[Ad - Sponsored by Entertainment Earth] Deadpool finally crosses paths with Wolverine as he joins the MCU in this fan-pleasing sequel, but Film Brain feels a bit mixed on the whole thing and pleas towards nostalgia.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to Projector and on this episode, Deadpool and Wolverine are together at last,
00:05in a film that isn't X-Men Origins Wolverine that is.
00:09🎵
00:25Wade Wilson aka Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds, is taken from his timeline by Mr Paradox,
00:30played by Matthew McFadden and offered a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe of Earth 616.
00:36However, Wade learns that his timeline is declining after the death of his anchor being
00:40Logan aka Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman and Paradox intends to destroy it.
00:45Wade tries to use a variant of Logan from another timeline to save his own,
00:49but Paradox sends them both into the void,
00:52ruled over by Charles Xavier's twin sister, Cassandra Nova, played by Emma Corrin,
00:56and Wade and Logan must begrudgingly team up to escape and save Wade's timeline.
01:02It's all come very fit in the full circle, given that Deadpool's first film appearance was in the
01:06absolutely abysmal X-Men Origins Wolverine, where the character was done a total disservice
01:11by being turned into Weapon 11, a generic bad guy for Wolverine to fight at the end of the movie,
01:17the Merc with a Mouth infamously being turned into the Merc without a mouth,
01:21and Reynolds begrudgingly playing the character despite this because
01:25when was Deadpool ever going to get his own movie?
01:28But then, of course, that happened, and the Deadpool films have long made that a source
01:34of their own mockery, including the aptly hysterical post-credits scene to the second film,
01:39but also just a running string of Hugh Jackman jokes, including mocking the ending to Logan
01:46again in the second film, which makes up the basis of that film's opening title sequence.
01:51So, really, you can say the groundwork for having Wolverine show up in a Deadpool movie
01:57has pretty much been laid since about 2009 or so. It almost feels like it was inevitable,
02:03in many ways, even though actually Hugh Jackman deciding to reprise his role wasn't actually a
02:09given, it was a fairly recent thing. Believe it or not, it's been six years since Deadpool 2,
02:14and suffice to say a lot has happened in that time, by which I mean the Disney buyout of Fox
02:19and all of their Marvel properties, including the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, which are now
02:24gradually being absorbed into the MCU, including Deadpool himself. And so there was some question
02:31as to whether putting Deadpool into the MCU would in some way new to him or change him,
02:37but the fact that the entire movie is a meta-commentary on this corporate merger
02:43pretty much says the opposite. One big noticeable change in this outing is the director.
02:48Stepping into the chair this time is Sean Levy, who is Ryan Reynolds' regular collaborator,
02:54previously worked with him on Free Guy and The Adam Project. He also did the Night of the Museum
02:59movies. That is definitely different to the previous Deadpool directors, Tim Miller and David
03:04Leitch, who both came from stunt and action backgrounds. That was clearly where they were
03:10focusing upon, whereas Sean Levy is definitely someone that focuses much more on comedy. That
03:15is where his experience lays. The movie is already breaking box office records as I record this
03:21review because it's the combination we've always wanted to see. We've wanted to see Deadpool
03:26playing off of Wolverine in the same movie. A proper version of Deadpool, I mean. Seeing
03:33Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in the same space feels like an event. And so the question with a
03:39movie like Deadpool and Wolverine becomes, what exactly do you want to take from it? Do you come
03:45into a movie like this wanting cameos and fan service? I'm going to tell you right up at the
03:50top, you're going to be extremely happy with the movie if that's the case. But if you wanted
03:55something maybe a little bit more than that, if you wanted a good story to go along with it,
04:01maybe not so much. I'd argue the first Deadpool film was quite subversive, as much as a studio
04:08comic book film can be. After all, it was wheeled into existence by a leak. It was the scrappy
04:14underdog that very nearly didn't happen. And the fact that there was a comic book movie that was
04:20very self-aware about the tropes, that it was poking fun at them, it did feel genuinely refreshing.
