Deadpool & Wolverine Review

This is a film about the studio that made it, which is either the joke or the problem depending entirely on your patience. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are genuinely great together, two versions of the same defensive man forced into a confined space, and the extended brawl inside a minivan is the funniest sustained piece of action comedy in the run. Jackman finally plays the version of the character the readers always wanted, yellow cowl included, and finds an actual wound underneath it: a man who failed everyone he was meant to protect.

Levy stages violence with a clarity the earlier Deadpool films never had, and the opening skeleton fight set to a boy band track is a perfect statement of intent. The problem is dependence. Whole stretches are cameos and eulogies for abandoned film series, funny once and completely inert on a rewatch, and the emotional climax asks you to care about corporate intellectual property rescued from oblivion. Emma Corrin's villain is thin. It is a great hang and a hollow film, and it seems to know both things about itself.