I’ve been a fan of Ryan Reynolds since Two Guys and a Girl still had a pizza place in its title. He does a lot of funny stuff, from his one episode in Scrubs to his star turn in Detective Pikachu. And my, oh my, from the level of skepticism I had when Hugh Jackman was cast as Wolverine, what feels like fifty or sixty years ago, to the level of admiration I had for him by the end of Logan, he cast aside all my doubts and continued to give the best performances in the X-Men franchise, even outshining James McAvoy’s excellent Patrick Stewart (I mean Charles Xavier). So I was pretty damn excited when I saw first that they were coming together for Deadpool & Wolverine.

And that was sort of where my excitement ended. From minute one, it was clear that the best idea they could come up with was calling out their bad ideas and the dearth of creativity that plagues not just Marvel now, but so many blockbusters these days. I get that Deadpool’s whole thing is that he’s the irreverent merc with a mouth who breaks the fourth wall, but the first note I wrote on the movie says “kind of over it at this point” and since I started the movie that way, I was really hoping that the situation would change. But the trajectory was not one of improvement. From the opening scene where Deadpool digs up Logan’s corpse where it was left after Logan (though I believe that movie took place in the future, still ahead of the current time) and uses it to kill a bunch of TVA agents (that is the Time Variance Authority, not the one in Tennessee) before he does a dance made for TikTok over the opening credits, I was sighing and rolling my eyes in a way I didn’t previously know possible. I bet you didn’t think this movie, Deadpool’s first entry into the MCU, was going to be a Loki spin-off, but it is. I guess with all the cameos, they decided to save budget by reusing sets (but not actors) from that show. Of all the cameos that they stuffed into this movie, they couldn’t fly Ke Huy Quan in for an afternoon? I mean, they brought back Toad and Pyro from the X-Men films, but you couldn’t get Ke? I guess he was too busy, compared to slackers like Chris Evans and Channing Tatum.

Sure, it’s true that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first two Deadpool movies; I thought they were good, but sometimes felt like they were written like a kid who spends their first night away from their parents and learns that they can say all the bad words they want. It was just a bit forced at times, but they were good movies. And at the center of those movies was the relationship between Wade and Vanessa; that was the thing that elevated them from schlock like Kick-Ass to actually good movies. So, of course, the move here is to make Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa a cameo instead of a character and just have Reynolds throw so many jokes against the wall spaghetti-style that you don’t notice that the movie kind of has no story and the fights don’t mean anything. Underscoring this lack of stakes is the movie’s music choices, laying over ironic popular songs over every battle to show off how funny and silly the movie is. This is a movie that is trying really hard to convince it’s funny by constantly saying “See? Look how funny that is! I’m so funny!” and hoping you just go along with it. The movie transitions to a job interview where Wade meets Happy Hogan (hey, I remember that guy!) and tries to become an Avenger. Happy shows him the door and Wade decides to become a car salesman; a very bad one, despite the fact he really pushes minivans, especially the Honda Odyssey, for pretty much the entire movie. It’s not just a one scene product placement; other than quips and the word “multiverse”, I swear he says “Honda Odyssey” more than anything else in the film. I mean, the only way the writing in this movie could have been lazier is if they decided to do the cameos as Zoom calls and actually hired the actors on Cameo. It would have undoubtedly been cheaper that way and maybe they could have afforded a coherent plot and to fly in Ke Huy Quan. Really, as disappointing as this movie was, the biggest disappointment I had was that Ke wasn’t at the TVA after his epic performance in Loki Season 2.

I am very tired of multiverse stories. I feel like we’ve forgotten that when DC Comics had to clean up its multiverse because it became far too unwieldy to handle, they had to have a huge event that they literally called a crisis to tie everything together and make the universe followable again. And when the best you can do in a multiverse is give us a state where things are slightly different from the established universe, it really feels like you’re not doing much with your concept. And, it also manages to take the stakes out of everything and make it so that character deaths and efforts and sacrifices are essentially meaningless because they’re not some singular person who steps up when needed to do the heroic acts the world needs of them—they’re one of an infinite number of mostly the same versions of themselves that can slot right in once this one dies. I’ve never cared for the idea and it’s been done to death by the MCU and the Arrowverse, of all things, which was essentially forced into it because of network changes for Supergirl. MCU’s multiverse jumped the shark in 2022 with Multiverse of Madness and it has not aged well at all. I’d go as far as to say the only property that actually pulled off the multiverse story well was Loki, because that show had a beating heart at its center and excellent performances by Tom Hiddleston, Ke Huy Quan, Sofia Di Martino, Owen Wilson, and Wunmi Mosaku, the sole veteran of that series that makes an appearance in this movie.