04:27There was kind of an anarchic feeling to the movie that felt like a poke in the eye to the Marvel
04:33Cinematic Universe, which can get a bit self-serious at times, certainly. It felt like
04:38something that we hadn't really seen before, especially because it was such a hard-R movie.
04:43There were, of course, R-rated comic book movies before that, but they were quite rare. Whereas I
04:49think there's a lot of movies that are followed in the shadow of Deadpool. Deadpool opened up
04:54things like The Suicide Squad, the James Gunn movie, and things like that. Deadpool 2 was a
05:00bigger, louder, and messier sequel, and everyone was kind of rushing in to do their cameos. And
05:07some of them were quite amusing. Some of them were fun, but it definitely felt like it lost
05:12something, because it wasn't the underdog anymore. It was a big, successful franchise. And that is
05:19only solidified by the time that Deadpool and Wolverine rolls around, where it's now fully
05:25into the MCU. The first thing we see in the movie is the Marvel Studios logo. And yeah,
05:32Deadpool is humming along to the theme song over it, but it does feel very much like we're in
05:38standard Marvel territory to a certain extent. It's not the scrappy underdog. It's very much got a seat
05:46at the table now. And don't get me wrong, this is very much a hard-R-rated Deadpool movie,
05:50with all that entails. It doesn't feel sanitized or watered down in that particular way, but it is
05:57also a Deadpool movie where there's a scene where he's led into a room showing screens that have
06:03clips of the Avengers movies. And it's all very celebratory and reverential, and the theme
06:09is playing. It plays that stuff surprisingly straight. Yeah, you get the jokes about,
06:15oh, you can't do that in a Disney movie. Kevin Feige won't allow us to do this in a Marvel film.
06:21But it feels weirdly toothless in its own way. Like, Kevin Feige probably had to approve the jokes
06:28about himself that Deadpool says in this movie, and that takes away from the real sting of it.
06:35The film doesn't really poke too much at the bear of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I think it's
06:41also telling that Deadpool and Wolverine largely exists in its own sandbox. Yeah, it does have
06:47connections with things like Loki, but it plays largely as a self-contained movie. Which makes
06:53sense because it feels in keeping with the other two entries, but it's also telling that they didn't
06:59really try to connect it with the massive behemoth of the MCU, and they aren't trying to do things
07:04that might affect what's going on in that universe. And so, in that way, it does feel like,
07:11to a certain extent, there is a bit of sanitisation, but maybe that's just naturally so because it's
07:18been absorbed into the thing that it was commenting on in the first place, and actually feels
07:24surprisingly on-brand despite the bloodletting. One of the more telling differences between this
07:30new Deadpool movie and the first two films is that the title sequence at the beginning of the movie
07:35is actually genuinely a credit sequence. In the first two films, it was gag credits. They were
07:40making fun of themselves. It added to the meta elements of the entire movie, whereas this time,
07:46they just play the credits. Which weirdly detracts because there's a fantastic bit of comedy going on
07:52underneath it, and so gag credits would have felt appropriate there. And it does detract a bit that
07:58it's literally just straight-up opening billing. I guess you really can't do that in a Marvel film.
08:05So, instead of playing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the film instead plays in the remnants
08:10of the Fox, Marvel and X-Men films, with the void itself being a massive running joke at the expense
08:16of this and the corporate merger, with the most telling identifiable feature in this desert
08:21landscape being the fragments of the old 20th century Fox logo, and it's envisioned as being
08:28this Mad Max-style wasteland with characters roaming around the landscape on their cars.
