Deadpool & Wolverine review: This time, the MCU is the villain

Being a Deadpool defender can be difficult. In just about any media where he appears, the character is exactly what his strongest critics think he is: an anti-hero with a strong affinity for irreverent violence, and a juvenile, obnoxious vessel for meta asides and a bushel of dick jokes. (“A bushel of dicks” would be a pretty solid Deadpool-ism.) I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for finding all that off-putting, because it is. But there’s also more to the character. Deadpool comes with a deep pathos. When that’s used effectively, it’s resulted in endearingly odd stories about those who are deemed (or feel) unlovable. That’s a potent emotional space for a summer blockbuster to inhabit. Deadpool & Wolverine — the third movie in Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool trilogy, and the first under the Disney banner — pays lots of lip service to that pathos. Then it punts it out of our multiverse, to Alioth-knows-where.

Look at that, I made a reference! Just like Deadpool! I can swear like him, too.

Deadpool & Wolverine has been billed as a Marvel Cinematic Universe story, but it isn’t, really. Apart from a brief gag scene early in the film, Deadpool never sets foot in the MCU’s Earth-616 for any Deadpool-y derring-do. Instead, the film is just MCU-aware — the mainline MCU is one more subject for Deadpool to joke about and pine for while he has a characteristically vulgar adventure somewhere else. In some ways, the MCU is more of a villain than the film’s actual villains.

But before all that, the story starts in Deadpool’s pre-existing corner of the multiverse, which is dying. Abducted by the Time Variance Authority from Loki, Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Reynolds) learns his universe is slowly fading away, due to Wolverine’s death at the end of 2017’s Logan. That’s because the former X-Man is an “anchor being” — someone so significant that their timeline falls apart without their presence. But TVA agent Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) says his superiors have deemed Deadpool as special, and worth rescuing from his decaying timeline and bringing over to the MCU. Trouble is, the invite doesn’t extend to the found family Wade has built up (and time-traveled to resurrect) across his previous two films.

This is Deadpool & Wolverine’s first problem: It arrives on screens already extremely pre-complicated and full of narrative baggage. This isn’t necessarily a problem if director/co-writer Shawn Levy and his script team just want to take the piss out of overly complex superhero films. But it is a problem when setting up that pathos that is also key to Deadpool as a character. It doesn’t particularly matter to me that I do not fully understand the mechanics of time and/or multiverse travel in this movie, or the chain of cause-and-effect that drives its plot. Frankly, I’m not sure the film’s five credited writers — Levy, Reynolds, returning Deadpool movie scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and comics and TV writer Zeb Wells — care that much about those things either.

I do care, however, when that confusion extends to the film’s emotional stakes. Deadpool & Wolverine spends so little time establishing where Wade is in relation to his friends and relationships (for some barely explained reason, he’s on the outs with ex-girlfriend Vanessa, played by Morena Baccarin) that his driving need to do something that “matters” feels rootless. He’s static, not terribly different at the end of the film’s two hours and seven minutes than he was at the beginning.

Perhaps that’s because the film offloads much of its emotional weight to Wade’s co-star. Logan (Hugh Jackman) enters Deadpool & Wolverine as a part of Wade’s hairbrained scheme to save his universe. If Logan is his timeline’s anchor being, Wade’s logic goes, he’ll just scour other universes until he finds a new one. The Logan he winds up grabbing is even more damaged than the one we’ve seen in the X-movies, and a lot of the film’s non-joke runtime is devoted to unpacking that. This seems like a poor use of Wade’s time, and ours. Logan’s whole deal has gotten plenty of exposure in past X-movies, and while his presence here has lots of fun moments, his contribution to the film’s emotional arc feels a lot like stolen franchise valor à la Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Photo: Jay Maidment/20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios

It’s hard to take any of this seriously though, because Deadpool & Wolverine is much more interested in focusing on Deadpool’s relationship with the MCU. From the very first second of the film, Disney, Marvel, and Kevin Feige are established as the thematic butts of the film’s comedy. There is no need for character work to anchor any of the jokes here, because the MCU is that anchor. All that swearing and violence? It’s in a Disney movie, baby! Remember that time Wade got pegged in the first Deadpool movie? Mickey Mouse paid for a movie about a guy who gets pegged! Oh, and the film’s on-screen bad guys? All a result of Marvel’s corporate dominance.

This last bit is where Deadpool & Wolverine almost gets at something interesting. The bulk of the film takes place in The Void, a Mad-Max-style limbo where the TVA sends troublesome people they can’t really erase. Ruled by the powerful telepath (and evil twin sister of X-Men leader Charles Xavier) Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), The Void is an island of misfit toys full of heroes and villains from other movie studios, disposed of by the MCU powers-that-be after Disney bought up 20th Century Fox. If you’ve heard about Deadpool & Wolverine’s many cameos and guest appearances, this is where they come from: corporate consolidation spun as fodder for jokes.

In Logan and Wade’s struggle to defeat Cassandra and escape The Void, the pair are also trying to escape the ruins of, for example, the 20th Century Fox X-Men universe. Unfortunately, this plot, and the gags around it, only undercut Deadpool and the very narrow lane of pathos that makes him tick. Because as much as he constantly makes fun of the MCU, he can’t stop defining himself in relationship to it, calling himself “Marvel Jesus” throughout this movie. Regardless of the fate of his home universe, Wade wants to matter — which is a way of saying he wants to join the mainline MCU universe, and that it is the only thing in this continuum that does matter.

That’s more or less the ball game. It’s hard to buy this movie as a love letter to anything but Marvel Studios’ corporate conquests. That’s one of the fundamental miscalculations behind the film. Wade is worth getting behind because he’s an underdog. But in Deadpool & Wolverine, he isn’t representing the unloved or speaking truth to power: He’s sucking up to the undisputed champ of the box office, even though that champ has earned the potshots Deadpool throws its way. The Void is what Marvel has done to pop culture. It’s the call coming from in the house, the big fucking smoke dragon that assimilates everything into its morass of multiversal bullshit or relegates it to oblivion, stripped for parts. And in this movie, Deadpool doesn’t just love it, he wants with all of his being to be part of it.

Deadpool & Wolverine has made its hero the worst kind of comic-book character: one who doesn’t stand for anything. It’s a terrible irony. Fans worried that Disney’s corporate control and the MCU’s rigid narrative oversight would leech away Deadpool’s edge, the swearing, jocular violence. Turns out that part was fine. Instead, the MCU just took his fuckin’ heart.

I told you I could swear like that cheeky bastard.

Deadpool & Wolverine debuts in theaters July 25.