It is a fine line to walk, loving a pop culture phenomenon with all your being, yet being able to make mad sport of it at the same time. Thus is DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, the ultimate fanboy and fangirl experience of the Marvel Universe that manages to be both wickedly funny and curiously reverent.
Deadpool AKA Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) starts things off by explaining why he is in North Dakota digging up Wolverine’s corpse. He’s already assured us that we needn’t worry that this film will show the proper respect for the late superhero. It won’t. And for the next two hours or so, tropes will be mocked, the fourth wall will disappear, and the film’s theme of redemption will have been explored from many angles.
The redemption arcs begin with Wade, who longs for his life to matter and to get back with girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Rejected by the Avengers in a job interview designed to make us all squirm, Wade resigns himself to the hum-drum life of a car salesman in the 10005 Earth timeline. There he struggles to pay the rent for him and his testy blind roommate (Lesley Uggams). He also struggles with being just friends with Vanessa. His birthday party, though, brings more than a surprise party from his nine friends when Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen as the epitome of corporate wankerdom) recruits him for the Temporal Variance Agency to put his timeline out its misery after the death of its anchor being. The end will be swift and painless for his friends (and everyone else), and Wade will have a bright future of mattering at the TVA.
Hence digging up Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the anchor being, with the sure certainty that he has regenerated and thereby able to save his universe with his anchor being-ness. It doesn’t work out, but it does lead to the first of many spectacular battle sequences with Deadpool wisecracking his way through the horde beset upon taking him down and that dandy whiff of necrophilia.
Further hence, tripping through the multiverse to find another Wolverine and coming back with the worst one, a snarling alcoholic with a dark secret and utter contempt for Deadpool. For reasons that don’t really matter because it keeps the fun going, the two end up in The Void where they are caught between a smoke monster and Cassandra Nova (Emma Corwin), a bald psychopath with psychic powers and a grudge against the world.
At no time does the flick pretend that it’s anything but a movie being watched by eager fans. Deadpool riffs to us about studio sales, Jackman’s recent divorce, and the odd accent affected by Channing Tatum in his extended cameo. It’s all done brazenly, but with a quick wit that finds Deadpool asking Mr. Paradox if he will >marvel< at the way he will be able to >avenge< himself. The in-jokes fly with wild abandon, and the studio that dropped the Deadpool franchise earns itself a fine and monumental drubbing that resolves itself into a visual lasting only a few minutes, but potent, and Easter Egg-y perfection.
As for the cameos, there are many of them, all neatly dovetailed into redemption arcs. This is strictly played for laughs, but in the humor there is a core of dignity to the heroic characters that does its work to raise the emotional stakes. Emotional stakes where there really shouldn’t be any. That’s good filmmaking. So is the pairing of Reynolds and Jackman. The former’s impudent sarcasm intoned with sincere gravitas; the latter the scenery chewing straight man to Reynold’s endless font of anarchic whimsey.
The special effects, of course we much discuss, are fabulous, but so is the refreshing takes on such things as a steel-cage death match staged in a Toyota Odessey, and the decision to populate the TVA’s office with the 19950s vision of what the future would look like. As for Dogpool, one of the many Deadpool variations explored here, that is no special effect. That is a dog that is so ugly it’s beautiful, and a darn fine actor, too.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE earns its R rating with every frame, and not just from the wanton violence and the F-bombs that flow throughout. There may not be any sexual situations per se, but the way Deadpool mixes innuendo with sarcasm paints some very vivid pictures, some disturbing, some hilarious, some both, which may or may not be disturbing for the viewer. Don’t fret. Embrace the chaos fearlessly. And stay through both the post-credit surprises.
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