Deadpool and Wolverine
Directed by Shawn Levy
Written by Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, Shawn Levy
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin
Rated R
Runtime: 128 minutes
In theaters July 26

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

Dear Superhero Movies,

“I wish I knew how to quit you.”

–Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), Brokeback Mountain (dir. Ang Lee, 2005)

Why do I keep doing this to myself? I thought I was done with superhero movies. I skipped Morbius, Aquaman 2, and The Flash. But I did see Madame Web, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and Black Adam in theaters. It’s like a disease. I can’t quit superheroes, and I’ve tried multiple times. The first time, I tried was after Avengers: Endgame and Joker, when I ranked all 104 theatrically released superhero movies from 2000-2019 for a now defunct website. But then I had to see Birds Of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn) and Bloodshot was surprisingly good and…I remain the only person on the planet who liked Wonder Woman 1984. I couldn’t stop. I’ve seen both versions of Justice League. Why?

My love of the genre does not originate with live action films. Like many elder millennials, I was pulled in by Batman: The Animated Series and the X-Men cartoon in the 1990s. My Saturday mornings and after school afternoons were spent learning about Mr. Freeze’s cryogenically frozen wife and the Dark Phoenix. From there, I started trying to get into comic books, in part because I loved those characters. Now, many years later, I am still hitting a local comic book store each week to keep up with the adventures of some of these same characters. Alongside my cohorts, we saw superhero movies grow from occasionally solid to becoming the center of the culture. And herein lies the issue. 

Nerds, especially superhero nerds, suddenly became film obsessives. In the era of the early internet, it was mostly a place, in the words of Kevin Smith–one of our own–“where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another.” So we all got invested in casting news, leaked photos, and obsessively tracking the moves made by studios as Marvel began to take over the box office. Arguably, the main reason Deadpool even has a movie franchise was because of leaked test footage. 

"What would you prefer? Yellow spandex?"

–Scott Summers/Cyclops (James Marsden), X-Men (dir. Bryan Singer, 2000)

I'm never gonna dance again
The way I danced with you, oh

–”Careless Whisper” George Michael, 1984

All of this brings us back to Deadpool and Wolverine, which sees the titular Merc with a Mouth (Ryan Reynolds) hop across the multiverse to bring a living Logan (Hugh Jackman) back to his universe in order to preserve the existence of Deadpool’s original timeline. What ensues is a buddy road trip style of movie, where the two heroes are deported to The Void by the Time Variance Authority (TVA)–as seen in the Loki Disney+ series. Deadpool and Wolverine assumes you are up to speed on the general state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), but the emphasis on Deadpool joining that universe is really a red herring. 

Truly, Deadpool and Wolverine is a eulogy for the non-MCU Marvel movies, mostly from the era at Fox that made the X-Men franchise, Daredevil (dir. Mark Steven Johnson, 2003), and three Fantastic Four movies. These movies are just as important to the development of the MCU as Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. While the trend was formally kicked off by Blade–the first R-rated movie based on a Marvel superhero not named The Punisher–X-Men (2000) proved that superheroes were viable when played seriously and in a somewhat grounded way. While the film discarded the iconic comic book costumes for black leather, the film took the character dynamics and storylines from the comics as direct inspiration for its treatment of the comics. That continued with Daredevil and Fantastic Four (2005). While these movies had varying degrees of success, Deadpool and Wolverine sweetly and lovingly (under a guise of irreverence) pays tribute to the Fox era of Marvel as the two last men standing, Jackman and Reynolds, fight, not really for survival but for relevance. What happens when characters are discarded? Either they are replaced via reboots or recastings, or they are forgotten entirely. 

“Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in!”

–Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), The Godfather Part III (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1990)

Deadpool and Wolverine makes “What happens to characters when they are discarded?” the central question of its premise and uses Deadpool’s signature fourth wall breaks as a way to bring pathos to the multiverse. Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness center the MCU versions of their central characters as “correct” and use multiverse counterparts as a “road not taken.” That leaves those movies feeling a bit hollow because they cannot serve the alternate versions who are  only there as supporting characters. While Deadpool and Wolverine packs in an impressive amount of cameos, all of those characters are facing the end of their existence in the Void, which means they have stakes and weight to their appearance. And because the lineup of characters speaks to the breadth of the Fox Marvel project, it does feel like one last chance to ride with the Marvel movies from before the MCU.  While it may come from an unlikely source in a Deadpool film, the movie makes a good emotional case for bringing back Jackman as Wolverine, even if his death at the end of Logan is widely considered to be an instant classic. 

We know this Deadpool, who is fighting to keep his supporting cast from getting deleted by the TVA, so the character has stakes that feel real despite the convoluted metanarrative at play. This is a new version of Logan, which does allow the screenplay to give us the ur-Wolverine arc: a regretful loner who realizes that he cares deeply about those around him despite how often he has hurt or been hurt. We’ve seen this arc for the character before, in X-Men and Logan, but it is hard to deny Jackman’s performance in this as one of his best outings with the character. After 24 years in the role, Jackman has fully mastered all versions of Wolverine, and this is a fitting tribute to his time as the X-franchise’s flagship character, giving him both an emotional arc as well as leaning into the R-rating with his annoyance/penchant for stabbing Deadpool. 

This is why I can’t quit superhero movies. Deadpool and Wolverine may work best for those like myself, who obsessively tracked movie casting news on ACIN, /Film, and elsewhere two decades ago and celebrated even small superhero movie success like “they got the costume the right color” and “that feels like the character Chris Claremont wrote.” That time is gone now, and sadly, it feels like being a movie nerd now is tracking box office and executive dealmaking first and final product second. Deadpool and Wolverine is a self-aware takedown of what Avi Arad, David S. Goyer, and others brought us, a loving one. These movies will always feel like home to me, and it took Deadpool–after two movies I didn’t love–to make me realize how much of my own moviegoing identity was formed by these projects. And just like that, I’m deeply nostalgic for the DVD release of X-Men 1.5 and the soundtrack of the Ben Affleck Daredevil movie. 

Thanks, Deadpool. I even bought your damn gin yesterday.

–Ryan