I saw
Deadpool & Wolverine during a Monday morning matinee immediately following the film's opening weekend. I'm glad I didn't wait any longer to see it, as by Monday evening my too-regular doom-scrolling on Twitter and Facebook was already revealing to me images from the film unbidden, images revealing certain actors who appeared in the film, the costumes they were wearing and, in one instance, even a still from the film's climax.
I'm not normally very strict about avoiding spoilers in comics or films (especially not the former, which I generally flip-through before reading, as I am usually far more concerned with the execution of a comic rather than the precise content of it), but here it was obvious the filmmakers and the marketing folks went to rather great pains to keep certain elements of the film as surprises and, I confess, it would have definitely altered my viewing experience if I saw those images I saw on social media before I had actually seen the film.
I hope you've managed to see it already too, if you are the sort of viewer who doesn't like spoilers. Not just because I am assuming it is now becoming increasingly difficult to avoid spoilers (I was just at IMDb.com looking for an image to use atop this post, and noticed that all of the guest-stars, from minor characters to cameos, are listed in the credits for the film there). But also because I don't want to be the one to spoil the film for you.
So let me say once again here that this post will contain spoilers for the film and is being written by someone who has already seen it, for an audience of readers who have also already seen it.
The film isn't a great one, but, nonetheless, it stayed with me throughout the day and throughout the night, and I found myself still thinking about it the next day, when I decided to start this post (Obviously I'm not actually posting it until a few days later, as it takes time to type paragraphs and paragraphs, and I have a day job).
Not all of my thoughts were necessarily positive ones, mind you, but I think the fact that I was thinking about it at all after the now-mandatory end-credits scene says something good about the film—its ambition, its scope, its eagerness to provoke a reaction.
I mean, I certainly didn't leave either of the first two Deadpool movies still thinking about them in anyway, nor can I say that any of the Marvel movies I've seen since Endgame—and I've missed a few—left me pondering them at all.
So anyway, these are the things I was still thinking about Deadpool & Wolverine in the hours and days after I left the theater...
1.) The timeline doesn't really make any damn sense at all, does it? The premise of the film, which you know because you have already watched it, is that when a timeline's "anchor being" dies, the entire universe that being calls home begins the process of slowly deteriorating.
This is what is currently happening to the timeline/universe called home by Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), as Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) of the Time Variance Authority explains, because it's anchor being, Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), has in fact died. Remember, Deadpool shares his timeline/universe with all of Fox's X-Men movies, despite the fact that he never seems to get to interact with any of the X-Men, with the exceptions of Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), a fact that was joked about in previous installments of the Deadpool trilogy.
Now when, exactly, did Logan/Wolverine die?
Well he died in 2017's Logan. You remember. You saw it. He nobly sacrificed himself at the end to save Laura (Dafne Keen). It was all rather touching.
But although the movie Logan was released seven years ago, it was actually set in the future (the year 2029, according to Wikipedia, and yes, I did have to look it up), a dystopian future that I don't think anyone really took to be the real, official ending of Fox' universe of X-Men films, what with its very down world-building (no new mutant children have been born for a generation, the ninety-something Charles Xavier has dementia, and he accidentally killed all of his X-Men when he had a psychic-powered seizure, etc).
Sure, it took place in the future, but it certainly wasn't meant to be the future. Certainly no more than the apocalyptic, Sentinel-ruled future in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past was meant to be the real future. (Or, to use a comic book example, Logan's setting was no more definitive than that of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's 2010-launched "Old Man Logan" arc of Wolverine....which proved popular enough to become a well that Marvel kept going back to, and thus establishing it as a possible future that became its own, alternate timeline).
But never mind what degree of "official" the Logan filmmakers might have thought of their work, or how the audience received and understood it. Official or not, it still takes place in the future, as in five years from now, which is when Deadpool & Wolverine is set. Deadpool even visits Logan's grave from the end of Logan and exhumes his at this point mostly skeletal remains.
