PREMISE
Deadpool is offered a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by the Time Variance Authority but instead recruits a variant of Wolverine to save his universe from extinction.
THE GOOD STUFF
A TRIBUTE TO LOGAN- This movie had a mission. This movie was here to remind everyone that the answer to the question “Who’s the best actor to play a superhero/supervillain?” Only has one answer and that is Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Even at his age, there is absolutely nobody that can meet the bar that this man continues to set. There are so many Easter eggs, so many flashbacks, and so much continued gratification that he gives the audience through this character.
There’s a cameo by a very famous actor at the beginning of this film portraying Wolverine. And though this actor makes a lot of sense physically in playing Wolverine… I’m sorry, but no. Wolverine is not James Bond. This is not a character that you can just substitute with any famous face no matter how much it makes sense. Wolverine is immortalized through Jackman and he is the only answer to the aforementioned question.
FLAWLESS CHEMISTRY- In the review, I did for BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE, I mentioned duos of actors with perfect chemistry. (The Rock/Kevin Hart, George Clooney/Brad Pitt and Will Smith/Martin Lawrence) Well, we can go ahead and add Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds to that list. Boy are they absolutely perfect together, and they would be perfect together in any kind of comedic movie that you place them in. The best parts of this movie are them just shooting insults at one another in a way that classic comedic duos tend to do.
On top of all that, the tender moments that they do share on-screen really reflect the real-life friendship that you can see in every promotional interview that these two have done together. As it turns out, the key to making perfect chemistry is to be homies in real life. And you can tell that these two are exactly that.
H2H COMBAT- More so than any other Deadpool movie to date, this movie has the most hilarious (and bloody) hand-to-hand combat sequences in the entire franchise. The final battle sequence in this film is one of the very best action sequences in the entirety of the MCU.
THESE CAMEOS- Hard to even hint at some of these cameos without spoiling a single thing, (even though the trailers have spoiled one major cameo, and if you’ve watched any Comic-Con footage, then you’ve pretty much spoiled the entirety of the cameos in this film) but I will tell you this… The Cameos really don’t start ramping up until the second act of the film, but once they do, they really pay off the fan service that this film has been promising. It’s refreshing that there are at least two cameos that are flat-out mind-blowing that I did not see the Reddit pages and the internet conspiracy theorists’ guess. And given how hard the internet detectives try to get things ahead of time, and how much time they spend in doing so…this is quite impressive.
THE BAD STUFF
THE RUNTIME- This film is 128 minutes. There are in fact 13 Marvel movies that are longer than this that don’t have much to do in comparison. This is the movie that is supposed to either reset the MCU or push it into a new direction. At the very least, this is the first movie that is building to AVENGERS: SECRET WARS. 128 minutes is simply not enough time. There was a bull**** movie that once existed called ETERNALS which was 156 MINUTES of absolute dogshit nothingness, and for some reason, this film is a full half-hour shorter than that and has a lot more to accomplish. This irks me to no end. TO NO END. This needed to be at least 25 minutes longer. AT LEAST.
THIS VILLAIN- Out of nowhere we are introduced to a villain who is QUITE EASILY one of the most powerful villains in the history of the MCU. Emma Corrin is really good here, but for her character to be this powerful without any kind of mention in any other MCU-related material is flat-out odd. Corrin does what she can with this, but the character has a “restroom break” kind of presence. To really complain about the plot holes that are in this movie because this character is SUPER spoilery territory so there’s only so much I can say.
THE UGLY STUFF
TOO MUCH RESPECT…
**RANT ON DECK**
I will just say this, though the 20th-century Fox X-Men franchise is culturally important, when you really break it down, the bad stuff was really really f****** bad and overshadowed the great stuff that the franchise did. The X-Men franchise went out sad and wasted the overwhelming talent that every single solitary movie had. The third movie in the X-Men franchise X-MEN: THE LAST STAND in particular probably had the greatest cast ever assembled for a film, and it was the worst of the original trilogy by a hundred miles. DARK PHOENIX and X-MEN: APOCALYPSE are things that people have not forgotten, and are gutter-tier superhero flicks by general consensus.
Yes, I understand that these are imported 20 Century Fox properties…but EVEN STILL I don’t know why it’s important to give tribute to the franchise as a whole outside of Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, and Hugh Jackman. Respectfully. The Easter eggs giving homage to it were adorable. But there’s at least one instance in this movie where we spend way too much time reminiscing about this franchise as if it didn’t disappoint us more than it satisfied us. FOH with this.
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Ultimately, this movie does almost everything it’s advertising itself to do. The ultimate problem comes with the fact that this is the only MCU movie of the entire year, and the next two things associated with the MCU (the Disney+ show AGATHA ALL ALONG, and CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD) don’t seem to have anything that could possibly tie into the story that this tells.
As just a movie, this is really good. It’s possibly the funniest movie of the year so far and tells a really good story from beginning to middle to end. I simply cannot overstate how much longer this film needed to be. This promised its audience a buffet of tie-ins, cameos, Easter eggs, and the like. And Instead of a buffet we simply got a three-course meal. Everything tastes good…but I didn’t feel full.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is in theaters now.
