Commentary by Brad Balfour
Film: Deadpool & Wolverine
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Aaron Stanford, Matthew Macfadyen
When I was a wee lad, I discovered comic books. This was in the early ‘60s, long before all the electronic media opportunities. Those paper comic books had to serve up various complicated narratives to fulfill the thirst of fans who wanted more and more fantastic tales of many superheroes battling more and more nefarious villains. As comics evolved, their writers and artists knew that standard criminals would never sustain the interest of fans.
Then came the supervillains to pit their heroes against. These villains often had world or galaxy conquering goals in mind.
And that brings us to modern times. Now there’s a multiverse of many villains all wanting to conquer the universe, remake the galaxy and warp time. And they’re all present in state-of-the-art cinema environments. As superheroes transitioned from print publications to celluloid and then, digital media, the experience expanded and became something larger-than-life. Villains have now grown not only physically but with galaxy-large ambitions of galactic domination within the worlds of the Marvel and DC cinematic universes.
That evolution birthed the many films detailing great superheroes and their adversaries. After many films — now dozens of them made with more fantastical and superior digital technologies — these universes began wearing out their welcome for fans.
Along comes the multiverses and new opportunities for variation. But that hasn’t been enough, so along comes Deadpool. As played by veteran hero-embracer Ryan Reynolds, this character has several unique qualities beyond the ability to regenerate no matter what death-dealing injury has afflicted this anti-hero. He also can traverse the fourth wall and speak directly to audiences.
In his comic book appearances, Deadpool was initially depicted as a supervillain, a member of the New Mutants and X-Force, though, in later stories, he was portrayed him as an antihero. The alter ego of Wade Wilson, a disfigured Canadian mercenary, he possesses superhuman healing abilities.
Besides his survival abilities, he’s known to joke incessantly especially when he breaks the fourth wall,. That’s how far things have come for hero-weary fans and geeks — to embrace such an un heroic hero.
Since he speaks directly to his audience, an R-rating was necessary given his foul mouthed proclamations. When the character transitioned from print to the big screen he became not only a big mouth but also dirty mouthed as well..
The character’s popularity has seen him featured in numerous other media outlets. In the 2004 series “Cable & Deadpool,” he refers to his own scarred appearance as “Ryan Renolds [deliberately misspelled] crossed with a Shar Pe.i.” presciently envision a connection between the actor and the character. Reynolds, himself, developed an interest in portraying the character when reading this comic, which has ultimately been realized in the X-Men film series. That includes 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and 2016’s “Deadpool” along with its sequels, 2018’s “Deadpool 2” and now, “Deadpool & Wolverine.” The latter includes a cornucopia of actors: Blake Lively, Matthew McConaughey, Paul Mullin, Nathan Fillion, Peggy Inez Reynolds, and Olin Reynolds. They all portray alternate versions of Deadpool from the multiverse.
According to Wikipedia, the story starts something like this: In 2018, Wade Wilson (Deadpool) uses a time-traveling device to go from his timeline, Earth-10005, to Earth-616 — the “Sacred Timeline.” There he meets Happy Hogan and asks to join the Avengers. He is rejected.
Six years later, Wade has retired from being a masked mercenary and is working as a used-car salesman with friend Peter Wisdom after breaking up with girlfriend, Vanessa Carlysle. During his birthday party, the Time Variance Authority (TVA) captures Wade and brings him to Mr. Paradox, who offers him a place on Earth-616. However, Paradox also reveals that Wade’s timeline is deteriorating as a result of the death of its stabilizing “anchor being” — Logan (Wolverine).
Paradox details his plans to use the “Time Ripper,” a device developed to mercy-kill timelines and to prematurely destroy Wade’s timeline. Wade steals Paradox’s TemPad to escape and dig up Logan’s grave. When he fails to resurrect that Logan, Wade uses the TemPad to travel the multiverse and find a variant of Logan to save his timeline. And so, this convoluted time twister takes off and gets even weirder and more convoluted.
Given how confusing the narrative is with all of its convoluted twists, I flashed on “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — the previous multi-verse, time bending epic but one done far more modestly.
That’s all well and good. The movie is fun for its bombast and faster-than-light action sequences. But the story arc is such a jumbled mess of subplots, characters and of various powers that I needed a chart to make sense of it all. After attempts to make the MCU somehow fit into a reality of sorts, this totally surreal and absurd mega-Marvel film feature seemed to be the logical next step to inject life into a well-worn series of films.
All of this has happened since Disney has acquired 20th Century Fox and its Marvel-based characters in the X-Men series and its related spin-offs. That allowed Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to join in this adventure. Jackman has successfully fashioned his character — with all his powers and complicated storylines — into a plausible person. There’s an investment Jackman makes in his character that lends it credibility beyond any script. Reynolds gets off on portraying his over-the-top being that, when he pushes the envelope, sometimes he does so to the point of aching annoyance.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that Reynold’s character’s development led to this film, which now has spawned such great collectibles as a popcorn bucket with a Wolverine head attached. But I’m not sure its mega-blockbuster status this season competes with “Oppenheimer,” last summer’s intellectually substantial blockbuster. The film is fun and poses some intellectually engaging puzzles — but nothing of the import Nolan lent to his biggie.
As for weird mind-bending and time-traveling storytelling, it doesn’t compare with “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Both offer twisting turns, but something less bombastic is in play with the Oscar winner. But for having the ambition of a superhero, director Shawn Levy made a heroic effort and it at least paid off at the box office while being R-rated.
Still, thanks to this one, I was forced to rethink what a comic book movie should be. So, for that alone it did its job. But what’s next after all this?!