Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
Directed by Shawn Levy
Ultracitational, politically incorrect but also corporatist to the core, Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine is an uninhibited version of the production and narrative philosophy seen in Spider-Man: No Way Home. It’s a boisterous melee of character entrances, cinematic and television crossovers, sexual innuendos, brawls, and more. Everything, so much, too much, yet still not enough.
Hit me, baby, one more time
Six years after the events of Deadpool 2, the Time Variance Authority arrests Deadpool, ripping him from his now peaceful life. Along with a reunited and problematic Wolverine, the irreverent and unreliable Deadpool will change the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe…
The opening dance sequence sets the tone for Deadpool & Wolverine with a grand guignolesque slaughter to the rhythm of NSYNC, including the desecration of Logan’s hero. Yes, Logan, one of the many paths trodden by comic book movies, too auteur to become truly dominant or even a reference point. True to Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018), the new adventure of the anti-hero has transitioned from the defunct Fox to the omnipotent Disney and must bear the weight of the MCU’s destiny and the past and ashes of its former production house. An homage, if you will, and at the same time a new timeline, a free-for-all that allows the return of the (real) stars and erases previous faltering corporate and narrative choices. Deadpool & Wolverine is a coarse and witty dive into the past, a farewell to a generation of (lost) superheroes, to an imaginary world built by Fox, not much loved by viewers but always useful when it comes to shuffling the deck and especially filling the gaps. A game of excessive accumulation, like the latest Spider-Man, that guides the Marvel Cinematic Universe towards a phase of grand returns. Bad jokes, rock music blaring, pop apotheosis, gallons of blood, over-the-top cartoonish violence, the fourth wall repeatedly kicked down, entrances from every corner (and splatter exits), an erratic rhythm and fun for almost everyone. Good? Yes, in part. Bad? Yes, especially in perspective.
Perhaps, at times, incomprehensible for those not up-to-date on Marvelian adventures and the Sacred Timeline, the mother of all possible narrative freedoms, even the most absurd and incongruous, Deadpool & Wolverine takes on the dirty work, picking up everything needed to fill a gag-filled movie along the way. Thrown into the limbo of superheroes, in an ultra-citational void, the two immortal outcasts have the task of not making Linus’ blanket seem too short in an imaginary world incapable of taking itself seriously: deluded by James Gunn, corrupted by Taika Waititi, the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems no longer able to tell stories, the simplest variants of the hero’s journey, instead bloating its films with out-of-place and out-of-time jokes, systematically resorting to the past and nostalgia—no longer a surprise effect, now diluted and predictable like post-credit sequences. Sacrificing epic on the altar of mandatory box office climbs, throwing away the infinite aesthetic possibilities offered by the comic universe from the start (no one expected wonders like Jack Kirby’s, though…), Marvel/Disney has only the worst option left, the laughter that will sweep everything away.
From Gossip Girl to Loki, through a whirlwind of references, citations, jokes, entrances that we avoid spoiling (but would it really change anything?), and all that follows, Deadpool & Wolverine is a triumph of the ultra-post-modern to be consumed hot, on the day, likely soon to become indigestible to a not-too-geeky audience. Unless Disney’s diabolical plan—shaping the entire audience in its image and likeness—is successfully completed. Ryan Reynolds performs as usual, while Hugh Jackman dominates and makes a future handover even more problematic; the playlist of songs is predictable and therefore enjoyable; the script advances in fits and starts, between dead times and iconoclastic outbursts; the technical-artistic sector, orchestrated by Shawn Levy (Free Guy, The Adam Project, Night at the Museum) is obviously up to the task; all the others, more or less known faces, from television or cinema, to be erased or relaunched, do their duty. And yet, in the end, the void always remains there…
Enrico Azzano
Quinlan, July 27, 2024
