DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. And So On Until 90, Logan [REVIEW]

I have to admit, the screening of the third movie about Wade Wilson was one of the strangest experiences of my life. I’m not even sure if it was… a movie, and certainly not a good one. However, I had a lot of fun for most of it, like a kid. From the halfway point, I started to get a bit tired because how long can you sit through a two-hour SNL sketch that’s a grand farewell to the 20th Century Fox studio? There’s a lot of love here for the world, characters, and comics. Plus, there’s full awareness of what they want to do – make a production that will instantly take over Tik-Tok and Instagram with quotes and scenes. In my mind’s eye, I can already see those videos like: “All Cameos from Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Funniest Quotes from Deadpool & Wolverine,” or just simple cut-scenes. It doesn’t matter that the plot is flimsy and barely held together. It’s as if Kevin Feige and company made the following decision: “You didn’t like the multiverse after Endgame? You don’t like the new superheroes? You wanted a festival of returns, cameos, and fan service? You’ll get it. And we guarantee you’ve never seen anything like this.” They’ll break the bank, no doubt about it.

The best comparison I can make is this – Deadpool & Wolverine is like a superhero version of the Polish movie Job, or the last brain cell. The plot and its development don’t matter at all. The film about the wisecracking mercenary is some… new subgenre of “deliberately bad cinema.” Not B-movies. Something else entirely. There’s a lot of Mel Brooks here, youth comedies in the gross-out style, and even more pop culture awareness. Everything is done totally deliberately, and the abandonment of a sensible script and consistent action building aims to cram in as many jokes, quotes, funny meta-comments, and above all, cameos as possible. Marvel flexes its muscles and laughs at itself. The closest comparison is the She-Hulk series. And yes, although (like here with Deadpool) not all the jokes hit for me, I have to admit that my face was smiling for a really long time. Well. At least it smiled for the first hour. Then I got a bit tired because the number of surprises can make your head spin. From the appearance of a certain trio in the Void, I started to get a bit tired because they started hitting hard with clunky, overly talkative exposition from a cabaret again. And the army of certain duplicated characters was nothing more than a wink to me. And probably unnecessary, even in terms of fan interaction. Interestingly, Deadpool laughs at this too. In previous parts, the whole world behaved as if it were real, and individual things really happened, with Deadpool being the only one breaking the fourth wall. Here, everyone breaks the wall between the viewer and the characters, pointing out moments we should laugh at. Sometimes it’s intrusive, later tiring, but in the planned convention… it works. I’ve never seen anything like it.

It’s amazing that there are moments of true acting brilliance in Deadpool & Wolverine. And I won’t surprise anyone by saying that Hugh Jackman had his adamantium claws in all of them. I know Reynolds is Deadpool, but Hugh Jackman was born to be Wolverine. What a feeling for the character! Even in something so frivolous. As a certain loud-mouthed mercenary would say – keep going until you’re 90, Mr. Australian. The monologue scene in the car is probably… the best acting moment for Wolverine. And I remind you, this character got such a great movie as Logan. It’s just a shame that Hugh Jackman gave us the only flesh-and-blood character in the entire film. Well, maybe next to Cassandra Nova, the twin sister of Charles Xavier. A very cool character, who is a bit wasted on such a frivolous film, because the potential for a complex, serious villain is enormous. But there’s no point in complaining, because that’s the convention of Deadpool & Wolverine. The rest of the characters serve to provide fan joy, make us laugh, become the lever for the actions of the two main characters. It’s their film. I had some hopes for the return of Dafne Keen playing X-23, but there’s no point in expecting any emotional depth and depth in these returns. And if you expect that, you won’t be disappointed. Visually, Deadpool & Wolverine stands out above the Marvel average of the last three years. The effects never hit you in the eye, but this production wasn’t aimed at flashy CGI and rendering of artificial worlds. The most important are the big winks, the impressive fight scenes, of which there are really many. Everything is conventional, intentional. Music? Here, big plus for the creators, because it’s perfectly matched to the rhythm of the spectacle we get.

Deadpool & Wolverine is not a serious film. If I had to objectively assess it in terms of structure and script, I would have to say that it’s just a very poor production. But that’s not why it was made. It’s… deliberately bad cinema, which gives up being anything more than a fan attraction from Disneyland. It turns the MCU upside down, making me know even less about how it’s built and how it works. And I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. The creators understood this too, giving viewers what they wanted – pure fun. At least a few of the guest appearances (especially THAT one) will make their jaws drop. I don’t know if Marvel Jesus will save Marvel, but there hasn’t been such shameless fun for geeks. I guarantee it.