08:34They even managed to fit in a joke at the expense of Furiosa, which seems like it might have been
08:39inserted in at roughly around the last minute once they realised that Furiosa was underperforming at
08:44the box office. Bit of a low blow there. And as the film is playing into the nostalgia for the Fox
08:50X-Men films, bringing back characters like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, that it helps that Jackman
08:55clearly hasn't missed a step in reprising the role. He's fantastic, as he's always been in his
09:01career-defining part. It's great to see him back again, and it's also great to finally see him at
09:07last in the comic book-accurate costume, which is saying that fans of the comic books have been
09:13asking for for decades, because notoriously, the X-Men films refuse to have comic book-accurate
09:20costumes, instead going for black leather ensembles, because they felt that comic book-accurate
09:25costumes would be a bit too campy. It definitely shows the difference between then and now that we
09:32finally get this at last, and actually, it does look pretty good on Hugh Jackman. But the fact
09:38the costume is probably the most significant part of the role this time around is maybe a little bit
09:44revealing, in that Jackman has been now playing the role for 25 years, and I suddenly have the
09:50crushing realisation of the weight of time on my mind by saying those words. But he has genuinely
09:57been playing this character for so long, and in so many films now, that there is literally nothing
10:03that he hasn't already done with the character at some point, one way or another, and you do
10:09feel that at points in Deadpool and Wolverine. Even though this is a different version of Logan,
10:16normally speaking, it's still the same version of the character we're familiar with, and also the
10:22fact this version is dealing with Survivor's guilt, dealing with the fact that he's lost the X-Men in
10:28his particular universe, wasn't that exactly what the character's main conflict was in Logan
10:34previously? It's just him retreading that to a certain extent. Maybe he kind of left the role
10:41for a reason the first time. And while I could definitely argue the existence of Deadpool and
10:46Wolverine does undermine the power and significance of Logan, at least in terms of being a send-off
10:52for Jackman as the character, the film knowingly exploits that in its deliberately offensive
10:58opening sequence, which is probably the funniest part of the film, and the best action set piece.
11:05It's a good example of what Deadpool can do right in its best moments, in that literal defilement
11:12actually turns out to be somewhat hysterical, because it goes way, way beyond what you expect it
11:19to. And when Jackman does show up, he's largely playing it straight, which is exactly what you
11:23want, because he's meant to be the foil to Deadpool. You don't want both of them, cracking-wise.
11:29But as a buddy comedy, I do have to admit that after a while, I did find Deadpool and Wolverine's
11:35interactions to be a bit repetitive and a bit samey, because Logan's not exactly a big talker.
11:41He's a quite surly, monosyllabic guy. Much of the interactions between Deadpool and Wolverine
11:47can largely be summed up as, oh, I'm Deadpool, I'm making a lot of quips, and then Wolverine just
11:52growls at him, shut the fuck up. More effective in terms of their squabbling are the fight sequences
11:58between Deadpool and Wolverine, of which there are two in the movie, and that's arguably one too many,
12:04but still, these sequences are bloody slapstick, because both characters have healing abilities,
12:10so they can do the worst possible things to each other, and they just regenerate instantly,
12:16with no consequences, to do even more carnage on top of each other, and the fight scene in the car
12:21is a great example of this, especially as Deadpool is getting by far the worst of this in close
12:27quarters, where he's getting his limbs snapped out constantly, and then his limbs just
12:32heal back instantly. It's quite funny, and knowingly over the top, but again, they do this
12:39twice, when really, they should have just had one big blowout, like the one in the car, rather than
12:46doing two, and diminishing the second one by having already done that beat, and as for Ryan
12:52Reynolds' Deadpool shtick, I think we're all familiar with it by this point. We know exactly
12:57what he's going to do in this movie, in that he's going to crank the sardonic quips up to 11,
13:03which is exactly in keeping with the character, and it's ultimately quite funny, because of the
13:08sheer volume of the jokes, to just being very annoying, depending on the scene, and I do have
13:12to admit, I was kind of sympathising with some of the characters, especially Logan, for finding him
13:17immensely irritating at points. Admittedly, I have form for this, as many long-time viewers will know,
13:25I can find that Ryan's shtick, when he really, really decides to go with it, can be a bit on
13:32the grating side, to say the least. He can be charming when he kind of dials it back down,
13:38but that's not the case in the Deadpool movies, and I will admit he's funny, but sometimes I grow
13:44very tired of it, after a certain point, especially because Reynolds seems to be trying to set a world
13:50record for the amount of pegging jokes in a single film. But as I've said before, the film delivers
13:55as a fan service machine. It gives the fans a lot of things that they've been wanting to see
13:59in a film for years. Deadpool and Wolverine is basically a testament to, hey, Disney owns all
14:05these characters now, we can do this, we can do that. And that means that there is a veritable
14:11ocean of cameos, many of which are quite surprising, and many are fun in their own ways. And the
14:17surprise is absolutely the best part, so I'm not going to reveal any of them here, even though the
14:22movie has been out for over a week now. But still, watching the movie, it was quite enjoyable to have
14:29someone walk on screen and go, I genuinely didn't expect them to be in this movie, followed
14:34immediately by, okay, I genuinely did not expect that person to show up, they are the last person
14:40I expected to appear in a Deadpool movie, but it's kind of sweet that they're here. And this is all
14:46very inside baseball, because it's not just playing on the knowledge of the X-Men films, as the
14:51audience have very likely seen them, it's also playing on the development history of those films
14:57as well. At least one of these characters is a reference to a film that wasn't even made. This is
15:03very much meant to be a tribute to the Fox era of superhero films, as much as it's poking fun at it.
