From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.
Throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, what was then called the Marvel Comics Group was, er, not picky about whom they sold rights to their characters to. As the superhero renaissance came upon us around the turn of the twenty-first century, Marvel’s characters were all over the place: Spider-Man with Sony, Blade with New Line, and Daredevil, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four all with Fox. The Avengers characters as well as Ghost Rider, Punisher, and others remained with Marvel and their nascent Marvel Studios.
The 2019 absorption of 20th Century Fox into Disney changed that landscape significantly, as now Marvel Studios controlled the X-Men and Fantastic Four (Daredevil’s rights had already reverted to Marvel), and the question then became how those characters would be integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That process was significantly delayed, first by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, then by the dual strikes of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA in 2023. However, the seeds for doing so were sown by the establishment in Avengers: Endgame (and, to be fair, also in the X-Men films, particularly Days of Future Past) of multiple time tracks, and then by Spider-Man: No Way Home establishing that the movies created by the other studios were simply alternate timelines.
The first look at X-characters in the MCU came in the post-credits scene in The Marvels, where Monica Rambeau went through a dimensional fissure and wound up in a timeline that has (at the very least) Beast from the Fox X-films.
Since the entire multiverse concept is pretty batshit already, it seemed the best way to bring it all together would be with the most batshit character in Marvel’s pantheon of heroes: Deadpool.
The notion of a third film starring the Merc with the Mouth was stalled by the Disney acquisition of Fox, and then by finding the right story. The notion of using the Time Variance Authority, established in the Loki TV series, was there from the beginning, but it wasn’t until Hugh Jackman was convinced to come out of character retirement to reprise the role of Wolverine that it really came together, as long as the film didn’t violate the dramatic impact of Logan.
Back from Deadpool 2 are Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, Rob Delaney as Peter, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Karan Soni as Dopinder, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Shioli Kutsuna as Yukio, Stefan Kapičić as Colossus, Lewis Tan as Shatterstar, Randal Reeder as Buck, and the character of the Juggernaut, here played by Aaron W. Reed.
Back from Logan are Hugh Jackman as several different Wolverines (among them the “Patch” persona and “Old Man Logan,” both from the comics) and Dafne Keen as X-23. Back from X-Men: The Last Stand is Aaron Stanford as Pyro. Back from X2: X-Men United is the character of Lady Deathstrike, here played by Jade Lye. Back from X-Men are Tyler Mane as Sabretooth and the character of the Toad, here played by Daniel Medina Ramos. Back from X-Men: First Class is the character of Azazel, here played by Eduardo Gago Munoz. Back from X-Men: Apocalypse is the character of Psylocke, here played by Ayesha Hussain.
Back from Spider-Man: No Way Home is Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan. Back from Loki season 2 is Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15. Back from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is Chris Evans as the Human Torch. Back from Elektra is Jennifer Garner as Elektra. Back from Blade Trinity is Wesley Snipes as Blade.
Introduced in this film are Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, Matthew Macfadyen as Paradox, and Channing Tatum as Gambit. In addition, we meet many alternate Deadpools, played by (among many others) Reynolds (Nicepool), Reynolds’ wife Blake Lively (Ladypool), Nathan Fillion (Headpool), Matthew McConaughey (Cowboypool), Paul Mullin (Welshpool), Reynolds’ stunt double Alex Kyshkovych (Canadapool), Kevin Fortin (Zenpool), Hung Dante Dong (Roninpool), and Reynolds and Lively’s kids Olin (Babypool) and Inez (Kidpool).
Deadpool & Wolverine
Written by Ryan Reynolds & Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick & Zeb Wells & Shawn Levy
Directed by Shawn Levy
Produced by Kevin Feige, Lauren Shuler-Donner, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy
Original release date: July 26, 2024
“You really are God’s perfect idiot, aren’t you?”
We open with Deadpool digging up Wolverine’s corpse from where he died in Logan, as Deadpool is convinced that Wolverine isn’t really dead, because he has regenerative healing. Except yeah, he’s dead, and all that he finds in the grave is an adamantium skeleton.
Then some soldiers from the Time Variance Authority show up to take Deadpool in. Aided by Wolverine’s skeleton, Deadpool takes out all the TVA goons over the opening credits and to “Bye Bye Bye” by *NSYNC (which we also see Deadpool dancing to periodically).
