Deadpool & Wolverine

It’s hard to pull off a trilogy of movies. It’s a huge feat to make three movies that both stand as excellent movies in their own right and serve a larger arching narrative. For every Lord Of The Rings trilogy, there’s Ti West’s X/Pearl/Maxxxine trilogy that failed to stick the landing on the third chapter, or the Star Wars sequels, where each movie suffered from individual issues as well as lacking the cohesion of a trilogy. The MCU hasn’t done well with trilogies either. Iron Man’s second and third chapters are divisive and nowhere near as loved as the original. Captain America’s third movie is only a third movie for the sake of branding. The third Guardians movie is such a dark and tonal shift from the previous two, it feels removed from them entirely. So I, someone who is not by any stretch an ardent Deadpool fan, came into this hesitantly. I found the first Deadpool movie too in love with itself to focus on making an actual movie instead of a string of vulgar jokes and fourth wall nods. I found the second one a marked improvement, actually balancing some story and character growth with the humor. I was interested to see how this would play off from Deadpool 2’s themes of found family and maturing sensibilities, while juggling the introduction of ties to the MCU. Sadly, I can’t say it did either of those well at all. As a Deadpool movie, it functions well enough, I guess. Vulgar humor and fourth wall breaks abound. The reluctant buddy story and chemistry between Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman is fun. If that’s all you need or expect, you’ll enjoy this. I chuckled on a few occasions. But more than anything, I saw missed opportunities. Its problems are so inextricably tied to one another, it’s hard to know where to begin. I suppose the best way to explain it is to make a comparison to the Evil Dead trilogy. The first movie of that trilogy is a straight up horror movie. The sequel blends in comedy. The third goes full on comedy, and also changes the setting from a cabin in the woods to a medieval landscape. The Deadpool trilogy is a lot like that, where the tone and style change over the three movies, to the point where the third movie and the first movie feel unrelated without the presence of that middle chapter. But Evil Dead’s progression feels natural. This does not. The first is an avalanche of sophomoric comedy and gratuitous violence. The second mixes in actual narrative arcs and character moments. Deadpool & Wolverine is an MCU movie with Deadpool in it. The MCU’s humor and tone are not Deadpool’s. They don’t layer onto or blend into one another at all. It’s like showing having Bill & Ted meet up with the guys from Hot Tub Time Machine; just because they’re both time travel movies doesn’t make them compatible for a crossover. Deadpool is such a square peg in the MCU’s round hole. I felt every minute of this movie struggling against myself; the edgy, R-rated madness of Deadpool’s style pushing against the MCU template, neither willing to give an inch. Deadpool’s prior big bads felt more personal and (I use this term loosely) grounded. D&W’s is a super-duper-powered megalomaniacal tyrant bent on revenge on an epic scale. We’ve seen it in so, so many MCU movies, it loses all meaning. But more importantly, is that it just doesn’t fit with Deadpool. The intended seriousness of this new villain that threatens the entire multiverse clashes with Deadpool’s style and tone. It’s like calling in James Bond to stop Jason Voorhees. I always felt like I was watching two movies happening at the same time, and they were in a constant argument. D&W also fails as a third movie in a trilogy because of this. It’s not just wrapping up an ongoing arc. In fact, it chucks the arc entirely. The found family themes of D2? Gone. They’e all reduced to cameos, and relegated to a picture to serve as motivation for Deadpool to save his universe. Character growth is gone. Development is gone. Deadpool’s supposed journey here — becoming worthy of being a superhero — is because he’s dragged into a situation and forced to take action, not because he chooses to be a better person. It’s all reactionary, driven by plot necessity and not the character himself. This could’ve been Hawkeye or Daredevil or Scarlet Witch, wanting to protect and save their loved ones, and it would’ve been the same story. Nothing about this feels designed to use the character or build off of what came before it. It feels like such a wasted opportunity. The biggest crime, though, is the thorough character assassination of Deadpool himself, who is turned into Disney’s cheerleader and a megaphone for corporate. He spends the movie either thanking Disney for not killing his franchise, or acting as the mouthpiece for the corporate overlords’ acknowledgment of the MCU’s overall deteriorating appeal. Deadpool is an irreverent, caustic, rebellious character. He is not — NOT — a corporate spokesperson. Watching him suck up to the powers that be, all the while act as a conduit for Disney to acknowledge how mediocre the MCU has gotten, is insulting both as a moviegoer and to Deadpool fans. If Disney wants to show they’re listening to fans, MAKE BETTER MOVIES. Don’t have the movie itself look me in the eye and patronizingly say “I hear you”, using the company’s biggest anti-establishment character to represent the establishment. All it does is make Disney look like they DON’T understand the problems with the MCU, since they apparently can’t understand something as simple as one character’s base design and motivations. What’s even more frustrating about all this is that all this is done in the service of another movie that is beats the dead horse that is the MCU multiverse that, in the end, has no effect on the main timeline of the MCU. The movie ties Deadpool, Blade, Ben Affleck’s Daredevil, and the X-Men franchises to the MCU and does nothing with it. Everything goes back to normal at the end. That’s 2 hours of movie that fails to build off its previous chapters, murders its lead, and then serves as nothing more than a side story. It infuriates me how much this movie fails to understand the assignment. But then again, maybe it can’t. Maybe Deadpool and the MCU don’t mix, and maybe that’s why D&W plays out how it does: to show Deadpool needs to be in his own playground. Unfortunately, even viewed as that, it fails to do what it should as a third chapter by relegating Deadpool’s interesting cast of characters to walk-on roles. My biggest disappointment, though, is that this character that had been hyped up for so long, a character I avoided because of the hype, started to win me over … and just when it had an opportunity to really get its hooks in me, it fell hard. The MCU trilogy curse strikes again.