Deadpool & Wolverine — The Soullessness of Immortality, In-Jokes and Multiverses
Monday is about movies and sometimes TV. Today, A ‘review’ of the new Marvel that offers little to marvel over, because, you know, same-same…
When I was 6 years old, I told the kids at school that I could kick my soccer ball up to the moon. It was the winning note, I thought, in a mild argument around who had the biggest kick. Some jerk in my class wagged back disproving my theory by pointing out that I still had my soccer ball under my arm, so how (on earth) did I kick it all the way up there? And also, if I even did, how did I get it back?
Just as he thought he’d scored a very special goal, I calmly pointed out that my dad was as astronaut, and was able to simply ‘go get it’. He’d fire up his rocket and head straight to the moon whenever I asked.
Some kids laughed. Some kids winced. But it was truly game over. End of that particular TED Talk.
I’ve never thought too much about that exchange — despite it staying with me. When I was the parent of a 6yo, I’d overhear bits of similarly nonsense bravado and braggadocio in the playground during drop off, or at sugar-rush birthday parties.
We all know of such foolishnesses — just as, when adults, we continue to hear them. A mate of a mate is a legend because he was the one who had a drink with Dave Grohl and nearly got his band on the bill with the Foo Fighters…except it never happened. The work colleague with those stories that just never check out but everyone lets them say them anyway, is powerless to stop them, and anyway, why bother, right?
Last week I went to see Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s the third Deadpool film, the 10th Wolverine movie, the 267th Marvel film, and the start of phase 5, chapter 2, page 167, sub-clause 8. It is also the continuation of my soccer ball on the moon story, the local band that nearly opened for Dave Grohl’s stadium monoliths, and every single water-cooler conversation you’ve slowly inched away from without actually shouting your obvious disbelief.
Oh, to be clear, I enjoyed the movie almost immensely. Whilst it was happening. It was a bit like a game of ten-pin bowling. In that I knew what I was getting myself in for, I gave it a go, and left feeling unsurprised, time had been correctly killed, and everyone involved was none the wiser, nor entirely sure about what had actually happened. Also just glad it was finally over.
I’ve seen a few X-Men films, but nowhere near all of them. I’m not completely in on the Marvel Cinematic Universe conversation, I make fair weather fans look like doyens. If I didn’t have a 12yo who, a few years back, went Avengers crazy for a bit (as seems fair) I wouldn’t have even put a toe in, much less pretended to enthusiastically call back to the shore that the water was warm. But I am also, by virtue of being a pop-culture enthusiast with a well-clipped season-ticket to the internet, somewhat nerd-passing. I am, like the embarrassed loner that put the right key in the wrong door and ended up having to soon after toss that key right down there in the bowl, capable of just holding my own.
So I went to Deadpool & Wolverine. I went because my 12yo will hope to subvert the draconian age-limit nonsense of making it apparently a film for 16+ only, as soon as the internet at home allows. But only with my blessing. I went because I had a free ticket. 100%. I went because I wanted to see this shithouse go up in flames. And, perhaps most crucially, I went because when you are a part-time newsletter writer with the side-gig of a full-time job (or have I got that around the wrong way?) who also has a family and twice as many dogs as used to be the case, the chance — the mere chance — to sneak away for a bit, and stop being so terminally online, is a frigging blessing. It is my trip to the day spa. Even if it’s at night.
So that’s what got me to the dance.
And, look, I should declare, when I saw Deadpool (2016) on a flight, with limited movie-watching options, I almost wanted to jump out the window. I do like Ryan Reynolds, I’m not immune to his charm. But I just took an instant knee against whatever the fuck Deadpool is or was. Please and no thank you. But, weirdly, I quite liked Deadpool 2 (2018). Still stupid, of course, but the action was better, the explosions were bigger, and as a Take Your Brain Off For A Bit experiment, I just felt it was more successful. More calming somehow, even in all that movie-screen chaos.
It’s been a long wait for what is effectively Deadpool 3. In nerd rotations, there has been such a delay that many Deadpool fans have bought and sold their entire collection of Funko Vinyl Pop figures twice over, but it was a bargain because they bought when the price was high and sold when the value was low and then bought them back at half-price and then sold them for whatever offer would be made on TradeMe. And met three new online friends IRL from Reddit in the process!
