Deadpool & Wolverine Are Consumed By the MCU, Self-Aware or Not

Shawn Levy’s threequel Deadpool & Wolverine, a film ostensibly about mourning the Disney-Fox merger, is just another example of the tiredness of the multiverse, of the Disney mega-monopoly that just won’t die (even if it’s already been in decline). The film is obnoxiously metatextual—in the sense that it exists within a larger universe, but also in the sense that it, by its own admission, recognizes that its characters are traversing multiverses to essentially create a theme-park confection (consisting of the superheroes Deadpool and Wolverine) that will return the Marvel Cinematic Universe to its peak level of entertainment and intrigue. 

But all of this is “self-awareness” without much else, and poking fun at itself doesn’t make up for what amounts to more of the same. Deadpool & Wolverine is another mind-numbingly corporatized CGI fest, divorced from any true emotional stakes. It’s a picture that would rather tell you how to feel than make you feel.

The unfortunate sequel to Deadpool 2 stars Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool in the throes of a mid-life crisis. Having left his superhero life behind in search of something less monotonous (there’s a meta-irony here about the genre itself), he works as a used car salesman alongside friend Peter (Rob Delaney) following a break-up with his former fiancée Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). He’s yearning for purpose.

Here’s where things get annoying. The Time Variance Authority captures Wade, where Mr. Paradox (Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen) makes a proposition: Leave this universe and go to another, where he can become a superhero again. In the process, though, his home universe would be destroyed, along with all the people he loves within it, including Vanessa.

The Time Variance Authority is an organization that’s vaguely sketched, primarily because it’s already been detailed in the television series Loki or something, and knowing the full lore of a movie now requires you having watched all the Marvel iterations up to this point, on screens small and large. No matter. Mr. Paradox also underscores the reason Wade’s universe is being destroyed: the death of Logan (Hugh Jackman) death, as Logan was the “anchor being” of the universe. The clause is a fitting contrivance to make the eponymous superhero team-up happen, causing Deadpool to steal Mr. Paradox’s tablet in order to retrieve a Logan to replace the one in his universe.

Levy’s film is immensely satisfied with itself. It sees itself as novel, particularly for its conceit—obviously symbolic of the destruction of the 20th Century Fox Marvel universe—and because it nods towards Marvel’s decline and of Disney’s limitations, but it’s as trite as the rest of Marvel’s catalog.

Deadpool & Wolverine is reliant on insipid millennial-esque bits; for instance, its hackneyed, eye-roll-inducing needle-drops. The opening credits burst in, CGI-laden, over NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” in ceremonious fashion, but the sequence feels like anything but. The song has had a storied history in cinema, where it played as more than just a cool throwback song to soundtrack an excessively CGI-laden fight sequence where Reynolds makes a duck face and shakes his butt in the camera’s direction. Sean Baker’s Red Rocket did it better.

Another piece of millennial shtick: the whole dog bit. When Logan and Wade get trapped in the Void because of Mr. Paradox, they are met by other variants of Deadpool, including Happy Deadpool and his dog, Dogpool. Wade falls in love with Dogpool; of course he does; dogs are just so more lovable than humans and we’ve all agreed with that take. Or maybe this is just another routine that feels programmed for the city-centric millennial (think of the data that 44% of millennials see pets as “practice” for potential babies, and accordingly treat them as such, or that the most densely populated areas in the United States that majorly consist of millennials have more dog daycare centers than human ones).

Regardless of the tired jokes, the purportedly originality of Deadpool & Wolverine’s premise is undercut by virtue of this simply being another Disney/Marvel joint.

Deadpool notes on various occasions that “assplay” and “pegging” jokes have been approved by Disney but not others, as if winking at the audience that the film stands apart from the rest of Disney/Marvel’s catalog…but, aside from a few bits, it really doesn’t. All of its moving parts are interchangeable with the rest of the company catalog: overstuffed with extratextual lore from every other film or show in the universe; emotional stakes communicated through a montage sequence during the climax, rather than through careful attention to arcs; ugly, hyperdigital cinematography; more scenes set against CGI backdrops than on location. And this one will probably be a hit, too. That’s because Deadpool & Wolverine’s aim of getting butts in seats through teasing a team-up has been proven to work in the past. The picture just thinks it’s above this because it acknowledges it. It isn’t. Deadpool & Wolverine’s attempt to turn commonly held pet peeves around the superhero genre into inimitable strengths is a failure—pegging jokes aside (or rather, inside).

Director: Shawn Levy
Writer: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy, Zeb Wells
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Matthew Macfadyen, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney
Release Date: July 26, 2024

Hafsah Abbasi is a film critic who has covered the Sundance Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival in years past. She currently resides in Berkeley, California. Find her latest writing at https://twitter.com/hafs_uh.