One movie?  That’s all that Kevin f****** Feige is giving me in 2024?  This hardly seems fair, considering how I’ve been among the party faithful from the beginning.  I paid to see the very mediocre Black Widow, The Eternals, Thor: Love & Thunder and Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania.  I’m one of the biggest defenders of Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, for crying out loud.  I did punk out on The Marvels, but that’s no reason to force me to go cold turkey, Feige.

I do understand why Disney CEO Bob Iger let Feige decelerate to focus on quality, because nobody wants to experience another Quantumania in their lifetimes (or another Thor: Love and Thunder).  But still, only one Marvel MCU release this year?  One?  Sure, it’s happened before, back in 2010 (Iron Man 2) and 2012 (The Avengers).  (That’s ancient history from my perspective.)  And the only movie we get this year is Deadpool 3?  Yes, it will be fun to have the Merc with a Mouth as part of the MCU.  How his brand of humor will fit in with the notoriously squeaky clean Marvel Cinematic Universe will be a big question going forward.  Until Feige scarfs a boatload of mushrooms and figures it out at Burning Man, he’s placating me and the rest of the Marvel Army with Deadpool & Wolverine, featuring two refugees from the recently deceased merged 20th Century Fox studio.

Even Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) himself acknowledges at the outset that it’s been a long time since he graced the silver screen.  2018 to be exact, six long years.  You’ve probably forgotten that in the closing credits of Deadpool 2, Deadpool used Cable’s time travel device to undo his girlfriend Vanessa’s murder (as well as several members of his ill-fated team, X-Force.)  If you’ve been following the MCU’s multiverse saga, you probably suspect that Deadpool will pay for his reacharound with the sacred timeline in this movie.  Well, not exactly.

Before Deadpool & Wolverine answers that question, there’s an even bigger one that must be wrestled with.  How in the f*** is Wolverine in this movie?  Didn’t he famously kick the bucket in 2017’s Logan?  Isn’t he, as the Munchkins put it, “morall, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead?”  Why yes, he is, but Deadpool mistakenly believes that Wolverine has somehow regenerated himself while buried six feet under.  However, as the movie’s opening scene reveals, all that’s left of Wolverine is his adamantium skeleton.  If you thought for one minute that D&W would treat Wolverine’s incredibly heart-wrenching death with the dignity and respect it deserves, well, you don’t know Deadpool.

There’s little time for Deadpool and the remains of Wolverine to make nice, because the Time Variance Authority (or TVA) mall cops show up wielding batons.  Without explaining why they’re after Deadpool, we get to see Deadpool dish out some ultraviolence set to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye”.  In the middle of all the graphic–and homoerotic–mayhem, Deadpool takes us back to how he got to this point.

Turns out all of Deadpool’s problems are due to his relationship with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin).  The two have split up because Deadpool has turned into a schmuck, the one thing that Vanessa just can’t deal with.  His “angry avocado” face?  No problem.  But living with a man riddled with self-doubt?  Uh-uh.  Deadpool did try to join The Avengers, but his application was quickly rejected by Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau, pitch-perfect as a corporate gatekeeper).  Since no superhero team wants him, Deadpool joins his buddy Peter (Rob Delaney) selling pre-owned vehicles.  That, of course, doesn’t work out due to Deadpool’s tendency to swear and reveal everything about his sex life to everyone.  (One of the movie’s best jokes comes during a test drive with a very nice family.)

That night, Deadpool has all nine of his friends over for his birthday.  Colossus, Teenage Warhead Negasonic, Shatterstar and his non-superhero friends are there, but Cable and Domino are not in attendance.  (They must be waiting for Deadpool 4.)  Vanessa also shows up because she’s still Wade’s friend, but her presence is a sharp tug of the g-string for him.  But before he can feel too sorry for himself, the TVA shows up.  These guys really are the worst at everything in the MCU: worst timing, worst outfits, worst dialog….

To my surprise, the TVA isn’t after Deadpool to chuck him into the void.  (See: Loki season one on Disney+.)  This is where the plot turns into a cluster.  In short, Deadpool’s universe is dying because it lost its “anchor being”, who happened to be Logan.  His self-sacrifice sent shivers through the timeline (and Fox’s box office returns for the X-Men franchise into the dumper). .  The manager of Deadpool’s timeline, Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), gives him a choice:  join the sacred timeline or face annihilation in 72 hours with his friends.  So Deadpool must decide whether being someone who matters is more important than his friends.  He doesn’t want his friends to die, so he figures that the problem can be solved by plugging another Wolverine from the multiverse into his timeline.  Oh Deadpool, if only the rules governing the multiverse were that simple.  (Remember when that whole business with the Infinity Stones was complicated?)