Anyway, Wade is pulled into the TVA and told by a fellow who calls himself Mr. Paradox that he’s the chosen one to fix the sacred timeline or something and that his timeline is slated for destruction after Logan’s death, as he was the anchor being for that timeline and without him it can’t exist—so we’re going to have to really ignore how that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and just go with it, I guess. I mean, unless the anchor being is born at the moment of the timeline and is immortal, wouldn’t mean that all timelines at some point don’t have an anchor being and should be slated deprecation? Including the sacred timeline? Well, I guess they don’t want us asking questions like that, and other questions like “Why was The Eternals so bad and if Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos, but to me he’s always Paper Boi) is the one who gave humans all the technology starting with things like the plow, what makes Iron Man so special?”. But that’s another problem. So, Wade decides to get a replacement Wolverine. Cue the montage. And yes, Deadpool actually says that.

See, the move here, the entire conceit of the movie, really, is that if you call out bad writing and uncreative decisions that it somehow becomes good writing and creative. That’s right—if you write your movie like it’s its own Reddit comment section, people can’t complain on Reddit. At least that’s the theory, it seems. So much of this meta comedy is trying to mask the lack of originality and stakes and simultaneously call out and appease the Reddit mob. It just doesn’t work; not for me, anyway. You can’t call out bad choices while leaning into them and get a pass for it. I mean, come on; they even made an “I identify as” joke like it’s 2014. I get it, your view of comedy hasn’t changed in almost a decade, cool. Just don’t expect me to be impressed by jokes I got tired of seeing on Twitter when my beard was still all black and I had hope for the future. If your idea of a good time is quantity over quality with a maybe 5% hit rate, Deadpool & Wolverine has you covered. But I don’t think you can quip your way to a satisfying movie just by doing it as much as you possibly can in its bloated runtime. And I say bloated because even though something is happening all the time, halfway through the movie I still didn’t really know what it was about and I wasn’t even sure who the villain was. At first I was sure it was Tom Wambsgans from the TVA, then I was sure it was Cassandra Nova (played by Emma Corrin, who was actually allowed to emote in this movie, unlike their role in A Murder at the End of the World, in which they were seemingly only permitted to look like a deer in headlights and chat flatly to an AI assistant), then I swapped between the two, then it was both, then it was neither, and I ended the movie still wondering what anyone’s plan or motivation was. Still, it was pretty dope to see Matthew Macfayden. I settled on the idea that I was the villain all along and, frankly, I was fine with that. Because perhaps this movie is really as bad as I think it is or perhaps I’ve just outgrown it. Maybe it’s a little of both, but I really do think that I could go back and watch the first two Deadpool movies and still enjoy them because there was something there, a kernel at the core from which a whole cornstalk could grow. But here, there’s very little to hold on to. And that very little rests completely on Hugh Jackman’s shoulders.

Yes, much like his time in the X-Men movies, Wolverine carries this film. Jackman puts in an excellent, heartfelt performance as a character beloved by many and clearly one that means something to him. It’s just a shame it’s in a movie meant to be memes and TikToks. But hey, at least they made a movie specifically for cosplayers, I bet they’re stoked about the multiverse full of Deadpools. I’m sure Comic Cons will have lots of excellent costumes on display and I can’t wait to see them. Jackman absolutely brings it in a film that’s not worthy of his talents as he plays the “worst” Wolverine in the multiverse, but sad and angry is when Logan is at his best. Let’s face it, Wolverine isn’t a beloved character because he’s a happy-go-lucky, relentlessly positive Ted Lasso-type. He’s sad, he’s alone, he’s mean, but he’s got a heart and he does the right thing. Which he does here. The man can’t help but step up, not just in the story, but for this movie. Because any scene where Logan wasn’t talking was absolutely boring. Even the fight scenes between effective immortals and/or legions of red shirts underpinned by silly music choices weren’t fun to watch because there were no stakes to any of them and after about the 30th cameo, you’re exhausted with how excited you’re supposed to be (although seeing Dafne Keen again and Channing Tatum as Gambit were actually delightful). I was rolling my eyes so hard and so often I had to concentrate on not falling over. For the most part, these super specific references for the terminally online bored me to tears. Add to that a carbon copy of the Guardians of the Galaxy ending, the feeling of “Hey, I know that thing, I’ve seen that thing before” isn’t one of delight, it’s one of despair. At the end of this, I just wanted to watch Loki and Logan again. And the worst thing about a movie like Deadpool & Wolverine is that it could have been so good. They just decided against it.