Ryan Reynolds asks the audience to lower their expectations at the start of Deadpool & Wolverine. This is good advice (2024)

Warning: This article contains spoilers.

For an invincible superhero blessed with Hugh Jackman's turgid physique, it's hard not to feel bad for the Wolverine. Across eight different films, we've watched as the downtrodden mascot of the X-Men has been twisted into a screaming pretzel, disintegrated by the love of his life, and even whacked in the face with an atomic bomb.

Even in death, he can barely catch a break. The opening of Deadpool & Wolverine sees Logan's grave dug up by Ryan Reynolds' asinine anti-hero, and his exhumed adamantium skeleton subsequently wielded as a makeshift nunchaku against a squad of disposable baddies.

As NSYNC blares and CGI brain matter splatters over the title credits, Deadpool proudly rings in the first MA-rated MCU movie.

In the first of many fourth-wall breaches, Deadpool asks the audience to lower their expectations, reassuring us that his latest sequel doesn't intend to honour the legacy of 2017's Logan (which remains a crowning achievement of superhero cinema, if no longer a lasting farewell).

Ryan Reynolds asks the audience to lower their expectations at the start of Deadpool & Wolverine. This is good advice (1)

Wolverine's T-1000-esque corpse is quickly ditched, our hero goes multiverse hopping, and a new Logan is dragged into this movie from an alternate dimension, finally realising the beloved comics team-up of the title.

The exact plot mechanics of how the movie gets to that point matters little, but begins with Deadpool's failed audition for the Avengers six years ago, which spirals into an early mid-life crisis.

Deadpool is offered a chance to prove his heroism when Mr Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen doing a half-hearted Tom Wambsgans), a middle manager at the Time Variance Authority (last seen in the Loki TV show – seriously, don't worry about it), hand-picks him to save an alternate reality.

The catch: accept that his own decaying timeline must be 'pruned', along with all his loved ones. When Deadpool rebels, he recruits a desolate Wolverine to help set the multiverse straight.

Ryan Reynolds asks the audience to lower their expectations at the start of Deadpool & Wolverine. This is good advice (2)

Despite needing a glossary to be entirely understood — two seasons of a Disney+ show should not be required reading! — Deadpool & Wolverine never meaningfully intersects with the MCU, nor does it suggest a bold path forward for the ailing franchise.

The film instead finds its purpose as a sincere send-off to the now-retired line of Fox superheroes who dominated the early 2000s, only to lose sight of its lead characters.

Little of Deadpool's limited repertoire has changed since his first outing; you likely know by now whether you care for his brand of dick jokes and comic ultraviolence. But six years of Ryan Reynolds mugging the camera in a uniquely terrible run of off-brand movies (6 Underground notwithstanding) has irreversibly eroded his genuine charms.

Similarly, we're left yearning for our country's greatest showman to play a different tune. Despite being designated as the multiverse's 'worst' variant, this Wolverine is barely more of a booze-addled screw-up than Jackman's previous incarnations; the actor is given little more to do than mope about as a reluctant hero for the umpteenth time.

Ryan Reynolds asks the audience to lower their expectations at the start of Deadpool & Wolverine. This is good advice (3)

If there was a way to make these setpieces dramatically interesting, or at least cool to look at, a creatively exorcised journeyman like Shawn Levy (Free Guy) is not the one to find it.

Levy continues to fortify his brand as a director of glorified Fortnite cut scenes. To restore their worlds, the heroes must trek through the literal trash heap of The Void: a purgatory for cinematic superhero rejects. Modelled after the irradiated wasteland of Mad Max, it's an homage that feels nine years late, but just in time to be humiliated by Furiosa.

Ruling over this Battle Royale map is Emma Corrin's (The Crown) Cassandra Nova, the never-before-seen twin of Professor X who boasts similar telepathic powers and more than a passing resemblance to Tilda Swinton's Ancient One.

Ryan Reynolds asks the audience to lower their expectations at the start of Deadpool & Wolverine. This is good advice (4)

It's a little tragic that the gratuitous cameos are the unambiguous high point of the film. Deadpool & Wolverine wisely treats its guests as more than one-off jokes; forgotten heroes are given a final hurrah, and even granted unrealised ambitions.

In no world should mainstream superhero films ever be taken seriously as scruffy underdogs, but it is worth commemorating a pre-MCU era in which superhero failures could be cheaper, riskier, and trashier. Cinema once dared to envision Troye Sivan as Wolverine. Conversely, our current superhero failures largely feel like a grim march towards brand-compliant obsolescence.

Ryan Reynolds asks the audience to lower their expectations at the start of Deadpool & Wolverine. This is good advice (5)

Deadpool & Wolverine could've made a better case for its outcasts had it bothered to take any risks of its own. For all its outsized crassness and gore, it still doesn't dare breach the one big Disney no-no: sex.

At this point, the genuinely unexpected, boundary-pushing thing for the series to do is to truly embrace the raunch of an MA-rated comedy, and take Deadpool's canonical queerness seriously — rather than just talk a big game.

He is, after all, 'the Merc with a Mouth'.

Deadpool & Wolverine is screening in cinemas now.

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Ryan Reynolds asks the audience to lower their expectations at the start of Deadpool & Wolverine. This is good advice (2024)

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