Deadpool and Wolverine Review

The Inspiration Station

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00:00Are you ready?

00:02F*** yeah, I'm ready.

00:04I'm the Wolverine.

00:07Deadpool and Wolverine saw you from across the bar, and they like your vibe.

00:12It doesn't matter if you haven't enjoyed the MCU since Avengers Endgame pushed the stakes of the franchise off a cliff,

00:18or if you're cautiously optimistic about the rest of the multiverse saga.

00:22Come for Deadpool and Wolverine's blockbuster chemistry,

00:25but stay for the frankness with which they comment on the past, present, and future of Marvel Studios.

00:31The Marvel Universe is about to change forever.

00:34It's a good thing that they do, too.

00:36The MCU has been bloated and unfocused for years now,

00:40and it's about time someone let the air out and had some fun with it.

00:43In that way, Deadpool and Wolverine is a perfectly timed and well-sustained cinematic fart,

00:49released with confidence and comfort in the space it creates for future nourishment.

00:54It's not going to single-handedly save the MCU from the larger bout of indigestion it's suffering through,

01:00but it's a refreshing mea culpa that demonstrates that Marvel can still let her rip loud and proud when it really counts.

01:07Whatcha thinkin' about?

01:08Get the f*** off of me.

01:09Shh, shh.

01:10Almost done.

01:11Almost done what?

01:12Getting my knife out of your buttocks.

01:15Get your mind out of my pants!

01:17The Sean Levy-directed superhero comedy gets off to a roaring start,

01:21with Deadpool riffing on the action before the Marvel Studios fanfare is even finished

01:25and running afoul of the Time Variance Authority from Loki almost immediately.

01:29Let's f***ing go!

01:31There's an electricity to the opening act.

01:33After all, this is Deadpool's first time in the MCU,

01:36and like a comfortably inebriated cousin giggling into your ear after Thanksgiving dinner,

01:41there's no sure way to know what weird, hilarious nonsense will spill out of his mouth.

01:46I am soaking wet right now.

01:48Or how hard it will make your aunt clutch her pearls.

01:51With a decade-plus of Marvel Studios storytelling and marketing to skewer,

01:55Ryan Reynolds is off to the races,

01:57with jokes aimed at every corner of the Sacred Timeline.

02:01All right, finally aged.

02:03Reynolds' command of Wade Wilson's whipping wit is razor-sharp as ever,

02:07and applying it to the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,

02:10he's able to bring the self-important franchise back down to Earth.

02:14You could practically see Reynolds slamming a binder full of Feige-focused jokes onto a table

02:18and recording every single one.

02:20Cain is the one thing that Feige said is off-limits.

02:23What about Bolivian marching belt?

02:25They know all the slang terms. They have a list.

02:27The self-referential material is unpredictable and incisive,

02:31enough at first to make this the most dangerous the MCU has felt

02:34since there were six Infinity Stones on the board.

02:37One of the biggest questions going into Deadpool and Wolverine

02:40was whether the MCU's first R rating would be enough to sustain the filthy, subversive tone

02:46that set the Merc with a Mouth apart in the first place.

02:49Man, that f***ing does it!

02:51Put your hands behind your knees and get down on your head now!

02:55That disgusting, irradiated heart is still very much intact,

02:59and if the idea of Wade and Logan trading curses every ten seconds

03:02is all it will take to get you into theaters,

03:04rest assured you will leave well f***ing fed.

03:07Let's f***ing go.

03:09But I can't look Mr. Poole in his horrifying, melty face and lie to him

03:14and tell him that I didn't detect some pulled punches.

03:17Some jokes that walk right up to the line of being truly fearless and surprising,

03:22only for them to double back or change the subject quickly.

03:25With all the big laughs and self-deprecation in play,

03:28it's hard to begrudge the filmmakers for sanding off some of the characters' harder edges,

03:32but it's still a little disappointing that Deadpool and Wolverine

03:35doesn't try to top some of DP's more heinous on-screen acts.

03:39Holy mommy f***ing shit!

03:42Speaking of, we don't make it more than ten minutes into Deadpool and Wolverine

03:45before Wade gleefully desecrates our memories of Logan,

03:49Shut the f*** up!

03:50Oh my god!

03:51both the character and James Mangold's 2017 film.

03:54It's another tightrope Deadpool and Wolverine has to walk.

03:58Logan is still correctly regarded as a high point of superhero cinema,

04:02and even though audiences are more or less used to the idea of variants now,

04:06bringing Hugh Jackman back in all of his clawed costume glory

04:10still runs the risk of feeling tacky after his previous borderline perfect farewell to the X-Man.

04:16But Jackman, an actor known for his great showmanship and ability to Wolverine really good,

04:22threads the needle of a post-Logan return to the role,

04:25clearly relishing every F-bomb and flash of berserker rage.