Wanting to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt, I did consider that maybe when an anchor being dies, the timeline/universe starts degrading backwards, with the "future" disappearing before the present (this is even somewhat suggested with the visual aid Paradox shows Deadpool, of the timeline disappearing from right to left), but that still wouldn't work, because if that was the case, the play would be for Deadpool to travel to the future and save Logan's life during the events of Logan's climax, not shop around alternate timelines/universes for a substitute Wolverine to take his Wolverine's place (which, of course, he does, leading to the rather fun montage of alternate Wolvies, mostly played by Jackman). That would simply result with the Deadpool's world having two Wolverines in the year 2024, the official one of which would still be destined to die in five years and erode the universe.
Complicating things further is the fact that a grown-up version of Laura (played by the now grown-up Dafne Keen) appears in the Void. There she tells Logan that her version of him gave her a chance to grow up. In the "real world" after the events of Logan? Or in the Void? It's not clear, but her being a grown-up at all suggests that time did indeed move forward after Logan's death in Logan, a good seven years or so.
I think that the four—four!—credited writers of this film, a number that includes comics writer Zeb Wells, should have realized this rather early in the process, and rather than just assuming it's a silly comedy, and therefore they don't need to explain such things, should have addressed it. (If anything, this movie starring Deadpool should make complicated explanations even easier to include, given that Reynolds' Deadpool peppers his non-stop dialogue with fourth wall-breadking, filmmaking terms like "maguffin" and "exposition.")
Really, Wells at least should be used to an audience questioning, even interrogating, the interior logic of a superhero story, and sought to address it.
2.) What was up with the Avengers application scene? I'm still not entirely sure I understand the scene early in the film when Wade Wilson, wearing a suit and tie, sits down for a job interview with Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) to discuss his application to join the Avengers.
It's actually a pretty pivotal scene for Wade's character arc throughout the film (such that it is), with a line of dialogue in the film's climax referring back to it. And it's got some decent jokes. As random as Favreau's appearance was—one gets the sense that he was the easiest get among the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent cast members—Favreau is a pretty good comic actor, and it is fun to watch he and Reynolds play off of one another.
That said, exactly when and how did the interview even happen, considering the fact that the movie makes it so clear that the Fox/X-Men movies are set in a completely different timeline/universe from the one that the Disney/Marvel Studios Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Paradox refers to as "The Sacred Timeline"...?
It seems to be set sometime in the past, before Deadpool settles on his somewhat sad, mid-life crisis-y status quo at the start of the film's narrative, a fact that is reinforced by a line of dialogue that implies that Iron Man/Tony Stark is still alive...and it's therefore sometime before the events of 2019's Avengers: Endgame.
Deadpool does of course get his hands on a device that allows him to jump from timeline to timeline (leading to the Wolverine-shopping sequence), but that's not until well after his interview to join the Avengers.
Or are we meant to believe that there are different version so the Avengers within the different timelines, and that Wade had thus interviewed with his timeline's Avengers, rather than the MCU Avengers...? (The version of Wolverine that stars in this film seems to know who the Avengers are, saying "Fuck the Avengers" when they are brought up, suggesting that there are Avengers in his timeline.)
Anyway, as amusing as the sequence is, it's one of several elements of the film that don't seem to be properly explained (or just plain don't make sense), and it seems like it's mainly in the film at all simply because now that Disney own Fox and the filmmakers had access to whatever toys from both universes they could afford/were willing to spend money on, it's a scene that could happen, rather than needed to happen.
3.) I'm just going to say it: I did not care for Wolverine's costume. I am going to assume this isn't a very popular opinion, given online reaction to the costume since it first became common knowledge so many months ago, but the yellow and blue costume Jackman dons in this film didn't do anything for me.
While I certainly understand the appeal of finally giving him a comics-inspired costume after he's starred or appeared in...so many of these films that I've now lost count, the result commits the same sins that too many superhero movie costumes do, complete with built-in muscles (or suggestions of muscles, in the ab area there, which Jackman clearly does not need, as is demonstrated in the climax) and a clunky, armor-like look.
Despite the color scheme, it's not actually that comics-accurate.
It's especially noticeable whenever Wolverine is standing next to Deadpool (which is, um, much of the movie), given how comics-accurate Deadpool's costume is. They could have given Wolvie something like that, tighter fitting and more spandex-y, but instead they went in a more Batmanly direction.
You know which costume did look great, though? The one that Jackman wore when he was playing one of his Multiversal alternates, in the Hulk-fighting scene. The classic brown and yellow suit (sans cowl). That was tight-fitting and more comics accurate, and it's kinda too bad they didn't make Jackman's blue and gold costume in that style and/or out of that material.
