Deadpool & Wolverine review: Mixed bag that highlights best and worst of Marvel machine

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman's chemistry and dedication stop an over-wrought plot from derailing their entry into the MCU

Deadpool & Wolverine marks the two legacy characters' long-awaited entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Photo: 20th Century Studios / Marvel Studios

There are a lot of masks in Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine. The film’s star, Ryan Reynolds, wears two at all times while playing the titular character – one the standard superhero sort, and below that, the prosthetic face of a burns victim.

His masks serve an important function in his performance, he says. Once he’s able to hide behind something, he can truly be honest.

“I never feel freer than when I'm under that mask,” Reynolds said at a recent press conference. “I really don’t take it for granted.”

The film, the third in the Deadpool series, functions similarly. On its face, it’s a cynical cash grab – a fan-service team-up between two of the superhero world’s biggest legacy draws, together again, decades after their prime, to pull at our nostalgia strings and breathe some life back into a winded genre.

Pull off that mask, though, and you’ll find something more sincere. From the opening frame of the film, Reynolds-Deadpool (there’s very little distinction between the two, even within the story) begins narrating to us exactly what we already know – referring to the money at stake for both him and the studio, how little any of this matters in either the short or long terms, and how excited he is to be there nonetheless.

The sincerity is a mask too, of course. Deadpool’s schtick is that he tells it like it is, and because he earns our trust, we end up forgiving a lot along the way.

When there’s a bad scene, he’ll turn to the camera and tell us how boring it was. When something is cheap, lazy, or offensive, he’ll say it before we have the chance to think it ourselves, rendering it inert.

Deadpool (Reynolds?) is a con man, but he tells us he’s conning us, so we feel immune – unaware that’s part of the con.

It would feel toxic if we were being conned into anything beyond more mid-tier Ryan Reynolds movies, but we’re not, so it’s not worth stressing over.

To play Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds wears two masks throughout the film, which he feels allow him to approach it honestly. Photo: 20th Century Studios / Marvel Studios

Watching Deadpool & Wolverine play out, the layers of sincerity and cynicism get exhausting to claw your way through. In the end, which one you land on depends on when you decide to stop scratching.

For me, the most important question to land on is this: Did anyone involved in this really, truly care? Here, the answer is clearly yes, and that’s enough to save this laboured mess on its own.

Does Reynolds? He'd never let us in deep enough to know for sure, but you can certainly tell Hugh Jackman does.

We’ve been watching him play Wolverine for 24 years now, and part of what has made him so beloved in the role has been his commitment through every high and low, and how much he yearned for the character to reach his potential.

He finally accomplished that in 2017’s Logan, a perfect send-off to the character and a highwater mark for the genre overall.

And even though he achieved his dream and promised never to return, he couldn’t resist the chance to team up with his friend Reynolds and bring to life an unexplored side to the character, leaning into the flaws and guffaws, not to mention the madcap violence.

I’ll spare you a lot of plot recapping, but the real story of the film is this: Deadpool and Wolverine are losers in desperate need of redemption. Each have failed their world and their loved ones, and they’ll need each other to make it right.

Through the powers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they get pulled into the world in between worlds, where all the losers that no one wants ended up – including many discarded characters from superhero films of years past.

Hugh Jackman is the film's unquestionable highlight, returning to the character of Wolverine after he retired the character in 2017. Photo: 20th Century Studios / Marvel Studios

The surprise characters are best left a surprise, but they need redemption too. Critics derided them, fans mocked them, studios rejected them.

Now’s their chance to be remembered for something good, before Disney, the owner of Marvel, banishes them to the vault once and for all.

All of this chugs along like a late-season Family Guy episode, with rapid-fire jokes, sight gags and over-the-top Three Stooges-esque violence that often veers into misplaced affection.

It adds up to a mostly agreeable watch full of sophomoric yet kindhearted humour that barely congeals into anything of substance, but never needs to – although you’ll probably get antsy during a finale that never quite comes together.

Jackman has said that he wanted this to be a throwback to 1980s buddy comedies such as 48 Hours, Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Midnight Run.

That was the right instinct, as these two have palpable chemistry throughout. I just wish they could have done a more straightforward version of that instead.

What weighs the film down, ironically, was one of its biggest initial draws – not just that these two would team up, but that they would finally be entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe, after years of being relegated to the world of 20th Century Fox, before Disney bought the studio, like it had once bought Marvel, to make the union possible.

Watching this with the fate of Marvel in mind, which has been in dire straits since the studio started leaning into multiversal storytelling after Avengers: Endgame in 2019, it’s hard to be too optimistic.

After all, it’s the Marvel-ness that feels the emptiest, as it overlays the Loki Disney+ series from start to finish which feels more convenient than creative, teases future team-ups with Avengers characters as pure fan service, and makes constant joking-yet-serious reassurances that this story, or any other, will never reach a meaningful conclusion.

I was left without any excitement for what could yet be. Rather, for the first time, I got genuinely nostalgic for what we had at the peak era of trashy superhero films in the mid 2000s, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2008.

The film ends up being an ode to the 20th Century Fox era of superhero films, which Marvel can still learn lessons from. Photo: 20th Century Studios / Marvel Studios

Deadpool & Wolverine has a sincere love for that time too, even if it can’t display that affection transcendently.

That’s thanks to the amiable semi-competence of journeyman director Shawn Levy, who can draw a clear emotional through line even if he can’t make you really feel it, or stage an action sequence you’ll remember or maintain a consistent visual language throughout.

Perhaps this is the best way to honour an era of movies that had the same failings. They too, were flawed but sincere. It was bad art that you could let yourself love.

The layered masks of cynicism hadn’t taken over. There was an innocence then, before the machine became too big to fail.

This film reminds us of the Marvel machine, and as often as it feels like a result of it, it smartly never bends the knee to it fully. No one recruits them to the Avengers by the end. It’s a throwback to how things were, and a sign of how things could be.

The machine is what will kill superhero films, if we let it. Teasing the future will no longer sell the present. Deadpool & Wolverine is a call to let things matter on their own again, and to peel a few more of these cynical masks off in the process.

Deadpool & Wolverine is in cinemas now across the Middle East