Deadpool & Wolverine movie review: Early in Shawn Levy's buddy superhero movie, when Ryan Reynolds' Wade Wilson is commissioned an Avengers-like world-saving mission, he literally breaks the fourth wall by headbanging the camera into cracks and telling Fox that he's going to Disneyland. That's exactly what the threequel entails: Deadpool entering the Disneyland that's the Marvel Cinematic Universe – it's like Alice in Wonderland, but on signature Deadpool steroids.

Deadpool in Disneyland

The reason why this turbulent marriage of Deadpool and MCU sustains is because it's not designed as Disneyfication of Deadpool, as many feared, but as the Deadpoolification of the MCU. One has rarely seen a Marvel film go all R-rated. Ryan Reynolds and Levy (Free Guy and The Adam Project) fly with the idea by introducing gore, abuses, and adult imagery into the MCU. But they do so by sticking to the core of what Deadpool is – humour. Lots and lots of humour. And no one is spared. Not even Marvel.

In that sense, Deadpool & Wolverine is to Marvel what Greta Gerwig's Barbie was to Mattel. The studio bosses are in on all the jokes directed towards them. Deadpool uses all the recent criticism directed towards MCU's Phase 4 and 5 as fodder for his unsparing humour. For instance, the most obvious criticism of Marvel resurrecting Hugh Jackman as Wolverine becomes a running joke. Deadpool suspects a bag of Marvel cash is tough to say no to, and predicts that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige is now going to bank on Hugh as Wolverine till he's 90.

He also welcomes Wolverine to the MCU, but adds that he has joined “at a low point.” When an army of Deadpool variants walk in from another dimension, he echoes our exasperation when he says he's sick of all the time variation, multiversal mumbo-jumbo. Not to say that there isn't any of that in this movie – there's plenty. Because it seems like MCU is no longer capable of building high stakes without invoking multiple timelines. Well, that may imply that the stakes are cosmic, but it also defeats the very purpose of stakes-building – nothing is under tangible threat because everything is revocable.

In 2017, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine had gotten the most memorable send-off – I'd argue it ranks higher than Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame. James Mangold's Logan was the perfect swan song for a special character and its legacy stands diluted by Wolverine striking back in the Deadpool threequel. But it helps that the very tone of the Deadpool franchise is of not taking itself too seriously. So along with all the Hugh Jackman sellout jokes, when a character getting decimated by Wolverine asks to make it stop, another butts in, “Mangold tried.”

The humour extends not only to Disney (Dogpool is referred to as Mary Puppins) and MCU's own movies, but also that of its rival, Warner Bros. and DC. The Void, a dimension where the rejects are dumped into by the Time Variance Authority, looks like a Mad Max rip-off. A joke about Furiosa is also slid in, just like a wisecrack about Batman pops up when Deadpool remarks that Wolverine's classic yellow mask makes him look like “Batman but who can move his neck.” Ryan doesn't spare himself either – with a sappy reference to The Proposal (2009) and a shoutout to actor-wife Blake Lively. My favourite, however, is when he looks at the worn-out giant Ant-Man skull and says, “Paul Rudd has finally aged.”

The meta humour somehow helps the audience glide over Marvel's borderline annoying obsession with timeline hopping, VFX overdose, and cameo bombarding. Thankfully, cameos don't turn into a spectator sport here as most of them have fascinating MCU lore attached to them. There are Fox characters returning to assemble like Avengers, a forgotten Fox character reprising role after he emerged as a Marvel legend, an actor playing a mutant he was supposed to play in the past but never got there, and even a now-retired DC actor cast as a Wolverine variant. Marvel could've gone overboard with the cameos, but it decidedly treats the movie as a tribute to 20th Century Fox, which it acquired in 2019. Stay for the end credits for a walk down memory lane to the high-stakes superhero storytelling of the X-Men and Fantastic Four days.

Red & yellow

Interestingly, it took a Marvel to unite two of the most loved Fox superheroes. Their team-up was teased way back in 2018 in the post-credit scene of Deadpool 2. The long-in-the-making threequel makes for a sumptuous buddy comedy because of the giving actor that Ryan Reynolds is. After headlining 2 movies in his franchise, he makes space for Wolverine not only in the film's title, but also the storyline. He's had great chemistry with his male co-stars in movies like The Hitman's Bodyguard (Samuel L Jackson) and Red Notice (Dwayne Johnson), and Hugh Jackman is no different. Because he slips into the adamantium skull and regenerative skill with consummate ease, as if he last played Wolverine just yesterday.

His no-nonsense, tough guy humour is a sharp contrast to not only his classic comic-book yellow costume, but also the irreverent, verbose one of Deadpool. The very fact that neither of them can die, but still go on to slash and pierce each other anyway, makes for some charged action sequences, high on gore and bloodshed. Watch out for the bit when all the windows of a bus turn red as Deadpool and Wolverine go about with their onslaught. It's every gore lover's wet dream. Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, Charles Xavier's evil twin, brings her own icky appeal to the proceedings, getting her hands dirty to literally penetrate people's minds with her fingers (that's some tangible telepathy), in sharp contrast to her prim and proper British accent.

Sure, the invincible immortality of both its lead characters, coupled with MCU's multiverse-fuelled revocability, makes Deadpool & Wolverine another superhero film with rather predictable, low stakes. But like Spider-Man: No Way Home, the multidimensional design is efficiently used as their one chance at penance. For the longer you live, the longer you fight with your guilt, your insignificance. MCU is gradually transcending its ultimate purpose of world-saving – it's increasingly becoming more about not becoming complacent of saving the world. It's become more about fighting the fatigue – of its very own existence.

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