That said, it was great seeing the cowl on film, and I kinda liked what a big deal the film made out of revealing it. By the time Jackman finally pulled it on, I had assumed he wasn't actually going to wear the cowl at all during the film.
4.) I was honestly a little underwhelmed by the cameos and uncredited guest-stars. This was probably more my fault than it was the movie's fault, but because of all the rumors flying around online during production—Reynolds' wife's friend Taylor Swift to appear as Dazzler! Daniel Radcliffe to appear as a Wolverine variant! Halle Berry spotted with her hair dyed white!—I went in expecting, if not a surprise Swift appearance, then at least a host of cameos from pre-MCU actors reprising their Marvel hero roles, including some who never actually got to play roles they were attached to.
Basically I was expecting everyone from the original filmic X-Men to Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider to Milana Vayntrub's Squirrel Girl, either making brief appearances while Deadpool and Wolverine hopped through the Multiverse, or rallying together as an army ala the "Avengers Assemble" scene in Avengers; Endgame.
My hopes for such a complete collection of cameos were only further raised when Paradox mentioned he was sending our heroes to "the garbage heap" and the first of the surprise guest-stars—unless you count Henry Cavill as a Wolverine variant, a "joke" I didn't really get—made his appearance: Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, from the 2005 Fantastic Four and 2007 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Say what you will about those movies, but they were pretty perfectly cast, especially in the case of Evans as Storm). If they could get Captain America Chris Evans to wear a "4" on his chest and shout "Flame on!" again, surely they could get Nicolas Cage, Eric Bana or Thomas Jane to appear for a scene, right?
Instead, what we got was a team of four freedom fighters resisting Cassandra Nova's forces in the Void: Jennifer Garner's Elektra (2003's Daredevil, 2005's Elektra), Channing Tatum's Gambit (from the long-rumored, never-made solo Gambit movie that languished in development hell), the aforementioned Dafne Keen (2017's Logan), who didn't really seem to "fit" with the others, and, most surprising to me, Wesley Snipes' Blade (1998's Blade, 2002's Blade II and 2004's Blade: Trinity...co-starring a young, up and coming Ryan Reynolds!).
As exciting as the sequence introducing them all was, it felt more like, say, the appearance of the Illuminati in 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness than the casting of 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home; that is, it felt more like Who They Could Get rather than Who They Would Have Wanted to Get.
Also, as great as it was to see the modern Marvel movie acknowledging Snipes' Blade as the vanguard of Marvel comic book superheroes anchoring successful movie franchises—beating the X-Men, Spider-Man, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four and the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" out the gate by years—his role in Deadpool & Wolverine didn't seem...well, big enough. I mean, he's the Adam of Marvel movie superheroes, the Ur-hero. Shouldn't he have had a bigger role than just, you know, hanging out with Elektra and a guy whose movie never even actually got made...?
Granted, I don't know what they would have or should have done with him to differentiate him from the others.
Personally, I thought they should have cast Snipes as T'Chaka in 2016's Captain America: Civil War and 2018's Black Panther, but that would have just been meta-commentary stunt-casting.
It's just that Snipe's Blade is the first, and should maybe be afforded a greater honor than hanging with Elektra and the never-to-be Gambit, you know...?
5.) I thought way too long about Wolverine's bones. Again, this is more a me thing than a film thing, but I had a hard time with the opening scene of the film, in which Deadpool is confronted by soldiers from the TVA at Logan's gravesite from the end of
Logan, and then proceeds to slaughter them all to the tune of NSYNC's
Bye Bye Bye, using the invincible, admantium bones of Wolvie's corpse as weapons.
The whole thing about Wolverine's bones is that they are unbreakable, right? So how was Deadpool snapping them apart like Legos to use as projectiles and clubs against his foes?
It eventually dawned on me—like, a day later—that the human skeleton isn't composed of bones connected directly to one another, but that there is some connective tissue at each joint that holds them together. (That's why when someone discusses a particularly grievous state of affairs for their knees, say, they will say something like, "It is basically bone on bone at this point").
