Mouth meets multiverse in a super sequel, this time inducing some yawns
Bigger isn’t always better. The initial “Deadpool” (2016) entry was crass, curt and ingeniously fresh in its fourth-wall-breaking delivery and dark humor. Ryan Reynolds was a revelation as the potty-mouthed superhero who can’t die, and the plucky gut punch sparked a possible resurrection of an increasingly dull and dying genre. “Deadpool 2” (2018) came out with the same kick and verve, but the trick was starting to thin as the plots thickened – and now, with “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the “more” is too much when the charms of yesteryear (nearly 10 years ago) largely float around like the remains of a bad, high-fiber meal left unflushed.
How did we get here? Let’s keep in mind that “Deadpool” was a Marvel outlier owned by 20th Century Fox while Disney held most of the rest of the Marvel Universe in its IP vault. Now that Disney has gobbled up Fox, it’s an all-for-one cross-breeding box office grab. Match ’em up, shift ’em around and listen to that cash register go ka-ching. This is not the first time Deadpool and Wolverine have crossed cinematic paths: Deadpool made an appearance in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (2009), back before the mega merge. Now coveted eggs nestled under the same corporate structure, they team up – kinda – though oddly there’s no “Hey, remember back when” immortal bro moment.
What we get is Deadpool’s unmasked, badly disfigured street person, Wade Wilson, stashing away his cool red costume and ninja swords for a stapled-on toupee and a job as a car seller. He’s just been rejected by the Avengers as a team member and his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) has moved on too. The removal of the mask mutes the rapid, rapier wit that usually spew from Deadpool’s mouth – that is, until he’s abducted through a time portal by an agency know as the Time Variance Authority, run by a smug, Trumpian suit named Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen of “Succession,” having hammy good fun with the part). The long and short is that the universe Wade is from is due to die unless an “anchor being” – an entity critical to a universe’s existence, in this case, the Wolverine – is restored. As you recall, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine took an honorable exit in “Logan” (2017), but since this is another multiverse of nonsense, anything is possible, including the impossible. “Fox killed him. Disney brought him back. They’ll make him do this until he’s 90,” Deadpool says in one of his many studio-merger-skewering lines, though few, if any, are really funny. There’s even a joke about how the multiverse had been overdone and overused, and yet the story chooses to chew the fat it just urinated on.
When the two immortals first re-meet, it’s as adversaries. They fight, arms are broken, torsos are skewered and blood spurts – it’s Bugs Bunny violence gone guts-and-gore graphic. It’s fun to watch for a second, but to what point? The pair wind up in a wasteland called “The Void” in which they encounter Charles Xavier’s evil twin sister, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin, the young Di in “The Crown”) a supreme being who lords over the dregs of superheroes from long-past Marvel franchises you forgot about and a few you never heard of. To give away further details would ruin the fun of the cameos that are one of the few bright spots of the movie, but I can say that Patrick Stewart does not come walking through the door, or even a time portal.
As plotless as the film is – its’s a series of not-so-meta inside jokes that occasionally land – I have to give it to Disney for taking off the family-values harness. “I’m going to show you something huge,” someone tells Deadpool, who retorts: “That’s what scoutmaster Kevin used to say.” At the beginning showdown with a legion of TVA henchmen, he says in an aside to the audience, “Get out your special sock.” There’s definitely some short, sharp jabs of dark, sophomoric wit that hit. Part of that’s credited to the return of writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, but their usual tightness gets sapped by including that everything-bagel multiverse and a host of others jumping into the scripting mix, including Reynolds and director Shawn Levy, who seems to be Reynolds go-to guy after pairing on “The Adam Project” (2022) and the Boston-set comedy “Free Guy” (2021).
Other wins are Rob Delaney, as Wade’s best friend and fellow car seller who has certain pull in other universes, and the series’ brilliant casting of Leslie Uggams as Wade’s cocaine-craving roommate, Blind Al. The two rob the few scenes they are in. As the titled leads, Reynolds and Jackman (and he is super jacked) give you what you’d expect: snarky sass, gruff growls and macho-manly bonding just in time to save the world. But all the reality- and alternate-reality rejiggering takes away from anything anyone can bite into, because the reality presented in frame can be rewritten ad infinitum without consequence. The dead and destroyed can come back just as easily as Deadpool and birthday candles. Where’s the emotional stock in that? In genre alone, we’re already dealing with a level of removed disbelief; now we just toss a handful of disparate this-and-that into a blender and take whatever the purée, chop or mince cycle gives us? To infinity and blah!
Somber and serious like “X-Men” this is not, and that’s where “Deadpool” draws its energy, with high quirk and black comedy as endless graphic dismemberings and gorings fill the screen. It’s what another Marvel offering, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” did so effortlessly throughout, but this is to such a gonzo degree that it has Deadpool in mid-sword fight talking casually to the audience to elaborate on his social views and past, even while taking a bullet or two for his trouble. But don’t worry; he regenerates like Wolverine, though not quite as fast. The wicked wit, so good and so rich early on, also happens to be the Achilles heel of “Deadpool,” as such a nosebleed level of hyperbole and genre-skewering becomes impossible to sustain.
For What it's Worth 