Deadpool and Wolverine Movie Review: Extravagant fanservice makes up for a hollow core

Deadpool and Wolverine Movie Review: Extravagant fanservice makes up for a hollow core

The film makes a joke out of its patience-testing exposition, recognises its formulaic screenplay through self-depreciating humour, and even playfully acknowledges worries about Hugh Jackman’s legacy being tarnished
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Deadpool and Wolverine(2.5 / 5)

The ‘merc with the mouth’ is back and this time, he wreaks havoc across several universes to make sure that the most-awaited team-up in superhero film history finally happens. Through a montage sequence loaded with quirky humour and upbeat music, we see Deadpool universe-hopping to find the ‘perfect’ Wolverine. Dredging up decades of references—all the way from the first X-Men film to Logan—Deadpool uses every iteration of joke you can possibly think of to annoy Wolverine, and it is enjoyable for the most part. Once the novelty of the team-up wears off and the film unravels the central plotline, both the quality and the momentum go through a steep drop. 

Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin

The Wolverine and Deadpool combination largely works because there is an inherent charm and chemistry in their constant bickering and wildly contrasting personalities. A lot of humour is leveraged from how Deadpool needs to convince a distraught, uninterested, perpetually irate, and psychologically broken-down Wolverine on a quest to save the universe. Ironically, It seems like Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool had to drag along, not just an uninterested Wolverine, but almost everyone involved in the film. From the writing department to the production design, visual effects, and cinematography, every creative output seems to be borne out of an explicit apathy towards the whole project. A major part of the film happens in ‘The Void’, an inter-dimensional landmass where rejects from every corner of the multiverse are dumped, to be forgotten. The Void is an interesting concept with raw potential, which gives you a licence to use any character (or possible iteration of a character) in any way imaginable. The film has fun with this concept sporadically—The giant version of Ant-Man's suit (with his skeleton still intact) is used as the villain’s lair, ruins of the 20th Century Fox Logo, crashed down Helicarrier etc. Apart from these minor flashes of ingenuity, the immense potential of several such remarkable ideas is sadly never fleshed out. 

Deadpool’s signature, fourth-wall-breaking humour, almost acts like an immunity against the usual issues of superhero films, which works to an extent in Deadpool and Wolverine. When an exposition starts testing your patience, we get a joke out of it, when the screenplay starts getting formulaic, Deadpool points it out, and even worries about Hugh Jackman’s legacy being tarnished is playfully acknowledged. The excessive self-referential humour, real-world references, and fourth wall breaks might take you out of the film at some point. However, they are still effective. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the unapologetic parade of cameos. Marvel is famously known for embracing the vast interconnected web of narratives and its colourful variety of characters. While the recent line-up of MCU films might have received backlash for excessive use of in-universe references, Deadpool, a franchise that was always cognizant of the criticisms against superhero films, was expected to be better. It comes as a surprise when the absurdly simplistic cameo scenes are rolled out one after the other, in a fashion that is eerily similar to an assembly line. 

Before Deadpool and Avengers, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine stood as the face of Marvel films. A legacy that was cemented through a grand, poignant end in James Mangold’s Logan. While Deadpool and Wolverine largely leave that legacy intact and introduce a brand new Wolverine, it still leaves you with mixed feelings, seeing a tired, uninterested Hugh Jackman grunting his way through the performance. Deadpool and Wolverine caters to a very specific set of fans who enjoy the Marvel films in a very specific way. They derive joy from figuring out the edges of the cinematic universe and find delight in knowing that it is expanding while also exuding warm nostalgia by staying connected to familiar characters. In that regard, Deadpool and Wolverine is one of the biggest fanservice films to come out of the MCU. As these ever-expanding stories connect with each other, one wonders if they will also connect to the audience like they used to.

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