When 2016s Deadpool was released by 20th Century Fox it did feel like a risk. It’s hard to believe that a superhero movie could feel risky at all, but an R rated one starring a character that wasn’t a part of the juggernaut that is the MCU? It at least felt rebellious. The fact that the same character is now owned by the Disney corporation and so even the idea that it could ‘feel’ rebellious is laughable, is only the tip of the iceberg of issues with the third entry in the franchise ‘Deadpool & Wolverine‘.

To say the plot is thin in D&W is a colossal understatement, it involves the same nonsense we’ve seen from any number of superhero movies. There is a ‘multiverse’ and it’s in danger and so Deadpool is for some reason recruited, even though he’s almost certainly the worst man for the job. Why would you have a story that involves relatable human stakes when you can have a parade of actors as other characters that they used to play? Audience members can point and ‘oooh and aaah’ at the CGI slop that graces the screen and Disney can make a cool bill off of nostalgia bombing us for two hours.

Multiverse parades have become the bread and butter of the MCU. ‘Remember when?’ the movie asks of us, ‘Yes why don’t I just watch that movie instead?’ is my response. I will be spoiling the inane cameos that make up the entirety of the DNA of Shawn Levy’s movie making prowess so if you’re someone who feels that will destroy the movie I’d stop reading. And honestly I’m not usually precious about spoilers but there’s nothing else in D&W except cameos to hang your hat on, so I have more sympathy in this case than most. If you know who the cameos are you’ve basically seen the movie.

The big return is that Hugh Jackman is back as Wolverine, Deadpool literally opens the movie by exhuming his corpse, and then when it turns out he is actually dead, Deadpool goes on a multiverse hunt for the clawed hero. The emotional stakes of the movie are mostly worn by Jackman because Deadpool is too busy making dick jokes to center anything around him, even though the past two Deadpool movies largely succeeded at making Deadpool a hero with a heart. Shawn Levy either did not want to or could not figure out how to center a film on Deadpool. Regardless D&W acts as both a welcome back and a farewell to Jackman for his efforts over the years as Wolverine. An insane thing to do as we already had him get sent off in ‘Logan‘, a considerably better movie I could have been watching.

This is the greatest flaw of the movie. It brings back characters from old franchises that existed outside the MCU and is fed entirely by the idea of how much we love seeing our old friends again. But I own ‘X2’ on Blu-ray! I can just watch that! I will have a considerably better time! So when the movie shows us Aaron Stanford back as Pyro or Wesley Snipes returning as Blade my immediate reaction is not overwhelming gratitude to Disney for showing me my old friends. It’s annoyance that because of a misguided decision that I made, I am not watching watching ‘Blade‘. When I think about how I could have spent those two hours watching ‘Blade‘ I get impossibly depressed.

I’m racking my brain trying to think of things I liked. The effects are exactly what we’ve come to expect from late stage MCU, bad CGI rammed through a system by overworked underpaid graphics artists. It’s crazy to me how expensive these movies are and how bad they continue to look. I recently rewatched Ang Lee’s ‘Hulk’ movie, and while there are dated aspects to some of the effects, it’s a much prettier movie than anything the MCU has made recently. It is simply astonishing that they can keep shoving out low effort, poorly written, garbage and making money off of them.

For the record I still have fondness for parts of the MCU, I think the first Avengers movie was somewhat of a masterstroke. Winter Soldier and Iron Man 3 are among my favorites in the series as well. Those movies had some winky cameo moments, but nothing like the deluge of ‘wouldn’t it be cute if we got Jennifer Garner back as Elektra?’ energy that we’ve witnessed from the MCU as of late. And that’s part of the issue, I used to love superhero movies, but we can’t just keep doing this and pretending these corporations are doing us a favor when they puppeteer the lifeless corpse of some of the characters we know and love.

If I was gonna say something nice about D&W it’s that some of the jokes are funny. But even this is a frustration because the tone is so confused. Deadpool and Wolverine team up to save the world, but it’s hard to believe anyone’s in danger when Deadpool is making cracks about ass play. The movie wanted it both ways, it wanted to make you feel nostalgic and emotional, and it also regularly went out of it’s way to undercut those feelings. It did not know what it wanted to be, and if it had leaned harder away from the self serious world saving peril of the MCU I may have liked it. But I don’t know if there’s anything that would have saved this absolute train wreck. I don’t think there was a world where the underdog that is Deadpool really belongs in the MCU, under the strict supervision of Executive Producer Feige and the glorious empire that is the Disney Corporation.

1/5