Marvel Jesus has risen, along with tons of fun comic book mayhem. The Merc with the Mouth is back on the big screen, this time teaming up with the X-Men’s not very nice mutant. Deadpool & Wolverine brings the first R Rating to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, full of the bloody violence and crude humor that the Deadpool movies are known for. The result is a hilarious crowd pleasing superhero romp that will please even the most hardcore fans.
Deadpool & Wolverine follows Wade Wilson’s attempt to save the universe from ending by recruiting a bitter and brooding Logan into defying the Time Variance Authority, who are out to destroy his timeline. Deadpool travels the Multiverse with Wolverine, forming a crew of various Marvel movie heroes to take on Cassandra Nova and her army of mutants. Cassandra is a deep cut X-Men super-villain who is the evil twin sister of Charles Xavier. It all may sound complicated, and might leave non-comic book fans confused, but the plot becomes secondary to all the over-the-top cartoony violence, potty jokes, comic book references and cameos. In fact, that’s kind of the point. The movie becomes self-satire.
With Deadpool’s constant fourth wall breaking and winks to the audience, he is totally making a mockery of the Multiverse saga and just how shallow comic book movies have become recently. Deadpool searches for the meaning of his existence while still knowing how meaningless this movie is, and that its only purpose is to bring in a bunch of old superheroes so they can fight each other in the ultimate comic nerd beatdown.
Fans suddenly pretending to care about the Chris Evan’s version of Human Torch, when he only shows up to die a horrific death, in one of the movie’s funniest moments. The ending credits is full of outtakes of the old Fantastic Four and X-men movies as a way of paying tribute to the Fox Universe, even when those films were never really revered by fans in the first place. Deadpool & Wolverine is aware of all this, and pokes fun at the whole idea. Comic book movies are now full of pointless action and references that no one but comic book readers will understand.
It begs to ask the question, are comic book movies still relevant? Marvel built its success on hooking non-comic book fans into caring about these characters, and the MCU was essentially, a giant comic book arc put on screen. Full of drama and depth that kept audiences flooding to theaters for over a decade. Yet, after Endgame, the MCU has struggled to keep viewers engaged. Marvel movies are not doing the numbers like they used to. It seems that the MCU has lost the non-comic book fanbase. All that’s left now is the comic fans.
So Deadpool & Wolverine brings up the point of, is this what comic book fans really want? Sure, every geek had a nerd-gasm when Blade, Elektra, X-23 and Gambit showed up onscreen, but none of that matters to the average person who never watched X-Men cartoons. The Multiverse was just an excuse to bring in every character that ever existed, and while it may provide some instant gratification to a comic geek, there really is no dramatic weight nor does it add to any story structure.
This new film lacks the depth of the previous Deadpool movies, which despite all the violence and jokes, had surprising amounts of heart. Yet still, this new film embraces its shallowness. It knows that it only exists to give fans the chance to see Deadpool and Wolverine beat each other to a bloody pulp while spouting curse words and dropping F-Bombs. As Deadpool searches for meaning, he doesn’t want to be known as just a joke, he wants to matter and be something more. Perhaps this movie is trying to make comic movies matter again.
Overall, Deadpool & Wolverine is a fun comic book caper full of bloody R-Rated violence, crude dark humor, meta references and superhero cameos. It doesn’t have the emotional dramatic weight of the previous films, but it’s still an enjoyable ride. Deadpool may not have saved the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he did shine a light on its flaws. Maybe by doing so, it has given Marvel insight into fixing them and correcting the course. All it takes is a little bit of maximum effort. In the meantime, it’s still fun watching superheroes beat the crap out of each other. And drop F-Bombs.
