A listless Wade Wilson toils away in civilian life with his days as the morally flexible mercenary, Deadpool, behind him. But when his homeworld faces an existential threat, Wade must reluctantly s...
Can’t believe after a full year of not watching anything MCU related after they burned me out, they’re dragging me back in with “Deadpool & Wolverine”. And amongst all the cameos, the action, the over-saturated saturation they call out and a beloved duo we’ve waited decades to see done justice…..
…..I dunno, guys. It’s functional. But this ain’t bringing me back.
What we get from Shawn Levy is par of the course for what I’ve come to expect from him: well-intentions brought forward through questionable methods. You can thinly see the sentimental outline he wishes to take this but once again though, other inspirations for his projects as an outline straddles the line between helping and hindering him. You always get the feeling he’s on autopilot and then a certain scene has to come along to jerk you awake, remind you “I’m going somewhere here”.
I understand why the production design looks so damn shoddy a good chunk of the time but that doesn’t excuse it. Putting aside how we’ve seen most of what this movie offers already, I’d say only half of what we see actually feels real. Due to that, the scope and scale for this adventure feels strictly limited despite the seemingly expansive environment begging for more otherwise. The excessive CG/special effects barrage doesn’t help much either despite them overall looking fairly….easy on the eyes.
Editing-wise, not much was presented to be considered exceptional or dogwater and neither is the cinematography. Only two shots come to mind that barely tip the scales of being either good or great but the rest have similar shot structures and staging to them, they all just blend together like burned potato latkes. Dialogue exchanges are a double edged sword while the humor is more of the same, and it runs smack into a stone wall; the metal doesn’t break but neither does the wall. For every LOL, visual wall gag and fourth wall break, the rest simply don’t pack the same umph they did in 2016 and there’s no longer a clear construction of tone. The first Deadpool film in a while where I felt even the mildest berth of whiplash.
Music composition isn’t all that special outside of the bopping soundtrack, its action sequences start off solid only to slowly trickle down the drain of mediocrity despite the decent choreography (plus only one of them actually holds up properly weight and importance) and I’m sorry, am I the only one taken aback by the R-rating here? With the exception of a couple of scenes, this might as well be the tamest R-rated feature I’ve seen Deadpool be apart of. It checks the boxes regardless but they’re only so many times you can say ‘fuck’ before it gets tiring.
Most of the overwhelming positives I can give to this film lie in the main cast. Deadpool is one of the few roles Ryan Reynolds can get away with just being himself and everybody will chew it up but Hugh Jackman’s comeback as Wolverine gives more to the role than the writing of his character allowed and it thankfully doesn’t tarnish the sendoff he received in Logan. Everyone else is clearly having a ball, even if the characters they’re stuck with aren’t up to snuff.
I’m not gonna sit here and pretend the plots from the previous Deadpool’s were foolproof; both of their stories were pathetically simple in practice and execution but were bolstered by a competent film structure. Between an erratic structure and a story that starts off electric but peeters out and grows shockingly milquetoast, this one is easily both the flimsiest and most hollow of the trilogy and it’s annoyingly by design. This is another case of the “And then” type of storytelling barely having any forward momentum with a clear lack of substance and banking on too many conveniences and contrivances to mask what’s essentially a firm watering down of the elements that best made the Deadpool franchise work.
In stark contrast to the stories from the previous two films, this doesn’t feel like a satirical subversion of the superhero genre anymore. Say what you will about The Boys (specifically the recent season) but at least, its satire works as documented expose with a purpose and it has something to say about celebrity worship and the way the media manipulates our way of thinking to keep us neutered. Here, it’s just another case of “rock’em sock’em” with physics juiced up by the power of Looney Tunes, like a bunch of separate skits knitted together while getting one half of the image backwards. It’s a MCU film first, Deadpool film second and the two are constantly fighting one another.
The thematic messaging stands out like a sore thumb compared to anything else and even that isn’t concrete enough to sustain throughout: most of these heroes going through an identity crisis and searching for a need, any need to feel important after being rejected, shunned or forgotten is a very emblematic, honorable gesture and it sets itself up fine. But here’s the thing: emotional stakes were presented and paid off in the previous films but here, trying to compliment that with actual world-ending stakes doesn’t click here because they couldn’t even pretend for a good thirty seconds that either Deadpool or Wolverines journeys actually mattered. Similar to most MCU movies nowadays, you hardly get the sense anybody’s in any real danger; focus is lost on what the protagonists are really up against to reach their goal and so much is done to prevent you from taking it seriously. The villains not constituting a good resistance force against the protagonists doesn’t help matters either.
You can say the entire cameo-invested multiverse structure is meant to be plodding and muddled on purpose as a means to shit all over how confusing and barren it’s become; plus, Deadpool’s entire method is making a joke out of the correct methods at the expense of, well, good storytelling. Yeah, you’re not wrong there; again, there is a theme with these cameos about redemption and unfinished business that is touched upon but the very inclusion of the TVA and multiverse comes across more confusing and irritating than exciting.
Just…..the story bits I do enjoy are comprised to very small bursts of excitement amongst a titter-totter of tedium.
Fisting itself between a 20th Century fanfare to the 2000’s era of hero films at best and a visually hideous two-hour inside joke at worse, Deadpool’s introduction into the MCU is passable to classify as a win but I was hoping the film I got was going to be a lot more funnier, a lot more brutal and a hell of a lot less frustrating than this.