Then we flash back to how this all started…
Shortly after Deadpool 2, Deadpool uses Cable’s time thingamabob to go to “the sacred timeline” in order to try to join the Avengers. His meeting with Happy Hogan does not go well, and he returns to his own timeline dejected. Six years later, his relationship with Vanessa has ended, and Wade Wilson is wearing a toupee and selling pre-owned vehicles in suburbia alongside his buddy Peter. He has retired from being Deadpool, though Peter keeps a Deadpool costume in his locker just in case…
After a day of work, in which Deadpool sells not a single car, he and Peter bicycle home where he’s met with a surprise birthday party at his and Blind Al’s apartment. Also present are Dopinder, Vanessa, Colossus, Buck, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Yukio, and Shatterstar. Vanessa has a middle-management job and is dating a co-worker.
A knock at the door, and Wade opens it to find several TVA soldiers. Immediately mistaken for strippers, they kidnap Wade and take him to TVA headquarters, where he meets Paradox. After providing him with a shiny new costume and adamantium swords, Paradox explains that he has a chance to go to the sacred timeline. His timeline is toast, as it has lost its anchor being. Usually that means that the timeline will die a slow and awful death over thousands of years. The days of the TVA pruning timelines is gone, but Paradox thinks that’s the wrong call and wants to wipe out Deadpool’s timeline completely. The TVA powers-that-be think Deadpool is special, so he’s getting this offer.
Deadpool mistakenly thinks he’s the timeline’s anchor being, and he’s very much alive, thanks, but actually it’s Wolverine. Deadpool then steals Paradox’s time displacement thingamabob and goes to Logan’s grave to dig him up—which brings us back to the beginning of the movie.
Now that he knows that Wolverine’s all dead, not just mostly dead, he hops around to various other timelines to find a Wolverine he can bring back and be the new anchor being for his timeline. He encounters several Wolverines (all to a Huey Lewis & the News soundtrack): one who is very short (like the one in the comics), one who is in his guise as “Patch,” one who is crucified on a pile of skulls, one in a post-apocalyptic future, one played by Henry Cavill instead of Hugh Jackman, one who is an old man in brown sitting on a porch, and one who is getting drunk in a bar. The last one is the only one who doesn’t try to kill Deadpool on sight. Mostly because he passes out from being drunk.
Deadpool carries his drunken ass back to the TVA. Paradox laughs his ass off. While it’s true that he wouldn’t have accepted any Wolverine to replace the anchor being, as you can’t actually do that, it’s also true that Deadpool picked the absolute worst Wolverine ever. He let down everyone in his universe.
Paradox then sends them both to the Void. A place between universes (which has, among other things, a broken 20th Century Fox logo) that looks like a giant Mad Max-style desert, Deadpool and Wolverine get into a huge fight, to the tune of AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells.”
The fight stops when Deadpool points out that the TVA can fix his timeline, but they have to get back to the TVA first. Wolverine reluctantly agrees.
They encounter a person whom Deadpool thinks is Captain America, as he’s played by Chris Evans. A caravan arrives led by Pyro, and which also includes Sabretooth and the Toad. Deadpool expects their new friend to say “Avengers Assemble,” but instead he says, “Flame on!”
It’s Johnny Storm, not Steve Rogers. Unfortunately, Pyro is able to absorb his flame, and he crashes to the ground. Sabretooth then challenges Wolverine, who cuts his head off. Deadpool holds up Sabretooth’s head and makes a Mad Max speech, but then the Toad uses his prehensile tongue to activate a giant electromagnet, which attracts Deadpool’s weapons and Wolverine’s skeleton.
As they’re brought to the big boss, Cassandra Nova, all tied up, Storm explains what’s happening: they’re in the Void, which is where the TVA sends troublemakers who don’t play well with the multiverse. (“Reed called it a metaphysical junkyard.”) There’s a resistance, which the Torch is a part of, that is trying to get back to the TVA. Wolverine says that’s where they’re going. The Torch laughs, as they are unlikely to make it that far. Also present is Alioth, a giant smoke monster from Loki that will kill pretty much anyone.
Cassandra’s headquarters is a giant Ant-Man corpse. (“Paul Rudd finally aged.”) Cassandra is Charles Xavier’s twin, taken from the timeline at birth and brought here. She’s a telekinetic and also a touch-telepath, though her method of reading your mind is to shove her fingers inside your head, which is a particularly gruesome special effect. Deadpool claims that Storm talked some serious shit about Cassandra, which Storm vehemently denies right up until Cassandra rips his skin off, and his skeleton and internal organs collapse to the ground.