15:10It's arguably the forerunner to what we know the Marvel Cinemac Universe as we know it today, even
15:16as it ran concurrently with it for quite a few years. You could argue that we wouldn't have the MCU
15:23without these movies proving that there was an audience for comic book films. It's the era that
15:28I grew up with. In my teens, I saw all these movies as they came out. I am the target audience
15:35for something like Deadpool and Wolverine. And the film even plays upon those emotions, because in the
15:40closing credits, there's a tribute video where they've compiled clips from various X-Men films
15:47and other Fox Marvel properties, and compiled it together. And there is a certain sweetness
15:53about that video, but I also thought there's a degree of rose-tinted glasses and rewriting history
16:00to a certain extent, because let's be absolutely real here. A lot of these films were lambasted by
16:07the fans when they came out, and they're still arguably some of the worst comic book movies
16:14that were made. Yeah, some of them were really good, and some of them were also wildly awful.
16:21It includes in that tribute video, for example, footage from X-Men Origins Wolverine, which, yeah,
16:28you wouldn't have Deadpool and Wolverine without that movie, but it's also a pretty terrible film.
16:34Likewise, it also includes footage from the 2015 Fantastic Four, which is a very weird choice,
16:42because that film had a notorious production history, and yet they include a couple of clips
16:47like, oh, it was just happy days on working on that particular movie, and that's not even getting
16:54into the fact the film completely sidesteps, say, the darker part of those films, but in particular
17:02the X-Men films like, say, Bryan Singer or Brett Ratner. You definitely won't hear those words
17:09coming out of Deadpool's mouth, let alone seeing any footage of them in the behind-the-scenes
17:14tribute video, which I'd imagine was very carefully edited to avoid any of that particular stuff.
17:20I'm the kind of person that lurked on, say, superhero hype or the IMDB message board, so
17:26I get a lot of this stuff, and there's a certain charm at looking back on these films compared to
17:33what we know the MCU as, because they are primitive in certain ways, but this is also romanticism
17:40through and through, and it's also not the first time the MCU has used the multiverse for nostalgia.
17:45You think of things like No Way Home, or even the middle act of Multiverse of Madness, with all the
17:51cameos that popped up in the midst of that, and I'd argue that something like No Way Home did this
17:57better and actually earned it, because it did do something interesting with those characters,
18:03especially those from the amazing Spider-Man films, which didn't have a resolution, it did
18:09actually finally give them an ending. This movie tries to do the same thing, it tries to talk about
18:16endings and things like that, but it feels a bit hollow because a lot of what it's referencing
18:21wasn't as beloved as the Spider-Man films, so it feels a bit strange, and also because the movie
18:28kind of discards that angle anyway, especially because it's flying in the face of an ending.
