Having been rejected for membership in the Avengers, the merc with a mouth is no longer a merc. Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has broken up with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) and he now sells used cars. What he really wants is to be a member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but Blind Al (Leslie Uggams) keeps doing cocaine even though Kevin Feige has forbidden it. Things aren’t going well for Deadpool until he’s contacted by Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), who explains that Deadpool’s timeline is decaying because of the death of Logan (Hugh Jackman), the character who was holding everything together. Paradox is willing to send Deadpool over to the main “Sacred Timeline,” but when Deadpool realizes that his current universe is going to end and all of his friends are going to die, Deadpool decides to resurrect Logan and save the day.
Deadpool & Wolverine answers the question of what happened to all of those characters from the Marvel movies that weren’t produced by Disney. It turns out that they’re all in the Void, where they’re ruled over by Professor X’s twin sister, Cassandra (Emma Corrin). Jennifer Garner shows up as Elektra. Wesley Snipes proves once again that he’s the only actor who should ever play Blade. Chris Evans plays not Captain America but instead a useless Johnny Storm. This being a Deadpool film, our hero can’t resist expressing his disappointment over not getting Evans as Cap. Deadpool & Wolverine becomes a commentary on just how many Marvel films there were before Robert Downey, Jr. declared “I am Iron Man,” and how most of them, with the exception of the X-Men films, were swept under the rug once the MCU became a cultural juggernaut.
Of course, Logan eventually returns. There are many different versions of Logan, just as there are many different versions of Deadpool, but eventually the right Deadpool finds the right Logan. Reynolds and Jackman bring an interesting dichotomy to the film. If Ryan Reynolds spends the entire movie commenting on how the MCU has become, even in decline, an unstoppable beast, Jackman reminds us that he was one of the first actors to prove that a comic book character can be played with real emotion.
Violent, profane, and very funny, Deadpool & Wolverine was a hit at a time when the MCU seemed to be really struggling. Rewatching it, I was reminded that the success of Deadpool really is a reflection of just how cynical a lot of us have gotten about comic books and the MCU. Deadpool exists to point out all of the things that we’ve noticed, and sometimes it feels like Disney is expecting too much credit for acknowledging its problems without actually fixing them. Fortunately, the team of Reynolds and Jackman is so strong that it’s hard not to just go with them. (You only have to watch the She-Hulk series to see how bad an attempt at meta commentary can be when you don’t have the right people.) With this film, Deadpool and Logan announce their arrival in the MCU, and it’ll be interesting to see where this all leads.
