(courtesy IMP Awards)
We get it – saving the world, the multiverse, the life of a treasured loved one or friend, is SERIOUS.
All caps, black font and dour countenance.
Sure, but when did superhero movies get so damn grim? Sure, they are dealing with some deeply intense issues and are filled characters who are flawed and troubled as they are powerfully enabled and almost supernaturally enhanced, and they don’t don snazzy suits just for the fizzily fun hell of it, but somehow Marvel and DC movies are now so leaden and dark that going to the movies feels like superhero therapy more than an escapist lark.
Thank the weird and wonderful denizens of the multiverse then for Deadpool & Wolverine, third in the Deadpool series of films (Deadpool and Deadpool 2, released 2016 and 2018 respectively) which, thanks to Disney eagerly snapping up 20th Century Fox, finds the most un-PC superhero of them all cosily ensconced in the often cloying worthiness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
But if you think for a minute that the Ryan Reynolds-driven character is simply going to behave himself and play nice, dropping the swearing and the straight sexual utterances for Disney Princess-level niceness and Avengers-squeaky cleanliness, then you have clearly not been paying a damn bit of attention.
In fact, if anything, this off-the-charts, hilariously batsh*t crazy third outing sees Deadpool going even more meta, more acerbic, more willing to push boundaries and envelopes and to embrace his fluid sexuality in ways that the average Disney movie wouldn’t even DARE think about.
In the midst of all this Deadpool-ian BAU, which sees our red-clad “hero” on a jaunt across the multiverse to save himself, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, finally in the cartoonish classic garb of the character) and those he loves and who, amazingly, love him right back – they’re a mixed bunch including ex-fiancee Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin), accidental X-Force member and friend Peter Wisdom (Rob Delaney) and cocaine-addicted, acidic ally wisecracking housemate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams) but then that’s the beauty and wonder of found families, right? – all the usual conventions of MCU films go out the window, and gloriously and happily so.
That really is the joy of Deadpool & Wolverine.
It just wants to, like the eponymous girls of Cyndi Lauper’s massive debut hit, have FUN, and fun it has in absolute spades, caring little for canon or conventionality and going way out-there loopy simply set up bloody and violent action set-piece after action set-piece, playing havoc too with the idea that it all has to mean something.
It does, of course, mean something, and there’s a great deal of emotion and meaning woven into a story that looks anarchically whimsical and silly, well, because IT IS, but which is still happy to wear its heart on its sleeve, almost literally in many instances as Deadpool stabs, weaves and fights his way to get what he wants which is the safety of the nine people in the world he loves more than any other.
As this titanic battle across various multiverses and against villains big and small, cruel and just ambitiously inept, wages on, Deadpool & Wolverine has a ball going all meta too, making some pointed comments about prequels, sequels and a host of cinematic decision-making that has less to do with creative purity than it does a quest for the biggest bundle of bucks possible.
As a scathing rebuke of the creative barrenness of much of moviemaking these days, when bottom-line obsessed suits care more for padding out the profit margin than saying anything truly original or meaningful, Deadpool & Wolverine is unparalleled, biting the very hand that feeds it with a bouncily messy alacrity that will have you laughing knowingly over and over and over again.
Possessing a script that is as audaciously vivacious as they come, soundtrack choices that are used in such inspired fashion that you will gasp with joy at the pairing of song and bloody narrative punctuation point, and Reynolds’ trademark ballsy quipping that is happy to not just go there, but go even further there, and then further again, Deadpool & Wolverine is the anti-MCU film that might just be the most MCU movie of all, and the one this moribund sprawling assemblage of stories needs to feel relevant and enjoyable again.
And for all its wold fun and silliness, what Deadpool & Wolverine truly brings is a deeply welcome sense that it is possible to make some awesomely important and emotionally hefty points without sinking into seriousness so intense that you feel like you’re being sucked into a black hole and an endless void and a chasm without finish or end.
You leave Deadpool & Wolverine feeling like something really important has just happened; after all, Deadpool sets out to save his world and dammit if he doesn’t in ways that are delightfully hilarious and ’80s and ’90s blockbuster-level bloody and violent.
But even more than that, you are liberated from this suffocating sense that life is always SERIOUS and that you can’t have any fun with it; Deadpool lets his fluid sexuality express itself, is happy to throw any and all caution to the wind (actually he has none so that was always a given) and calls out sacred cows left, right and centre, his zeal for the truth trumping, well and truly, any need for false niceties and half-truths.
He is like a shot in the arm of anyone who’s ever had to tow the line and wear the cloak of orthodoxy to keep people comfortable and happy, and with a smart, literate and wildly imaginative screenplay by by Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells and Shawn Levy (who also brilliantly directed the film which could have been an untold mess but isn’t), a sense of humour that’s irreverent and a strong shot of thoughtful and affecting humanity along for the ride, Deadpool & Wolverine is one of the films of the year, and a defining one for the MCU, because while it knows life is a LOT and demands a LOT, it can also be simple, silly, escapist fun too and the soul reviving, madly creative cinematic journey we didn’t know we needed.
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