Deadpool scours the multiverse for a Wolverine who is willing to help him.  (The ensuing montage includes a cameo from a “super” actor who was done wrong by DC.)  Deadpool finally settles for a fall-down drunk Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) who everyone hates and brings him back to the TVA cubicle farm.  Paradox says that this is not how the multiverse works, because reasons.  Additionally, Deadpool brought back the worst Wolverine in the entire multiverse.  When Deadpool realizes that Paradox is ignoring orders by killing off his timeline so quickly, Paradox vanquishes Wolverine and Deadpool into the void.  (If you think I’m spoiling things, this is only the thirty minute mark of the movie.)

After landing in the void, Deadpool and Wolverine first fight each other, then run into some familiar (Fox) faces.  They’re quickly captured and taken to the wasteland queen, Cassandra Nova.  Cassandra is Charles Xavier’s twin sister and has her brother’s psychic powers, but none of his moral and ethical circuit breakers.  From here on out, Deadpool and Wolverine need to escape from Cassandra and her henchmen, recruit some superheroes from yesteryear to their cause, go back to Cassandra’s fortress and convince her to send both of them back to Deadpool’s world just in time to save it and all his friends from total annihilation.  Got all that?

When people dismiss Marvel’s multiverse as a gimmick, I understand where they’re coming from.  The multiverse is basically a narrative cheat code that makes the impossible possible.  However, when done right, it results in something special.  For example, Spider-Man: No Way Home brought together the last three actors who’ve played Spider-Man, as well as villains from their respective films.  While seeing different versions of the same character interact with each other is familiar territory for comic books, I never thought I would see Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland play Spider-Man in the same movie.  What some people criticized as being “fan service” I thought was cool and a lot of fun.

Deadpool & Wolverine is similar to No Way Home in how it uses the multiverse to bring two of Fox’s biggest superheroes back together, even though one of them died seven years ago.  The way the movie goes about doing this is through convoluted, multiverse crap, but I didn’t mind because the movie is really a screwball comedy in superhero garb.  Like the previous Deadpool movies, this one exists as a vehicle for Deadpool’s quips and laughably gruesome violence, with a few heartfelt moments thrown in for good measure.

With that in mind, what I expected from D&W wasn’t complex, Infinity Stone-driven plotting, but to laugh at the combustible pairing of the flippant Deadpool and the grimdark Wolverine.  The previous Deadpool movies were funny, but D&W is on another level.  Deadpool and Wolverine play off of each other like characters in a buddy cop movie (48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, Rush Hour), where they are constantly getting under each other’s skin.  The difference with D&W is that when they piss each other off, they cut each other into ribbons.  The combination of Deadpool’s rapid fire quips and his extremely bloody vaudeville act with Wolverine produces a lot of laughs, and the movie is the funniest one I’ve seen in a theater in a long time.

You may have heard that D&W pays tribute to the 20th Century Fox Marvel movies of yesteryear along the way.  I don’t want to give away any surprises here, but as someone who watched the Fox Marvel movies for decades, seeing these “surprise guests” in action one more time was exciting.  Sure, there’s some serious nostalgia at play in this movie, but it’s done in a way that was both respectful to the characters and the actors.  I would compare what D&W does to the last Star Wars trilogy bringing back Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, or the recent Star Trek movies including Leonard Nimoy.  The supporting cast in D&W play an important role in the plot, which is exactly how it should be.

Of course, it goes without saying that even with Hugh Jackman on hand, D&W is still a showcase for Ryan Reynolds.  If you don’t like Reynolds’ shtick, this movie is not for you.  Jackman has some good moments but is mostly in grouchy/growly mode.  Emma Corrin is gleefully wicked as Cassandra Nova, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see her again at some point.  The actors who play The Characters Who Shall Not Be Named all have their moment in the sun, and I suspect they’ll return as well.

As much as I enjoyed Deadpool & Wolverine, it’s not a perfect movie.  The movie looks drab,  and the action sequences lacked visual pizzazz.  Director Shawn Levy’s purely functional approach to capturing everything left me wanting.  And the plot is a jerry-rigged contraption that makes little sense in hindsight.  However, I didn’t dwell on those issues because the movie is frequently laugh-out-loud funny.  Deadpool & Wolverine is an unwieldy combination of violent superhero fantasy and profane stand-up material, and I enjoyed every f-bombed minute of it.  Where the MCU and Deadpool go from here is anyone’s guess, but I’m confident it won’t involve pegging.  (Well, maybe just a little.)  Highly Recommended.

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