Deadpool & Wolverine Review — A blood-soaked love letter to a bye-bye-bygone era

Deadpool & Wolverine feels like both a kick in the teeth and the warmest hug. On one hand, it's the goriest, most F-bomb riddled Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to date. On the other hand, it's also a touching retrospective of a superhero movie era we might never see again.

Spoilers: I hate Deadpool. Never liked his first movie (embarrassingly juvenile). The second one was more competent (yet more of the same shit). Never even cared to give a review of either. So, forgive me if I went into this with expectations so low that not even the inclusion of fan-favorite Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) would move the needle. But who knew that the best way to handle Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is to chuck him into a bigger playground?

And that's exactly what happens in Deadpool & Wolverine, the Merc with a Mouth's intro to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In a bit of cosmic kismet, Deadpool arrives at his lowest during the MCU's lowest. His girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin having not aged a day) has left him, and he's given up on superheroing (or at least, what passes for it in his eyes) to embrace sweet mediocrity. But all he wants is to matter, and it just so happens that the forbidden door has been opened: the MCU's Time Variance Authority wants to use his skills to help protect the Sacred Timeline! Since, you know, Deadpool's universe is dying.

Because you see, every universe has an "anchor being" that keeps it alive. Once that anchor being disappears or dies, the universe around them goes with it. It just so happens that in Deadpool's universe, that anchor being was a rowdy Canuck calling himself the Wolverine. Said Wolverine died after a valiant battle protecting something he cares about, and now Deadpool and the rest of his reality are slowly withering away into nothingness.

I love how meta that is. A "universe dying" when their "anchor being" is gone? Like how the Blade movies stopped being made when Wesley Snipes got tired of motherfuckers messing with his franchise? Like how Fantastic Four movies disappeared due to low box office sales? It's those little elbow nudges and sly winks that Deadpool & Wolverine does so well. 

Surprisingly, for a movie he himself wrote, Ryan Reynolds is less annoying this time around as Wade Wilson a.k.a. Deadpool. He would tell you himself that he's no hero, but there's an awful lot of sincerity and warmth to his performance when he's not mugging the fourth wall to death.

Same can be said for Hugh Jackman's Logan a.k.a. Wolverine. Reports of him being a long-in-the-tooth has-been are greatly exaggerated. Jackman slashes and growls his way through the movie (and Deadpool's constant teasing) with an energy you thought only guys half his age had. He's also its emotional center with a past more tragic than most Wolverines we've seen in superhero movies, and he also gets to let loose in moments of heavy and gut-wrenching drama.

But don't let the tears fool you: Deadpool & Wolverine is for the fans. The first 45 minutes is a full-on fanservice roller coaster you have to see to believe, while the cameos and inside jokes in the rest of the movie will make even the most diehard 20th Century Fox hater into a straight apologist. Is there such as a thing as too much fanservice? Sure, but Deadpool & Wolverine at least isn't afraid of wearing its still-beating heart on its sleeve, or ashamed that it's a superhero movie.

And maybe that was the trick all along to get me to like Deadpool.  He's spent his first few years poking fun of comic book movies that it didn't occur to him that Wolverine wearing the yellow and blue costume would be extremely fucking cool. And now he's geeking out with the rest of us.

Leave it to an MCU outsider to give it the shot of adrenaline it needed at this critical juncture. Deadpool & Wolveirne just made superhero movies fun again by reminding us that superhero movies are supposed to be fun. Now, let's fucking go.