Deadpool & Wolverine : Meta humour saves the day

Early in director Shawn Levy's buddy superhero movie, when Ryan Reynolds' Wade Wilson is commissioned an Avengers-like world-saving mission, he literally breaks the fourth wall by headbanging the camera into cracks and telling Fox that he's going to Disneyland. That's exactly what the threequel entails: Deadpool entering the Disneyland that's the Marvel Cinematic Universe – it's like Alice in Wonderland, but on signature Deadpool steroids.

Deadpool in Disneyland

The reason why this turbulent marriage of Deadpool and MCU sustains is because it's not designed as Disneyfication of Deadpool, as many feared, but as the Deadpoolification of the MCU. One has rarely seen a Marvel film go all R-rated. 

Ryan Reynolds and Levy (Free Guy and The Adam Project) fly with the idea by introducing gore, abuses, and adult imagery into the MCU. But they do so by sticking to the core of what Deadpool is – humour. Lots and lots of humour. And no one is spared. Not even Marvel.

In that sense, Deadpool & Wolverine is to Marvel what Greta Gerwig's Barbie was to Mattel. The studio bosses are in on all the jokes directed towards them. Deadpool uses all the recent criticism directed towards MCU's Phase 4 and 5 as fodder for his unsparing humour. 

Kevin Feige welcomes Wolverine to the MCU, but adds that he has joined "at a low point." When an army of Deadpool variants walk in from another dimension, he echoes our exasperation when he says he's sick of all the time variation, multiversal mumbo-jumbo. Not to say that there isn't any of that in this movie – there's plenty. Because it seems like MCU is no longer capable of building high stakes without invoking multiple timelines. Well, that may imply that the stakes are cosmic, but it also defeats the very purpose of stakes-building – nothing is under tangible threat because everything is revocable.

The humour extends not only to Disney (Dogpool is referred to as Mary Puppins) and MCU's own movies, but also that of its rival, Warner Bros. and DC. The Void, a dimension where the rejects are dumped into by the Time Variance Authority, looks like a 'Mad Max' rip-off. A joke about Furiosa is also slid in, just like a wisecrack about Batman pops up when Deadpool remarks that Wolverine's classic yellow mask makes him look like "Batman but who can move his neck." 

Ryan doesn't spare himself either – with a sappy reference to 'The Proposal' (2009) and a shoutout to actor-wife Blake Lively. My favourite, however, is when he looks at the worn-out giant Ant-Man skull and says, "Paul Rudd has finally aged."

The meta humour somehow helps the audience glide over Marvel's borderline annoying obsession with timeline hopping, VFX overdose, and cameo bombarding. Thankfully, cameos don't turn into a spectator sport here as most of them have fascinating MCU lore attached to them. 

Marvel could've gone overboard with the cameos, but it decidedly treats the movie as a tribute to 20th Century Fox, which it acquired in 2019. Stay for the end credits for a walk down memory lane to the high-stakes superhero storytelling of the X-Men and Fantastic Four days.

Red & yellow

Interestingly, it took a marvel to unite two of the most loved Fox superheroes. Their team-up was teased way back in 2018 in the post-credit scene of Deadpool 2. The long-in-the-making threequel makes for a sumptuous buddy comedy because of the giving actor that Ryan Reynolds is. 

After headlining 2 movies in his franchise, he makes space for Wolverine not only in the film's title, but also the storyline. He's had great chemistry with his male co-stars in movies like 'The Hitman's Bodyguard' (Samuel L Jackson) and 'Red Notice' (Dwayne Johnson), and Hugh Jackman is no different. Because he slips into the adamantium skull and regenerative skill with consummate ease, as if he last played Wolverine just yesterday.

His no-nonsense, tough guy humour is a sharp contrast to not only his classic comic-book yellow costume, but also the irreverent, verbose one of Deadpool. The very fact that neither of them can die, but still go on to slash and pierce each other anyway, makes for some charged action sequences, high on gore and bloodshed. 

Watch out for the bit when all the windows of a bus turn red as Deadpool and Wolverine go about with their onslaught. It's every gore lover's dream. Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, Charles Xavier's evil twin, brings her own icky appeal to the proceedings, getting her hands dirty to literally penetrate people's minds with her fingers (that's some tangible telepathy), in sharp contrast to her prim and proper British accent.

Sure, the invincible immortality of both its lead characters, coupled with MCU's multiverse-fuelled revocability, makes Deadpool & Wolverine another superhero film with rather predictable, low stakes. But like 'Spider-Man: No Way Home,' the multidimensional design is efficiently used as their one chance at penance. 

For the longer you live, the longer you fight with your guilt, your insignificance. MCU is gradually transcending its ultimate purpose of world-saving – it's increasingly becoming more about not becoming complacent of saving the world. It's become more about fighting the fatigue – of its very own existence.