There are moments in cinema when you feel like the movie was made just for you. And then there are moments when it feels like the movie was made by an AI that once read Reddit, watched 48 Hrs., and snorted a line of Funko Pops. Deadpool & Wolverine is the latter. A film that proves even fanboy dreams, if left unsupervised long enough, can become overcooked fever hallucinations served with a wink and a broken fourth wall. Yes, Hugh Jackman is back. Yes, Ryan Reynolds is still Deadpool. And yes, I’m exhausted.
This film began like most toxic relationships do: with regret. Hugh Jackman famously buried the Wolverine claws after Logan (2017), a film so emotionally effective it made grown men weep and briefly consider taking up journaling. But then came Deadpool (2016)—a foul-mouthed love letter to chaos that had Jackman rethinking retirement faster than a boomer reading a crypto crash headline. He called Ryan Reynolds with the urgency of a man who just remembered where he left his keys: “Let’s do it.” No agent. No script. Just vibes and midlife panic.
Kevin Feige, ever the babysitter of continuity, was reportedly hesitant. Logan was sacred, after all. A cinematic tombstone not to be desecrated. But once Hugh Jackman agreed to wear the long-coveted yellow spandex—Feige’s one condition, like some kind of comic book genie—the doors blew open. What followed was a movie less like a resurrection and more like an exhumation, reanimating fan-favorite corpses for one last cash-grabbing, continuity-busting hurrah.
Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s chemistry is real, yes, but so is carbon monoxide—and that doesn’t mean you want to be trapped in a room with it for two hours. They’re the heart of this film, but like most hearts, theirs suffers from overexertion and palpitations. Reynolds is still charming, but his endless quips feel like they were written during a Red Bull bender. Jackman, ever the professional, growls and slashes through a script that asks him to be both grumpy old man and YouTube reaction video.
The rest of the cast reads like a Comic-Con fever dream filtered through studio notes. Matthew Macfadyen is a TVA agent who looks like he wandered in from an Office Space sequel. Emma Corrin plays Cassandra Nova like she’s auditioning to be the weirdest substitute teacher at Hogwarts. And as for cameos? Well, if you ever wanted to see a CGI orgy of dead X-Men actors blink across screen like ghosts in a Marvel-themed Poltergeist, this is your moment. Everyone is here except your sense of
Plot-wise, the film is basically Planes, Trains & Automobiles if the planes were metaphorical, the trains were jokes, and the automobiles were made of exposition. Deadpool and Wolverine hop timelines, bicker, reference movies better than this one, and somewhere along the way try to stop Cassandra Nova from doing… something. The plot is so thin it could get a scholarship to Weight Watchers.
Critics tried. They squinted through the meta fog, parsed the cameos, and searched for a heartbeat beneath the snark. Some declared it a brilliant deconstruction of superhero tropes. Others, correctly, likened it to an in-joke that overstayed its welcome and broke a lamp. Even fans seemed torn—half of them weeping tears of joy, the other half wondering when it turned into Ready Player One: With Claws.
Ryan Reynolds defended the film with the sincerity of a man pitching a third gin brand. “I just want people to walk out better than they walked in,” he said, as if the film were therapy or a foot massage. That’s admirable. But maybe we could’ve started by walking in with a story instead of a meme folder.
Despite the muddled reception, Deadpool & Wolverine stormed the box office like a toddler with a sugar high. It made money—of course it did. Nostalgia sells, even when it’s wrapped in recycled jokes and weaponized fan service. But as the dust settled, a strange feeling lingered: was that it?
In the end, Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t a movie so much as it is a reunion tour—complete with encore, confetti, and absolutely no concern for coherence. It’s fun, yes. Occasionally clever, yes. But mostly, it feels like a film so desperate to be adored that it forgot to be meaningful. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a dude showing up to your birthday party and making it all about his inside jokes. You might laugh, but deep down, you miss the sincerity.
Marvel needed a jolt. What they got was a joy buzzer.
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