18:34It makes a joke about the fact that, yeah, Disney brought back Hugh Jackman, he's going to be playing
18:38the role to these 90, and it kind of feels like it's true. But moreover, it reinforces the feeling
18:44that who shows up and what cameos there are have now become more important than the actual
18:49storytelling themselves in the MCU, which ever since Endgame has constantly gone back to previous
18:57characters, going back to previous movies, or even previous incarnations of franchises, and yes, I'm
19:04human, I enjoy the dopamine hit of recognising a character pointing at the screen like Leonardo
19:10DiCaprio, but even still, it doesn't disguise for me the fact that underneath it all, when you put all
19:18that aside, there really isn't that much story here. I did like some of the new characters that
19:24were added for this movie, but again, they kind of get a bit lost amongst the huge ensemble that
19:30eventually builds up over the course of the movie. Emma Corrin, for example, is clearly doing their
19:34best as Cassandra Nova, who is the twin sister of Charles Xavier, but of course, the evil side.
19:42I really like, in particular, the visual of Cassandra poking their fingers inside characters' heads,
19:49and you can see their fingers kind of poking out through them. You can feel the discomfort
19:55of the characters. It's very visceral in its own way, and you can clearly tell that Corrin
20:02is trying to add a bit of dimension to what, on the page, is a very straightforward villain that
20:08is clearly dealing with their own jealousy of being erased. The problem is the actual narrative
20:14of the story means that Cassandra gets turned into a villain whose plans don't really make a whole
20:21bunch of sense. They just exist to drive the nominal plot forward. Likewise, Matthew McFadden
20:28is wonderfully slimy as Mr Paradox, which is clearly playing on his work in succession,
20:34and McFadden does his best to turn that into a real character because, on the page, he has to
20:39deliver absolute buckets of exposition. He has so much dialogue and so many speeches, absolute reams
20:49of plot. The problem I found is that McFadden, he's set up great, but then he disappears for far
20:55too much of the middle of the film, and by the time he does reappear, his role has been superseded by
21:00Corrin anyway, so he's, again, just largely standing around to deliver even more exposition.
21:07But if you want to know who the real cameos are in Deadpool and Wolverine, it's the returning
21:12players from the previous Deadpool films, who are barely even in the movie and extremely
21:18underutilised. Deadpool and Wolverine might be the first film in history where the cameos have
21:25more screen time than most of the main cast in the opening credits. Marina Baccarin might not be
21:32fridged this time around as Vanessa, but she might as well effectively be, because this time around,
21:39Vanessa has moved on, and that provides a bit of conflict for Deadpool as a character. But again,
21:46it's a similar conflict to what he was going through in the previous movie, in that he has
21:51to find a way of moving on without her, and honestly, that conflict doesn't entirely ring
21:57true because he literally reversed time to bring her back to life. I think he might be a little
22:02bit of a keeper after something like that, but maybe that's just me. The only one that seems to
22:07actually evade this is Rob Delaney's Peter, who once again is a wholesome delight, even while he's
22:14doing jokes about weird piercings. But even so, I do think that the Deadpool cast are really squandered
22:22in this film, and especially because the conflict in this one is that Deadpool is trying to save
22:27his world. He's talking about how these characters, they are his world, but again, that rings rather
22:34false when they're hardly even in the movie to begin with. Separating him from his core cast of
22:40characters, the characters that he plays off of, I feel like is one of the film's worst decisions.
