- UK release: July 2024
- Director: Shawn Levy · Writers: Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, Shawn Levy
- Studio / distributor: Marvel Studios; Maximum Effort; 21 Laps Entertainment
- Genre: Superhero action comedy / multiverse buddy film · Runtime: 128 minutes (BBFC 15)
- Main cast: Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool, Free Guy) as Wade Wilson / Deadpool; Hugh Jackman (Logan, The Prestige) as Logan / Wolverine; Emma Corrin (The Crown) as Cassandra Nova; Matthew Macfadyen (Succession, Pride & Prejudice) as Mr Paradox
- IMDb: 7.5 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 78% critics / 94% audience · My rating: 8 / 10
When Disney bought Fox, the obvious worry was what it would do to Deadpool. The character built his two films on swearing at the camera, eviscerating people, and mocking the very studios now signing his cheques, and the standing joke was that a House of Mouse Deadpool would arrive sanded down to a 12A. So the first surprise of Deadpool & Wolverine is that it is the first film carrying the Marvel Studios logo to come out swinging with an 18-certificate sensibility and a UK 15, blood and all. The second surprise is that it talked Hugh Jackman out of retirement. He hung up the claws with Logan in 2017 and meant it, and getting him back into the suit, the actual yellow-and-blue suit he spent two decades refusing to wear, is the kind of thing this film treats as both a gift and a punchline.
The setup
Wade Wilson has given up the mercenary life and is selling used cars, which is its own quiet joke. The Time Variance Authority then informs him that his universe, the Fox X-Men world, is dying because its anchor being is gone, and offers him a way out that means abandoning everyone he knows. Wade being Wade, he goes looking for a fix instead, and the fix involves dragging a Wolverine, any Wolverine, out of the multiverse to plug the hole. The one he finds is the worst version available: a bitter, drunk, broken Logan carrying a failure he will not discuss. The two of them are dumped in the Void, a junkyard at the end of the timeline ruled by a telepath named Cassandra Nova, and have to work together to get home while loathing every second of it.
The cast
Reynolds has played this part long enough that he could phone it in, and the pleasure is that he does not. Wade is still the motormouth, still breaking the fourth wall to comment on his own studio’s troubles, but there is a thread of real loneliness under the patter that gives the jokes something to push against. Jackman is the reason the film works as anything more than a sketch. He plays this Logan as a man who hates himself, and he commits to the misery completely, which makes the eventual thaw land. The two of them spend a good stretch of the runtime simply hitting each other in a car, and their timing is good enough that it stays funny. Emma Corrin is the find of the piece, playing Cassandra Nova with a soft, unhurried menace that is far more unsettling than the usual shouting supervillain. Matthew Macfadyen brings his particular brand of oily mid-level officiousness to the bureaucrat pulling the strings, and it lands exactly as it should.
The craft
Shawn Levy is not a stylist, and the film is not trying to be beautiful. What he is good at is keeping a loud, busy machine moving, and Deadpool & Wolverine never sits still long enough to sag. The action is the most coherent the franchise has managed, with the two leads’ healing factors used as licence for fights that are genuinely brutal in a way the previous films only gestured at. The Void is a smart bit of staging, a dustbin for discarded properties that lets the film raid two decades of superhero cinema for faces and ruins without needing to explain itself. Rob Simonsen’s score does its job, and the soundtrack leans on big needle-drops with a confidence that mostly earns the swagger. The cameos, which I will not spoil, are deployed with more affection than cynicism, which is not what I expected.
How it stacks up
The honest comparison is with Deadpool 2, which this beats on energy and loses to slightly on heart, and with Logan, which it cannot touch and is wise enough not to try. Logan was a funeral; this is a wake, and it knows the difference. As a buddy-action comedy it sits closer to the better odd-couple films than to most superhero fare: the engine is two people who cannot stand each other being forced to share a journey, and that engine has been reliable since long before either of these characters existed. Against the wider run of recent Marvel, where the multiverse has mostly been an excuse for homework, this is the rare entry that uses the device for jokes and feeling rather than franchise admin.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics are mixed-positive, sitting around 78%, with the recurring complaint that the plot is a coat-rack for cameos and gags rather than a story. Audiences have ignored them entirely and pushed the score up into the nineties. Both are right. It is a delivery system for fan service, and the connective tissue is thin. But the fan service is delivered with real wit and a clear love of the messy Fox era it is sending off, and the central pairing is strong enough to carry the gaps. The critics are marking it as cinema; the audience is marking it as a night out. On this one the audience has the better measure of what the film is for.
Verdict
This is not a profound film and does not want to be. It is crude, overstuffed, and held together mostly by two actors who are clearly enjoying themselves. It is also one of the most purely entertaining things the genre has produced in a while, with jokes that land, action that hurts, and a send-off for the old X-Men films that is warmer than the snark suggests. It loses a point for leaning on nostalgia I will eventually tire of on a rewatch, and for a plot you forget the moment it ends. It gains everything back on chemistry and sheer momentum. I will watch it again, probably more than once. 8⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now. See it with a crowd; the laughs and the gasps both play better in a full room.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the film went on to become the highest-grossing R-rated release to that point and the box-office event of its summer, which retired any lingering worry that an adult-rated Marvel film could not sell. Jackman’s return, billed here as a one-off favour, reads in hindsight as the moment the studio worked out it could revive its older properties without pretending they never happened. It is now available on disc and digital and streams on Disney+.
BBFC content advice
Rated 15 by the BBFC for strong bloody violence, injury detail, sex references, very strong language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are sustained fight scenes in which blood is spilt copiously, mainly by superhuman characters whose wounds heal immediately. There are isolated moments of stronger injury detail: a man is skinned by fantastical forces, revealing his intestines; a superhero’s Achilles tendons are slashed prior to decapitation.
Threat and horror: There is mild threat from monsters, villains and life-threatening situations.
Language: There is infrequent use of very strong language (‘c**t’), as well as more frequent strong language (‘f**k’, ‘motherf**ker’) and other terms such as ‘bitch’, ‘queen’ and ‘prick’. There is use of ‘n***a’ in song lyrics.
Sex: Crude humour includes references to genital piercing, anal sex, necrophilia, paedophilia, oral sex and masturbation.
Discrimination: There is use of the term ‘retard’.
Drugs: An elderly woman’s fondness for cocaine is a recurring gag. One of the heroes is an alcoholic who drinks surgical spirit.
Suicide and self-harm: There are fleeting comic references to suicide.
Flashing/flickering lights: This film contains flickering or flashing lights that may affect those with photosensitive epilepsy.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