04:29There's undoubtedly some cognitive dissonance at first,

04:32as the movie asks the audience to map decades of goodwill

04:35onto a variant we're meeting for the first time,

04:38sort of like Loki did in season one.

04:40But in the end, this movie's Wolverine has all of the reluctant heroism and self-loathing

04:45you'd expect from any depiction of Logan,

04:47and the redemption he's after is personal enough that these sticking points feel less distracting as the movie goes on.

04:53But Deadpool and Wolverine does remind us that nothing, timeline aside, is sacred,

04:59and playing fast and loose with the rules is the name of the game.

05:02I have no idea how to save it alone, but you, you know how to save it!

05:09In the years since the abysmal X-Men Origins Wolverine,

05:12Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have been road-testing their chemistry on social media,

05:17and Deadpool and Wolverine proves their catty one-upmanship can sustain a feature-length adventure with ease.

05:23Deadpool and Wolverine. A team.

05:25Shake on it.

05:27There's a trust and ease between the stars that puts their banter head and shoulders above most of their MCU contemporaries.

05:34Again, years and years of de facto rehearsal and an R rating give them a lot of leeway here.

05:40As a buddy comedy, Deadpool and Wolverine is rock solid,

05:44but it falls prey to the perfunctory plotting that has plagued other recent Marvel movies.

05:49It grinds to a halt any time there's exposition to attend to,

05:53and while Deadpool sure does like to joke about that fact in real time,

05:57clunky plot junk still hits the ear like clunky plot junk.

06:02Much of that exposition gets dumped in the lap of the TVA's Mr. Paradox,

06:06the timeline cop who eventually enlists Deadpool's help.

06:10But Paradox's influence on the events after his initial encounters with Deadpool is pretty limited,

06:16and the movie largely moves past him after the first act.

06:19The incomprehensible plot is not helped by Deadpool and Wolverine's bland primary setting.

06:26The Void, a trash heap at the end of time introduced in Disney Plus' Loki series.

06:31The nondescript, bleak terrain makes the already thin stakes even harder to hang onto as the movie goes.

06:38We're regularly reminded of the reality and the family that Deadpool is trying to save,

06:43and yet our only connection to them are the Polaroid that Wade flashes

06:47the few times the story calls for him to be earnest.

06:50It's also in the Void where the mysterious Cassandra Nova holds court,

06:54driven by off-the-shelf villain motivations that feel totally mismatched to her erratic, impish nature.

07:01Deadpool and Wolverine benefit from years of audience goodwill,

07:05with connections to worlds and characters that give them an emotional leg up.

07:09But as a creature of the Void with nearly no link to anything or anyone,

07:13Cassandra, and by extension actor Emma Corrin, ends up totally swept away by more familiar characters.

07:20Deadpool and Wolverine's boring but budget-friendly wasteland

07:24does at least open events up to promised cameos and variants in a way that,

07:28for all of Deadpool's undercutting,

07:30actually treats the fabric of the MCU's internal reality with some level of respect.

07:35A marauding group of veteran Fox mutants like Pyro and Sabretooth

07:39open the door to even more surprise appearances,

07:42which range in significance and utility from

07:44my brain recognizes that character and I like that my brain recognizes that character

07:49all the way down to

07:50holy crap we've now closed the loop on one of the superhero subgenre's greatest missed opportunities.

07:56Deadpool and Wolverine's self-awareness is most effective

08:00when it's honoring the pillars on which the MCU is built,

08:03namely Fox's work to build superhero franchises at the turn of the 21st century.

08:08Deadpool and Wolverine converses with that history thoughtfully

08:12and with more tenderness than you might expect.

08:18Stop it.

08:20Deadpool and Wolverine is an outrageous, consistently funny superhero comedy

08:24that succeeds largely thanks to the contagious enthusiasm of leads Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman,

08:30and a surprisingly classy perspective on superhero movie history.

08:34Wade and Logan's profanity-laced adventure forces the MCU farther out of its comfort zone than it's been in years,

08:41even though old and increasingly frustrating issues like forgettable villains

08:45and a barely-there plot show that breaking the fourth wall

08:48isn't always enough to solve a movie's foundational problems.

09:00Score.

09:01Oh, you guys would have been really mad if I forgot that.

09:05I keep it down here in the bucket.

09:07I haven't wanted anyone to see it until now,

09:09so it's why it's in the bucket.

09:11So, you know.

09:13Come on.

09:14Cough.

09:16There it is.

09:17Yep.

09:18Score.

09:19It's here.

09:21Thanks for watching.

09:22For more movie reviews, check out what we thought of Twisters and A Quiet Place Day One.

09:26And for everything else, you're already in the right place.

09:28IGN.

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