Wolverine is furious that Deadpool got Storm killed. Cassandra then shoves her fingers into Deadpool’s head, which flashes us back to Vanessa and Wade’s breakup. She’s frustrated with how he’s given up on life. Cassandra then tries to feed both title characters to Alioth, but they manage to escape by holding onto a suit of armor that Wolverine hot-wires.
They crash to the earth far away from the Ant-Man corpse. They find a diner and get some food. Deadpool tries to get Wolverine to open up—for example, to find out why he’s wearing the yellow costume he also wears in the comics, something the Wolverine from Deadpool’s timeline never did, but Wolverine is tight-lipped on the subject, preferring to drink rubbing alcohol.
They meet up with another Deadpool, who was never disfigured, and who also has a pet dog, Mary Puppins. This Deadpool—“Nicepool,” as he’s called, while Mary Puppins is “Dogpool”—is very nice and considerate and sappy and dull. He offers his car to help get to the rebels faster, which Wolverine is fine with, but Deadpool isn’t, as it’s a Honda Odyssey. (“When Honda found out chlamydia was making a comeback, they created the Odyssey to compete.”)
However, they go off, after Deadpool reluctantly gives Dogpool back to Nicepool. At one point, Deadpool accidentally says “if they save your world,” at which point Wolverine stops the car and shoves his claws in Deadpool’s thigh. Deadpool then admits that he doesn’t really know if the TVA can fix his timeline—but it wasn’t a lie, it was an “educated wish.” Deadpool explains that he doesn’t know how to save worlds, but his world is nine people (he shows a polaroid from his birthday party) and he desperately wants to save them, but he doesn’t know how. Logan tears into him verbally and then they fight in the Odyssey for, um, hours, getting blood all over Nicepool’s “COEXIST” bumper sticker.
They both exhaust themselves, and pass out in the back of the Odyssey, which is then found and driven off by X-23 to a cave where the last bits of the resistance are gathered: Elektra, Blade, Gambit, and X-23. They were all taken by the TVA due to fear that they would try to save their universes (as were others who were since killed, including Daredevil, the Punisher, and Magneto). Deadpool riles them up to team up and go after Cassandra. Wolverine isn’t interested, preferring to drink up Gambit’s Jack Daniels supply. The only way to beat Cassandra is with either Magneto’s helmet (not available, as she killed him and melted the helmet) or Juggernaut’s helmet (he’s working for Cassandra). So they have to find a way to get Juggy’s helmet and put it on her.
X-23 goes to Wolverine to give him a pep talk. He finally explains why he wears the yellow suit all the time. He never used to wear it, even though his other teammates begged him to. But he refused to play ball. One day, when he was at a bar getting drunk, the X-Men were all killed. After that, he went on a rather indiscriminate killing spree, turning himself into public enemy number one. He wears the outfit now because it’s all he has to remember the X-Men by.
She says they’re going after Cassandra at sunup and that they can’t do it without Wolverine. He says he’s the wrong guy, and X-23 says that he was always the wrong guy.
Pyro calls Paradox, with whom he’s working secretly. Pyro wants out of the Void, and Paradox promises to help if he takes Cassandra out.
Using the Honda Odyssey and one of the Punisher’s bazookas, the rebels—including Wolverine—attack the giant Ant-Man corpse. We then get the big-ass fight scene, as Elektra, Blade, Gambit, and X-23 take on Cassandra’s goons (Blade repeating his epically ridiculous line, “Some motherfuckers still trying to ice-skate uphill”), while Wolverine and Deadpool confront Cassandra.
Cassandra knocks Deadpool out and enters Wolverine’s head. She offers to silence the voices in his head, which are all the people he let down.
However, it was a distraction. X-23 is able to slice off Juggernaut’s feet at the ankles and then remove his helmet, throwing it up to Deadpool, who puts it on Cassandra’s head.
The problem is this: the only way Cassandra can send them back to the TVA is with her psi powers, and those powers don’t work as long as the helmet’s on. But if they take the helmet off, she’ll kill them.
Pyro then shows up and shoots her, grateful for the chance to do so when it will have a lasting effect. Wolverine knocks him out before he can make a speech, however.