The Deadpool character can still get away with using phrases like “the gays” and it’s just so irreverent. The Deadpool character is so meta within the multiverse that he can make fun of the company that used to distribute the films as well as the one that now currently does, you see. He can also say the most outlandish things without fear of being cancelled, because it’s all just silliness and a big joke. So take your woke back up the mountain, or whatever.
In this Deadpool film — featuring an hour and a half-long cameo by Hugh Jackman as the bones and gathered skin-stretch of Wolverine — we open with a typical Reynolds delivery of a typical Deadpool joke. He holds a skeleton and says there are 206 bones in it. A fact every school kid learns. He then does one of his straight-to-camera, fourth-wall severely-broken bits, and adds, “207 if I’m watching Gilmour Girls!”
In the cinema, there wasn’t even a titter. Though the man next to me was all over his Twitter. So much so, that “X”-man was possibly copying and pasting the jokes straight for his audience of three. But in the rest of the cinema people just sat on their hands, basically. And watched. The popcorn wasn’t going to eat itself.
Deadpool in 2024 felt a bit like when you catch up with your Boomer Uncle from the Melbourne suburbs who still uses words like “chinks”. And, you guessed it, clearly does not have any armour.
Filial obligation requires you to keep that uncle’s name in your phone. And like Deadpool sequels, the gap in your contact widens with time. The weariness in your chuckle seeps through more and more. The ability to be in the conversation and miles away at the same time matches your skill for enjoying a film because it is two hours neither at home nor at work and with your phone profoundly off as much as it is any clever attempt to be meta and in-joke-y and “fan-servicing”.
What the actual fuck is this term, “fan-servicing”. We already have media organisations killing off opinion writing and reviews left, right, and now even in the very centre. But now we need a term to justify sloppy art, or laziness, or clod-hoofed stampeding in the vague direction of movie-making, the protectionism of “fan-servicing” as a signpost for New Members Welcome As Long As You’re Already Old Members. I mean, thank god Taylor Swift mentioned this little indie film or clueless hacks like me might have still be at home trying to kick our soccer balls just a little bit higher, right?
Deadpool made a heap of jokes about Disney and 20th Century Fox and it all felt very Family Guy but with real people — even if dressed in tired kink attire.
Wolverine grunted and was surly and drunk, because that’s cool. And he was just this bastion of broken-but-still-strong masculinity. Also cool? And the whole script was written by just five people! But was it written by them, or was it compiled from their separate prompt-engineering of ChatGPT? Script to Deadpool & Wolverine loaded and ready in five minutes. Just five years, 11 months, three weeks, six days, 11 hours and 55 minutes of “business negotiations” and then everyone can see and feel and hear the magic!
Deadpool & Wolverine introduces loads of new characters, and refreshes plenty of old ones, there are cameos galore, even from characters dating back to the late 90s/early 00s of the ‘forgotten’ Marvel failures, and adjacent worlds. And this isn’t even lazy, or tired, or disconnected, or desperate. It is only and ever FAN-SERVICING. It is always and forever IN-JOKING. And it contains a multitude of meta. So there joe. It doesn’t matter that in-jokes are soulless, and constantly referencing time-jumps and multiple universes is a bit like when you’d just switch pick-a-path endings in your junior reader, you know to keep the fucking dream alive man!
And if you also thought, just then, that fan-servicing essentially means the movie is giving favoured audience members a cinematic tug, you are most likely correct and deserve at the least a free, erm, ice-cream.
My other issue with this film, this franchise, this world, or is it these worlds, is this stupid dependence on invincible, un-killable characters. Deadpool can’t die, doesn’t die, won’t die, so even when he meets Cassandra Nova (played quite brilliantly by Emma Corrin here, it must be said) the threat isn’t really a threat. Cassie has all this power right there in the fingertips, can stick hands into minds, can unleash storms of fire and electricity with the flick of a wrist. Seems all-powerful actually. Dark god-like. But what’s another burn mark to a scarred and masked man? Boring eh. And I say this with the full awareness that a cursory link through any of my back-pages shows I’m a fan in full service to the absurdities of horror films and their multiple sequels, reboots and unexplained absences or abrupt left-turns.
But come on.
Wolfie and Deadpy just keep bouncing back.
Tis but a scratch.
So I think we know the ending, even though I’ve barely let rip with a spoiler, hardly the sniff of any give-aways here.
CODA: The jokes do land, eventually. A little bit. There was a time or two where I laughed a little chuckle, and didn’t even feel bad doing so. But that’s because you’ve got a great cast, and some deft comic timing from some of them. It wasn’t because Taylor told me to.