22:47And while we're on the subject of the film's emotional arc, the film tries to have a bit of
22:50depth with Wade trying to find his place, trying to find his significance. This whole thing about him
22:57wanting to be part of the Avengers, isn't that just very similar to what he was doing in the
23:02second Deadpool film where he wanted a place on the X-Men and he created X-Force? He wants to feel
23:08part of a team and feel included. He feels like that is going to make him feel important. So again,
23:16we're kind of going through things that we've already done in a Deadpool movie, but also because
23:22this gets overwhelmed in the sheer amount of cameos and stuff slathered on top of it, the movie tries
23:29to go for a big emotional moment that feels totally unearned at the end of it. And you might say,
23:36well, so what? But the first two Deadpool films did have that because you need that emotional
23:41grounding for the character. Otherwise, he's just bouncing around doing quips and he's just
23:46completely empty. The point is, he does actually care about something because you need the audience
23:53to care about something. But Deadpool and Wolverine doesn't pull this trick off. And
23:59because the film is missing that, it feels like it quickly falls into a cycle that it repeats
24:04over and over again. Deadpool and Wolverine bicker and fight, then a cameo walks in from behind,
24:10then you pause for a reveal and applause, then you have a set piece and then just repeat over
24:15and over again until about two hours passes. When it comes to action, I don't think it matches the
24:22first two films. For a start, too much of the film takes place in nondescript locations like
24:29empty deserts, woodlands or fields. So many just generic locations. Although, really, if it wanted
24:36to be a tribute to the Fox Marvel films, it needed to set at least 50% of the movie in corridors.
24:41And when it comes to the action set pieces, they're really messy and visually cluttered.
24:47There's too many effects getting in the way, yet it affords the time for the guest players to do
24:52their cool moments. Those are photographed quite well, but they're cut in very awkwardly. The staging
24:59is clumsy. It's always kind of cutting back and forth in ways that don't really feel very organic.
25:06Much later on, near the end of the movie, there's an attempt at a corridor sequence. You know, those
25:11kind of sequences that are inspired by the famous bit in Oldboy, where the characters have to go up
25:16against an army of opponents in a single continuous shot. This is something that you've seen in a lot
25:21of the Marvel TV shows. Really, in this case, it's a street scene, but still, it's an example of this.
25:28It again feels like a sequence that exists simply because it looks cool, and it ultimately comes
25:34across as just being empty time wasting for yet more cameos. There's no real significance to it.
25:40They just spend five minutes on all of this stuff, and it has nothing to do with the story or the
25:47plot. It just stops to do all this stuff, and then gets back to the climax of the movie. Although, I
25:54suppose when you think about it, Sean Levy might actually be the best person to direct this, because
25:58it really isn't all that different from Free Guy, where Reynolds had to save his world from being
26:03destroyed amidst a sea of cameos and references. It's just that this time around, there's more
26:09people saying motherfuckers and exploding heads. Look, Deadpool and Wolverine knows exactly who
26:15it's playing towards, and I think those people will be happy. In fact, I know a lot of those people
26:19are happy. I've seen people talking about how much they enjoyed the movie, and how they had fun with
26:23it, which is exactly what you want from a cinema experience. I'm glad for those people. I want to be
26:29one of those people. I don't want to be sitting here going, well, I didn't like it as much because
26:34there wasn't much of a story to it. But it's also the weakest Deadpool film for me, because
26:39it wore thin very quickly once I realised what exactly it was. Maybe it's just me, but I'm tired
26:48of all the IP displays that we've seen recently, especially in the superhero genre, and not just
26:55in Marvel. I mean, we've seen it in things like The Flash, which was roundly rejected, but largely is
27:02doing a lot of the same things. It's trying to cash in on the affection for the past, and the
27:09movies that we grew up with, especially my generation. But I mean more than that when I go
27:15to a movie. There's also a part of me that wonders that once the hype dies down, and people start
27:20re-watching the movie, once they've got past those initial surprises, on a second or third viewing,
27:28the lack of substance aside from those things might start to leap out at those viewers. And
27:34that's a bit of a shame. It feels like Deadpool and Wolverine might be a kind of movie that you
27:39watch once, you enjoy it, but you don't come back to. For something that starts out as poking the
27:45genre in the eye Three Stooges style, Deadpool and Wolverine ultimately feels like more the same old,
27:53same old, when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just navel-gazing at its past.
28:00If you like this review and you want to support my work, you can give me a tip at my Ko-fi page,
28:04or my YouTube Super Thanks feature which is right below the video. Or you can insert
28:08MetaQuip here at my Patreon, where you can see my videos early among other perks,
28:12including access to my Discord server, and you can join YouTube memberships for similar perks.
28:17Or you can simply like, share and subscribe, it all helps. Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, fading out.