Wolverine tells Deadpool to take the helmet off, because it’s what Charles Xavier would want him to do. Wolverine tells Cassandra that if Xavier knew about her, he’d punch a hole in the universe to save her.
Deadpool removes the helmet. She heals herself, and decides to let them go. She has a sling ring that she took off a Doctor Strange variant who was sent to the Void. She opens a portal—but she has also summoned Alioth, so they have to race to the portal before the creature eats them.
We see what almost appear to be kill shots on the four rebel heroes, but they all recover and fight back and watch as Deadpool and Wolverine just barely make it through the portal.
They land in the lot where Peter and Wade sell cars. Peter says he’ll clock Wade out, and Deadpool says to do it permanently.
They go to where Paradox has constructed the time ripper, which he’s going to use to eliminate Deadpool’s timeline. Cassandra finds out from Pyro that Paradox isn’t playing by the rules. (She’s about to shove her fingers into Pyro, but he backs off and says he’ll tell her. “Jesus, just ask sometimes!”) She kills Pyro and goes to Deadpool’s universe to use the time ripper for herself. She’s going to destroy the entire multiverse so that only the Void is left. She brings in all the Deadpool variants from the other universes to keep our title characters occupied while she wipes out timelines.
The Deadpool Corps arrives, under orders to kill Deadpool and Wolverine. Deadpool uses Nicepool as a shield for the bullets, only afterward discovering that he doesn’t have regenerative healing powers.
Wolverine, however, is quite ready to kill a hundred Deadpools, and so they attack. But first, Wolverine puts on his helmet, and Deadpool has a nerd-gasm.
The fight is brutal, and to the tune of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” as Deadpool and Wolverine dismember and disembowel and dispatch all the Deadpools—but they do have regenerative healing powers, so they all get back up.
(At one point, the fight goes through a bus, which has an ad for a “Stanlee Steamer,” with an image of Stan Lee, thus giving The Man a cameo.)
Then Peter shows up and all the Deadpools rally round him, as every Deadpool has a Peter. This frees our heroes to stop Cassandra.
Paradox says the only way to stop Cassandra is to blow up the machine by linking the matter and antimatter, which will kill either of them, despite their regenerative powers. Deadpool thinks he should be the one to do it because Wolverine didn’t ask for any of it. But Deadpool has people to get back to, while Wolverine has nothing.
But at the last minute Deadpool smacks Wolverine in the face with a fire extinguisher and goes in to make the noble sacrifice. Unfortunately, the matter and anti-matter streams are too far apart and Deadpool can’t reach. However, the two of them together can, and they complete the circuit together. Wolverine’s top explodes, exposing his six-pack abs.
The time ripper goes boom, taking Cassandra with it. Hunter B-15, now a muckety-muck in the TVA, shows up to ask if Paradox knows anything about an unsanctioned time ripper. Paradox tries to put it all on Cassandra, and praises “my friends” Deadpool and Wolverine, who sacrificed themselves to stop her.
Except they didn’t sacrifice themselves. Had it just been one of them, he would’ve been atomized, but because it was both of them, they survived. B-15 has Paradox arrested and taken away. B-15 also shows a new reading: the explosion of the time ripper regenerated Deadpool’s timeline. It’s no longer in danger of extinction.
Deadpool then asks if they can fix Wolverine’s timeline by changing his past, but B-15 points out that his past is what made him the person who could help save the universe. So they can’t change it.
Wolverine and Deadpool go eat some shawarma. Wolverine’s about to go off on his own, but Deadpool invites him back to his and Blind Al’s place. They have another party, this time joined by Logan, Dogpool, and X-23. At one point, Logan tells Wade to give him the dog and to talk to the girl. Wade and Vanessa wind up holding hands.
During the credits, we see clips and behind-the-scenes stuff from the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil films. (Nothing from the Blade films. Probably couldn’t secure the rights from New Line.)
Then the post-credits scene has Deadpool—who is tired of being accused of getting Johnny Storm killed—in the TVA pulling up footage of the Void. Turns out that Storm said every single thing Deadpool quoted, and more besides, ending it all with, “And you can quote me.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
I was prepared for this movie to be a romp, to be nerdy as hell, to be full of Easter eggs, to be ridiculous in all the best ways.
