Deadpool & Wolverine Are Consumed By the MCU, Self-Aware or Not
Shawn Levy’s threequel Deadpool & Wolverine, a film ostensibly about mourning the Disney-Fox merger, is just another example of the tiredness of the multiverse, of the Disney mega-monopoly that just won’t die (even if it’s already been in decline). The film is obnoxiously metatextual—in the sense that it exists within a larger universe, but also in the sense that it, by its own admission, recognizes that its characters are traversing multiverses to essentially create a theme-park confection (consisting of the superheroes Deadpool and Wolverine) that will return the Marvel Cinematic Universe to its peak level of entertainment and intrigue.
But all of this is “self-awareness” without much else, and poking fun at itself doesn’t make up for what amounts to more of the same. Deadpool & Wolverine is another mind-numbingly corporatized CGI fest, divorced from any true emotional stakes. It’s a picture that would rather tell you how to feel than make you feel.
The unfortunate sequel to Deadpool 2 stars Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool in the throes of a mid-life crisis. Having left his superhero life behind in search of something less monotonous (there’s a meta-irony here about the genre itself), he works as a used car salesman alongside friend Peter (Rob Delaney) following a break-up with his former fiancée Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). He’s yearning for purpose.
Here’s where things get annoying. The Time Variance Authority captures Wade, where Mr. Paradox (Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen) makes a proposition: Leave this universe and go to another, where he can become a superhero again. In the process, though, his home universe would be destroyed, along with all the people he loves within it, including Vanessa.
The Time Variance Authority is an organization that’s vaguely sketched, primarily because it’s already been detailed in the television series Loki or something, and knowing the full lore of a movie now requires you having watched all the Marvel iterations up to this point, on screens small and large. No matter. Mr. Paradox also underscores the reason Wade’s universe is being destroyed: the death of Logan (Hugh Jackman) death, as Logan was the “anchor being” of the universe. The clause is a fitting contrivance to make the eponymous superhero team-up happen, causing Deadpool to steal Mr. Paradox’s tablet in order to retrieve a Logan to replace the one in his universe.
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