The latest MCU’s film, directed by Shawn Levy and starring Hugh Jackman and Emma Corrin, might not have the outlier spirit of the first instalment, but it certainly carries the same verve and energy
The superhero with the motor mouth, the incurable verbal diarrhoea is back and he wants to show us that he cares. About what exactly? Well, Wade Wilson’s (Ryan Reynolds) existential crisis apparently dates back to nearly six years ago when he was denied an entry into the Avengers team and was told to settle for the middle instead of aiming high. Wade goes on to score a pretty neat gig as a used car salesman and even furnishes himself a nice toupee, a chummy colleague in Peter (Rob Delaney) and a small little world that includes a few very dear friends, the cocaine-hungry landlady Althea or Blind Al (Leslie Uggams) and his eternal love and ex-girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin).
It’s all there to be appreciated and to be grateful for but the mercenary in him, this guy called Deadpool, wants more out of life. He wants to matter (just as the Avengers do and the Green Lantern doesn’t), he says, and a good part of that is to prove to Vanessa that he is aware of his powers and responsibilities. He might not have an Uncle Ben in his life but he seems to have a good idea of his occupational obligations, and he won’t shut up about it.
A man caught in a terrible midlife crisis
So, in a manner of speaking, Deadpool & Wolverine — the 34th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a sequel to Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018) — is a film about a man caught in a terrible midlife crunch finding his purpose. It’s almost fitting that this story is being told by Shawn Levy, a man who traced a similar journey of a bumbling middle-aged duo (in Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn) that recalibrates life in the 2013 comedy The Internship. Wolverine, another mutant with the X factor, joins Deadpool (undesirably so) and tries to purge himself of own demons as the Riggs & Murtaugh, the Woody & Buzz of Marvel land go about the mighty task of saving the universe from being obliterated. Yes, the universe is in trouble yet again.
The story here, though, isn’t all that simple. In the sprawling multiverse, the timeline or the universe that Deadpool occupies, Earth-10005, is decaying and the reason is the demise of its anchor being Logan from a few years ago. The man in charge from the Time Variance Authority, a body that oversees these kinds of mundane issues, is called Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen in a template role) and he is one of the two British villains in the movie, who tells Wade/Deadpool that he wants to pull the plug on Earth-10005 instead of allowing for its slow, natural death. Wade could either let the bad guy do the bad deed and take up the offer of moving to Earth-616 (the main and most important timeline) or he could fight back to save his friends and family from being destroyed with the flip of a switch. To do the latter, he needs to first source a variant of Wolverine from another universe. Phew!
But things obviously don’t go as per plan and the two are ‘pruned’ to a place named Void, a purgatory where all unwanted elements, including some noble superheroes and the very evil, Professor X’s sister Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), exist before being annihilated for good. Deadpool and Wolverine must navigate this Mad Max-y world (one of the countless snarky hat-tips in the film) to find the solution. And also manage to get along — a little — with one another while they are at it.
Ryan Reynolds’ oral sorcery
The story, however, isn’t a concern considering what we are actually in for — the onslaught of sass, snarl and self-deprecation. Deadpool 3 arrives in theatres not just as a Messiah to MCU’s apparent lack of form since Avengers: Endgame (2019) came out but also to breathe life into Hollywood itself, especially after the slightly lacklustre start to 2024. Staying true to its ethos and image, the film is relentless in its pursuit of dishing out wisecracks and one of its highlights is that it really walks the talk of nonchalance. That is to say that despite setting a tall premise and raising the stakes to the maximum, it never gets ahead of itself and makes the mistake of taking any of the babble around seriously.
At no point are we asked, unlike in other superhero ventures, to ludicrously invest in the conundrums of these make-believe worlds or find any meaning or non-existent depth in the tales they tell. Instead, Shawn Levy and Co. simply want us to sit back and not worry about anything, as Ryan Reynolds unleashes the oral (pun might be intended here) sorcery of his. Deadpool 3, when viewed from another angle, almost seems like the antidote to the superhero fatigue that some of us (including Martin Scorsese) have felt over the years.
And Ryan Reynolds is truly a breath of fresh air. Despite the verboseness or the vexing nature of his character, he somehow finds a way to keep himself the most-desired guy of the lot. When the going gets tough or a tad boring in the narrative, you want him to keep going and keep yapping to bring everything back to centre, and as someone who has also co-written the film, he makes the self-aware material soar much higher than it is meant to. Each line he utters, each joke he tells or each fourth wall he breaks is timed impeccably to the exact micro-second and, boy, he has some serious heavy lifting to do here. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is good and he does really well what the script wants him to do — be the grump carrying a lot of emotional baggage — but it is Reynolds’ show all the way.
From mocking Disney, which took over Marvel Entertainment in 2009, for not knowing exactly what ‘pegging’ is, lauding Gossip Girl (the show starring Blake Lively, Reynolds’ wife) for giving him an extra bone, terming a more mellowed variant of his Deadpool character as Van ‘Milder’ to jibing at Hugh Jackman with the “Disney brought him back. They are gonna make him do this till he’s 90” line, Reynolds spits these and countless other gems to keep us hooked right from the word go.
Deadpool & Wolverine might not have the same innocence and outlier spirit of the first instalment but it certainly carries the same verve and energy to make the 128-minute runtime feel like a breeze. On top of that, it’s got some remarkable cameos (watch out for Wesley Snipes’ endearing bit), an irony-laden, supremely fun soundtrack and a whole lotta self-referential bashing to savour on the big screen. Some portions could be exhausting but don’t worry, the self-proclaimed Marvel Jesus comes to our rescue nevertheless.
