Wolverine' is Marvel's best character film

The Merc with a Mouth returns, ready to revolutionize the Marvel multiverse

Let’s start with the only spoiler you’re going to find in this text: if you liked the first two installments of this series, you’re going to like ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’. You’ll probably like it a lot: Marvel has made a film that is carefully faithful to the constants of the previous adventures of the Merc with a Mouth, and the change of production company has barely made a dent in the violence, dialogue and daring jokes that the film uses. Not even the presence of a lukewarm icon like Shawn Levy at the controls has affected the characteristic style of the series. ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ is, in short, one hundred percent Deadpool.

This means we have all the usual ingredients of anti-hero movies: relentless winking; even more continuous breaking of the fourth wall, with characters very aware that they are in a fictional vehicle; ultra-violence and calculatedly incorrect jokes; and a suffocating use of pop hits on the soundtrack. Marvel has taken good note of what made the first two installments popular and cloned them.

And yes, the film has a well-deserved R rating that ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ constantly flaunts. It’s curious and, in a certain sense, stimulating to attend this whole carousel of excesses in a Marvel / Disney film , but it would be more so if the film did not so shamelessly clone the findings of the two previous films. In any case, what is clear is that the one-year break that Marvel is taking to clearly differentiate its latest and not very brilliant releases (‘ Quantumania ‘, ‘ The Marvels ‘) and the pseudo-clean slate that awaits us with things like ‘ The Fantastic Four ‘, is further sharpened by a change of register as accentuated as this.

What Marvel does do very well is introduce Deadpool into its big plot of recent years: the multiverses. Like a kind of mischievous and irreverent ‘ Spider-Man: No Way Home ‘, ‘ Deadpool and Wolverine’ already has justification for slipping a multitude of winks into the plot and excusing them argumentatively. If the last trailer made you angry because it ruined a couple of easter eggs , don’t worry: the film has dozens more in the pipeline. And it is from this argumentative justification by way of the multiverses that the great problems and the great discoveries of the film come from.

Without giving too much away, the meeting between ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ is caused by a real mess in the multiverse that forces the mercenary to come out of his voluntary retirement. The start of the film (with credits that sing some of the highest and most ingenious notes of the film, and which will not be repeated in terms of ingenuity or visual excess) is difficult to tell without falling into an avalanche of spoilers, but let’s just say that both mutants will have to undertake a mission to save the multiverse that will make them meet characters like X-23, who we already saw in ‘ Logan ‘. Wait a minute: didn’t Wolverine die in ‘ Logan ‘?

Everything is appropriately explained in what is perhaps the least accessible film in the MCU, to the point that narratively everything is geared towards the catalogue of cameos and winks. Some, let’s not deny it, are spectacular (although not Robert Downey Jr.-type spectaculars; another kind of spectacularity). Unfortunately, there comes a time when the film becomes a compilation of people entering the frame in slow motion without their faces being seen. Are you a long-time Marvel fan? Some of these cameos will make you sigh with excitement. Did you jump on the bandwagon in ‘ Endgame ‘? Get ready to spend half the film shrugging your shoulders.

We have nothing against fan service when it’s tastefully done, but in Deadpool and Wolverine it’s like watching the class bully make nonstop jokes. The film mercilessly pokes fun at Marvel’s biggest failures: the lesser heroes, the box office flops, the casting mistakes. And it pays homage to blockbusters and corporate behemoths . Deadpool and Wolverine prides itself, given the circumstances under which it operates (a Fox property taken back by Disney when it needed a safe vehicle to captivate fans), on being radical and provocative, but it feels more like watching a department store ad for the latest punk fad.

In reality, Deadpool and Wolverine is more of a harmless, sycophantic movie. It thinks it’s constantly crossing red lines, but it pays homage not to the heroes and their creators, as it probably should, but to the brands and franchises, as demonstrated by the chilling post-credits sequence (perhaps the worst in Marvel history, which confirms that Deadpool has also been domesticated). Is that a problem? Not at all: if you’re pleased by the parade of Marvel’s most self-referential films, Deadpool and Wolverine is for you.

‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ is the best of the three films about the character, perhaps because of a certain air of an appropriate argumentative justification for the multiverse (justification that was not needed for a much superior proposal like ‘ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ‘ to work perfectly), and also because of a strange virtue. It works, possibly unintentionally, as a curious vindication of the disparate, impossible and secondary superhero teams . If you prefer the Defenders or the Champions over the Avengers, you will find here reasons to sigh for a movie that Marvel will never make.

Wolverine’ is Marvel’s best character film

The Merc with a Mouth returns, ready to revolutionize the Marvel multiverse

By knl9j

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