I did not expect it to be a delightful love letter to the pre-MCU Marvel movies. (Well, except for the five Spider-Man movies, but No Way Home covered that ground pretty good…) I got a real thrill seeing Wesley Snipes and Jennifer Garner and Chris Evans back as the heroes they played two decades (or more) ago. Even though the seven movies those three appeared in ranged from flawed to awful, it was still really great to see them.
And Channing Tatum finally got to play Gambit, and damn me if he didn’t sound (and look) exactly like the comics character. It was a beautiful thing, and I don’t even like Gambit! (Seriously, never really took to the guy. One of many comics characters created in the 1990s who were all posturing and no substance.)
Plus, of course, we’ve got the romp, the nerdiness, the Easter eggs, and the ridiculousness. Ryan Reynolds was pretty much born to play Deadpool, and he continues to absolutely kill it as a total agent of chaos. Hugh Jackman, meanwhile, continues to brilliantly inhabit one of Marvel’s most complex characters. Giving us a Wolverine who failed is a masterstroke, as it gives him a genuine arc. Watching him find his way back to heroism after everything he’s been through is a joy to watch (and an impressively serious bit of pathos to put as a character’s through line in a farce), especially since it’s mixed in with his constant drinking, his bitching out of Deadpool, and his proclivity for violence.
And there is lots of violence. The film’s R rating is partly for the language, but a lot of it is for the nasty violence, some of the nastiest of which is in the very first scene when Deadpool takes on the TVA armed with Wolverine’s skeleton. Plus several Wolverine/Deadpool clashes, both verbal and physical. Indeed, Jackman and Reynolds prove to be a letter-perfect double act, the former’s angry bitterness meshing perfectly with the latter’s random scatology.
We’ve also got two great villains in this. Matthew Macfayden is delightfully smarmy as Paradox, and Emma Corrin just gives a superb performance as Cassandra. Corrin revels in the character’s brutality, psychopathy, and cruelty.
And, most importantly for a movie that is, at its heart, a comedy, the movie is funny as hell. In particular, the movie isn’t afraid to take shots at Fox and Disney and Marvel Studios. There’s Deadpool admitting that the movies since Endgame have been hit-and-miss with way too much multiverse stuff (said in a movie choked with multiverse stuff…), followed by Nicepool saying that they’ve been pretty good. There’s Deadpool bitching that it took twenty years to get Hugh Jackman into Wolverine’s actual costume. There’s Paradox having a sandwich in the midst of his blithely telling Deadpool that his universe is toast. There’s Pyro telling Cassandra to just ask for once, instead of sticking her fingers into someone’s brain. There’s Wolverine knocking Pyro out while saying that not everybody gets a speech. There’s Blade saying that gloriously absurd line about ice-skating uphill. There’s Deadpool expressing sympathy to Elektra that Daredevil’s dead, but Elektra saying it’s fine, because Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck broke up.
And then there’s the classic bit where Blind Al asks Wade to do cocaine, with Wade saying that Kevin Feige drew the line there, that they can’t reference cocaine. Blind Al asks if they can call it Bolivian Marching Powder, but Wade says they have a list of all the slang terms, so they can’t use those—at which point, the two of them use pretty much every single slang term for cocaine you can possibly think of. It’s glorious.
The movie isn’t perfect. After doing such a magnificent job with Wade and Vanessa’s relationship in Deadpool, they fridged her in Deadpool 2, and after going to the trouble of reversing it, they’re broken up in this movie. Yes, they seem to get together in the end, but that’s after an entire movie of Vanessa being basically out of the picture aside from an opening scene and a weird psychic journey in the middle—just like in the last movie. It’s maddening.
It’s also just a bit too long. While the film only clocks in at two hours and nine minutes, it seems a great deal longer than that, mostly because there are a lot of drawn-out fight scenes. Plus there’s a major pacing issue at the end, as we get a glorious climactic fight scene when they attack Cassandra’s headquarters, only to have yet another climactic fight against the many Deadpools, followed by the climactic destruction of the time ripper. “Climactic” is not an adjective you should be using three times to describe the end of a movie…
Points, by the way, to the first of those climactic fight scenes. I really thought they were going to kill off Elektra, Blade, Gambit, and X-23, and seeing them get back up and keep fighting was fantastic. Sure, they were probably eaten by Alioth, but we didn’t see bodies, so I choose to believe they survived.
Next week, we look at the reboot of The Crow.