So I guess that while Wolvie's bones are individually unbreakable, his skeleton can still be pulled apart, especially if he has lost his healing factor and the organic bits holding the bones together into their skeletal structure have been rotting for a few years...? (Or, um, -7 years, in the film's nonsensical timeline).
I think what threw me at first, aside from my own ignorance of course, is the fact that I've seen Wolverine hit with fire, plasma cannons and explosions in his comics so often, terrible wounds that melt away all his flesh and muscle, and yet he still survives as an intact admantium skeleton (See above for one of the best examples).
In the comics, at least, whatever's holding his bones together seems as indestructible as the bones themselves.
6.) Is it weird that Cassandra Nova is, like, 20? Don't get me wrong, I thought Emma Corrin was great as Cassandra Nova. She was strikingly hot, rocked the bald head (Was it a bald cap, rather than a super-clean shave, though?), and was genuinely terrifying; they made a great, squirmy special effect out of the way her co-creator Frank Quitely had previously drawn her using her hands during demonstrations of psychic powers.
Still, it gave me pause at how damn young she was. According to IMDb, Corrin was born in December of 1995, making her...29, right? She introduces herself as the twin of Charles Xavier, but the Charles Xaviers we know from previous films are both quite a bit older (Patrick Stewart is 84, and James McAvoy is 45).
Yeah yeah yeah, she could have been a variant from an alternate timeline where a Charles Xavier isn't yet 30, but the casting reminded me quite a bit of Sony having 34-year-old Dakota Johnson playing senior citizen Madame Web in that particular film starring a minor Spider-Man character the studio somehow convinced themselves there might possibly be an audience for (And here let's pause and wonder that Fox never ended up greenlighting a Gambit movie, whereas Sony has produced flops starring Morbius and Madame Web...as well as a flop-to-be featuring Kraven).
Studios seem fine with using Marvel comics' old lady characters in their movies...as long as they lose the "old" part.
7.) Is it just me, or were there an awful lot of gay jokes in this film for the year 2024? I mean, it does indeed have some positive gay representation in the form of a relationship between Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna)...although you might not even realize they're a couple at all if you skipped Deadpool 2, given their very brief appearances in this film. And Deadpool himself presents as bisexual, spending a generously long sequence in which he's confronted by an all-male TVA group of soldiers at a party and intimating that he assumes they are strippers and that he is quite alright with them gang-banging him with sticks (Although, as is so often the case, it's impossible to tell to what degree Reynolds' Deadpool is just joking).
Still, there are repeated jokes in the film that amount to nothing more than pointing out that a minor character may in fact be gay and...that's it. See this guy? He's gay. That's the joke!
8.) Grant Morrison seems to have had a bigger influence on this Deadpool than many other Marvel movies. It's not just the reappearance of his character Negasonic Teenage Warhead (first appearing in 2001's New X-Men #115) or the use of his villain Cassandra Nova (Morrison and Quitely's 2001 New X-Men #114), although those clearly show the writer's fingerprints, despite how long ago their reinvention of Marvel's X-Men and their concept of mutants is now.
Rather, the concept of the Void, a "garbage heap" where Paradox and/or the TVA can send characters that have outlived their usefulness (and/or who were recast, and/or had their franchises end, no longer earning new sequels), reminded me quite a bit of Morrison's Limbo, which Buddy Baker visited in 1990's Animal Man #25, discovering it to be a lonely, hell-ish plane where comic book characters are sent to languish when they are not actively being written about or starring in any comic (Initially he encountered the likes of Ace the Bathound, The Inferior Five and the Gay Ghost there).
Of course, it's not such a unique concept that Morrison and the writers of Deadpool & Wolverine couldn't necessarily have developed it in parallel, with Wells and the other screenwriters never having read Morrison's Animal Man run or their Limbo revival as part of 2008's Final Crisis event series, but given their use of Nova, it made me curious if they were indeed influenced by Morrison here.
9.) The line "kick rocks all the way to bald hell" is my favorite in the film. I don't have anything else to say about it, I just like the idea of a "bald hell" for bald people, and the use of the old time-y, inoffensive insult of "kick rocks" in an otherwise fairly filthy, profane rant. Bravo Mr. Evans, a quite gifted comic actor who hasn't been allowed to shine much comedically in the strait-laced, upright role of Captain America.
