One of the biggest breakout hits of Summer 2024 is Deadpool & Wolverine.
It comes as no surprise. The first viewing of the very first movie trailer had both Deadpool fans and Wolverine fans salivating. Both characters were superstar superheroes in their own right. Putting them together was the cinematic equivalent of hydrogen fusion. Think of it as this summer’s Oppenheimer.
Maybe there was a brief millisecond of doubt. Pairings like this have a long history in the movie industry.
I’m thinking of Frankenstein versus Dracula, Godzilla versus King Kong, Freddy versus Jason, you name it.
Usually the combining of once popular, well-loved characters is a last-ditch attempt to salvage their waning careers—one last shot at squeezing a few dollars out of loyal fans at the box office. I was skeptical, for maybe a second and a half.
There was no way that Deadpool or Wolverine fit this description. Both had a solid fan base. They were wildly popular. The idea of uniting them was pure genius. Even the actors (Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman) were bubbling with excitement about the prospect of their characters appearing in the same film together.
There was of course the slight detail that Wolverine had died on screen in a previous film. But as we all know the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a multi-verse with infinite possibilities. While other recent Marvel movies have struggled to deal with this mind-bending concept, the writers of Deadpool & Wolverine quickly seized upon it to fix the problem.
Make no mistake, Wolverine is definitely dead in the opening sequence of the movie. We see Deadpool digging up his rotting corpse in a creepy cemetery. Abuse of a corpse is a good description of what follows, but the scene plays as edgy, irreverent, slightly disgusting comedy. Face it, dead people can be funny. Recall Weekend at Bernie’s (1989).
The scene becomes supercharged when Deadpool is attacked by a small army of warriors who emerge from Doctor Strange-type portals and engage in bloody, gory, hand-to-hand combat. It’s ultra-violent but at the same time ultra funny, if you don’t pass out at the sight of blood and guts. There are plenty of both.
All of this over-the-top violence and grotesque humor is precisely what audiences love about Deadpool.
In a world of straight-up superheroes, he was a renegade, foulmouthed badass with an axe to grind. In a word, he was a breath of fresh air at a moment when superhero movies were becoming mundane and predictable. He was the anti-superhero-- possibly the descendant of characters like Clint Eastwood’s "Man With No Name" in the Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. He was the bad guy that you rooted for.
Deadpool’s wise-cracking, cockiness and attitude could only be matched by Wolverine who seemed a not-too-distant cousin in terms of temperament and wiring. They were the perfect match, in so many ways.
Of course, every great movie like this needs a good villain, in this case, Cassandra Nova, played by Emma Corrin. She is deliciously evil and totally frightening.
To its credit, Deadpool & Wolverine gets it exactly right. The script is perfection. The direction, performances, stunts, special effects, photography and editing are all spot on.
The music track meshes like the precision gears of a Swiss timepiece. It is exhilarating and immensely entertaining.
Bear in mind that it is an R-rated movie with all the things that earn a movie an R-rating. It pulls out the stops and serves up everything that fans of Deadpool and Wolverine prayed to see.
No spoilers here. There are some classic lines, hilarious jokes and genuinely surprising cameo appearances. Deadpool & Wolverine is the comedy buddy flick of 2024. It’s that rare movie that lives up to all the hype, and then some.
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