At The Movies: With snark, stabs and surprises, Deadpool & Wolverine brings mayhem to the multiverse

Deadpool & Wolverine (M18)

127 minutes, opens on July 25
4 stars

The story: Wade Wilson, also known as the mouthy mercenary Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), has given up his violent ways, following the events of Deadpool 2 (2018). Fitting in as the average American salaryman, however, is proving difficult. It gets harder when officers from the Time Variance Authority (TVA), the organisation which polices timelines in the multiverse, appear. After he learns from the TVA that his timeline might evaporate, Deadpool vows to stop the destruction – a feat that involves scouring the multiverse for the right Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).

For a film with a plot that falls apart at the slightest touch, with fight scenes this gory and with this many gags relying on objects hitting people in the crotch, it is shocking that it can be this good and genuinely funny.

Directed by Canadian film-maker Shawn Levy (Free Guy, 2021; the Night At The Museum trilogy, 2006 to 2014), the third Deadpool film is 2024’s only Marvel superhero movie, so there is a lot of anticipation around this release.

But Deadpool & Wolverine is significant for another reason – it represents a break with the Deadpool films of the past.

In the first two films, a large portion of Deadpool’s appeal leaned on the fact that he lived outside Disney’s more sanitised Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). He, along with the mutants that form the X-Men, belonged to another studio, 20th Century Fox.

The Deadpool films were superhero movies for people who do not like superhero movies. The sweary, violent adult-oriented action comedies were almost parodies of the genre. Reynolds’ character broke the fourth wall to comment on the B-list status of his Fox superhero sidekicks, for example.

Now that Disney owns Fox, does the first post-Disney Deadpool film have the old magic?

Fans can breathe easy. The snark is abundant, the humour remains properly juvenile and a couple of the darts thrown at the superhero genre are tipped with real acid.

The F-bombs are still plentiful, the stabbings are just as bloody and the fourth wall is shattered every five minutes to throw insults at other superheroes, even ones who belong to competing studios.

The most Disney-esque feature of the latest sequel is that it sits in the post-Avengers: Endgame (2019) phase of the MCU, the one concerned with multiverses, timelines and the TVA, with parts of the story related to canon shown on the Disney+ streaming service.

Aside from such canon references, the problems that one might have with Deadpool & Wolverine are ones that apply to all time-travel, multiverse-jumping films: Nothing matters because any deed can be undone. Dead characters can live again, even characters given heartbreakingly final, noble deaths – such as Wolverine’s in one of the best superhero movies ever, Logan (2017).

The cheapening of Logan’s death, however, must be weighed against the rush of seeing favourites back on screen. There is a lump-in-the-throat moment when Jackman’s Logan and Dafne Keen’s Laura/X-23 from that earlier film appear together. In spite of it being unearned and written into existence out of nothing, the on-screen reunion, against every expectation, carries emotional power.

Hot take: Marvel’s snarkiest hero returns in fine form, with more superhero cameos, more face stabbings and more toilet humour than ever.