Deadpool & Wolverine

2024

Nerd culture is eating itself from the inside, with films and TV shows that only exist to reward audiences for the niche knowledge they’ve accumulated about their favorite franchises — Deadpool & Wolverine is the biggest offender yet.

You could watch Iron Man on opening night and enjoy the film without any prior knowledge of the characters… but Marvel threw in a quick wink for the hardcore fans in the after-credits and the rest is history: the MCU is born, it becomes Disney’s golden goose, and every other studio chases that model as they launch their own cinematic universes.

Fast forward to the 2020s and Kevin Feige tries to jumpstart a new saga by bringing ALL the timelines together through the concept of the multiverse. At it’s peak, it’s been audience pops for Tobey Maguire, at its worse, it’s Black Bolt receiving a muted reaction… but I one guy in my theater standing up and fist-pumping the air when the latter showed up — let’s be clear, there’s never been a good reason to go that hard for Black Bolt, a character from a show only 4 people watched, but that fan wanted to be seen, he wanted to make sure everyone else in the theater knew that he recognized the obscure spandex’d hero, cementing his spot as the night’s ultimate nerd.

The entirety of Deadpool & Wolverine is based on this idea of rewarding the nerds, with a “story” that’s basically a delivery system for cameos, callbacks, and gay jokes. So we scrap the barrel for characters from past movies (real or not), and because it's Deadpool you also get plot elements and inside jokes that will only land if you know about corporate mergers, IP and brand management, memes, or the personal lives of your favorite actors.

Scorsese compared these films to theme park rides but they’re more like classrooms with the way audiences participate. The theater becomes a room of know-it-all students with their hands up, waiting to explode each time a reference is made. Do these films even work on repeat viewings once you know what’s coming?

Deadpool & Wolverine is a soulless exercise in movie-making, with Ryan Reynolds pretty much calling us dumb for enjoying anything Marvel since Endgame — you can’t tell me the MCU has fallen off while simultaneously delivering one of the worst entries yet, you can’t poke fun at the concept of multiverses as you literally tell one of the most convoluted multiverse stories so far.

But hey it’s ok because Deadpool is in on the joke right? When he talks to the camera, he is talking to ME, the forever online nerd who happens to know the long history of Channing Tatum’s Gambit movie!

Am I suppose to know who that is">franchise filmmaking.

Underneath all the boner jokes you’ll find nuggets of good ideas touching on the meta-existence of sequels, it’s similar to The Matrix Resurrections but with zero substance and no commentary on the allure and death grip of nostalgia. Now obviously we’re not getting the Wachowskis in the MCU but surely you can do better than Shawn Levy? This premise could have work with folks like Lord & Miller who have a strong track record with superheroes and meta-narratives.

I watched this an hour after the announcement about the Russos and Downey Jr. returning to the MCU and I’m afraid Marvel has completely broken audience expectations — they only know how to make one type of movie, just regurgitate familiar characters and endless sequels that are constantly looking back… I’m not even sure if Iron Man would be appreciated if it was released today.

Block or Report

SuperBardiBros liked these reviews

All