Nerdly » ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Blu-ray Review

06th Nov2024

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Blu-ray Review

by Chris Thomas

Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Matthew Macfadyen | Written by Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, Shawn Levy | Directed by Shawn Levy

I have been down on Marvel superhero films, for a long time. I was trashing them before it became cool. It was in April 2020 that I said the following, in my review of Hellboy 2 (a brilliant film).

In ten years time everyone is going to be saying “The Marvel films were actually quite rubbish, for the most part, weren’t they?”. This is because, they are. I enjoyed the odd one here and there (Guardians of the Galaxy) but for the most part, they are bad films. The Avengers have taken the traditionally accepted plot and story arc conventions of film making and torn them up. Why have Oreos when we can have double stuffed. Why have double stuffed when we can have quadruple stuffed? Those dark biscuit bits are unnecessary, just squirt the white cream into my mouth for over 3 hours while I gurgle with something that might be pleasure but isn’t.

Don’t get me started on the time travel.

There is a reason that stuffing a story with dozens of “protagonists” cannot work, it does not matter how much CGI we throw into the mix. It is just a question of competent storytelling. At some point, the hubris of Marvel spilt out, and an attitude of too much, but never enough seemed to lead to adding more air into the balloon, until we were shocked to see it pop. It is also no wonder that most people have little interest in D list Superheroes from obscure comics, so making huge budget / huge marketing films dedicated to them, is also not likely to lead to success unless the films are brilliant (and they are not).

To add to this, untenable situation, we have “the multiverse” which means infinite dimensions, time travel, and anything else that can simultaneously means the writers can do whatever the heck they like, with whichever version of whichever character they like, while also meaning that all stakes are off the table, and the whole thing is pointless. So what if Thanos destroys the Universe? There are countless others. If you zoom out far enough, nothing has ever mattered, in the great cosmic sweep of the Universe.

Also, most of the films were dull rubbish that required an intimate understanding of dozens of other films, and TV series plot lines, to follow. Sound like fun? It is really not. Most of those things are not very interesting. Is it any wonder that hardly anyone has kept interested in this rattrap of mediocre characters and bad writing?

This is the first movie to feature Deadpool, since the Disney purchase of Fox. This is important, as Deadpool has always been the third wall-breaking jester, or speaks to the audience, with torrents of rapid-fire commentary that could be insufferable, but with Ryan Reynolds, it just works.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Deadpool had been one of the few exceptions to the drift and malaise. The scene in Deadpool 2, where X Force parachutes into their drop zone (in high winds) is a thing of black comic perfection.

Wolverine is one of the most loved of the X-Men, and certainly one of the more interesting (particularly with Hugh Jackman). Pairing these two up, and putting them in a film rated for adults, is a great idea. The problem is, right off the bat, the reason we are pairing them up is down to ridiculous multiverse, time travel nonsense. To kick off, we fall down with of the biggest holes. The plot then relies heavily on this. I guess, as a writer, it is just much easier to write stories, when you can just magic everything into “making sense” with either time travel, or multiverse nonsense. It feels like someone started typing “write me the script for a superhero film, featuring two popular characters” into ChatGBT.

The plot takes us to a kind of dumping group, of a dimension, which is fitting, as the plot belongs in the trash (apologies dear Reader, this sentence wrote itself). The baddies are a bald English woman, with lots of powers, that just sort of happen and an unloved, dull, English bureaucrat. Neither of which are interesting. Most of their henchmen are generic armoured soldier types, or feral, junk world types. Lots of them are killed in a blur of CGI, no one seems to care.

The ending is incredibly silly. It is what a 12-year-old me thinks is a clever metaphor.

Despite it all, the characters Deadpool and Wolverine remain likeable. There is a cool fight scene, between the two titular characters, in a car. There is not enough to keep my attention, however.

This film could have given Disney a real chance to laugh at their past mistakes, and they do. Except the whole thing is made completely hollow, by the fact that this film makes many of the mistakes that this film is allegedly making light of. Clearly, Marvel / Disney have no sense of humour about themselves, they just want you to think they do, so they can go back to making Billions of Dollars.

As Western films once did, Superhero films have fallen out of fashion. They were popular, a load of them got made, many of which weren’t very good, and now “normal” people are not going to sleepwalk into buying films based on characters they have seen so many times before. Disney is going to have to come up with some new ideas, to take some risks, not just pretend they are, as they did with this film. I do not think they are up to it.