Review: Deadpool & Wolverine

Written by: Tony Lazlo, CC2K Staff Writer

Well, I’m pleasantly surprised.

I’m a huge fan and apologist for the first two DEADPOOL movies, both of which combine the vulgar-shock intensity of a SPACE MOOSE cartoon with a legitimately felt and performed sense of trauma and loss. Amidst all the grab-ass humor and fourth-wall breaking is a story about a man who only feels useful when he’s dying, and … well, I can relate.

I know I should stay off social media, but I’d heard a lot of bad stuff about this one, and while much of it is true—cameos don’t constitute good storytelling—there’s also a goofily inventive comic-book crossover in here that, at its best, reminded me of Grant Morrison’s work or Noah Hawley’s LEGION.

Emma Corrin is outstanding as Cassandra Nova—one of my all-time favorite villains—and I hope they get a chance to play the part again. Visually, the move to Disney-Marvel’s house style flattens out the more vividly rendered mutant movies, but there’s still some nicely surreal imagery to enjoy: the midcentury/Aperture Labs-style bureaucracy of the TVA, an evil lair carved out of the skull of a colossus, Nova lancing her fingers through her enemies’ heads like putty.

The aforementioned SPACE MOOSE-esque humor’s not for everyone, and that’s okay. The bajillion meta-cameos aren’t for everyone, and that’s okay. Wolverine’s comic and cartoon-accurate suit isn’t for me, and I say that’s because it looks horrible. That’s okay, too, because Jackman plays his role one hundred percent straight, challenging Reynolds for the most pathos-ridden antihero.

I get grouchy about the ascendance of comic-book movies, but they’re only a symptom of a larger array of problems: the advent of the internet and streaming, an increasingly risk-averse and creatively atrophied movie business, and the collapse of an entire middle class of movies about grown-ups and grown-up themes. Fanboy culture’s insistence we treat comic-book movies like holy writ is fucking exhausting, and I say that as a fanboy who’s been a huge asshole in his time. It’s so dreary that filmmakers have to piggyback on old intellectual properties to get something greenlit, even when it leads to stronger projects like LEGION or JOKER. (Which I know wasn’t for everyone.)

So despite the (also very dreary) reality that every cheeky, piss-taking joke in DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE was undoubtedly weighed and signed-off on by the Disney suits and bean counters, I’ll take some dipshit-Brechtian wall-breaking as long it comes with a few heartfelt moments.