Deadpool & Wolverine is a desperate Hail Mary

Though we’ve all poked fun at 20th Century Fox’s old X-Men films for the dubious wigs and middling stories that became rules rather than exceptions, the franchise played a significant role in defining the modern comic book movie genre. Without the live-action, leather-clad mutants of the early aughts and their box office success, Marvel Studios might not exist as we know it today. And for years, the ironic thing about the MCU as a project was how complicated rights issues kept Disney from being able to use some of Marvel’s most iconic IP.

Having access to the X-Men didn’t guarantee that many of the Marvel-branded cape features Fox released through the early aughts were particularly good. But it allowed the studio to take chances on Deadpool and Logan, two films whose freshness felt, at least in part, rooted in their being created outside of the Disney machine. Marvel’s desire for that kind of novelty is self-evident in director Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine — the studio’s first R-rated film and major X-Men vehicle. But for all of its big-ticket fan service and willingness to poke fun at how much of a drag the MCU’s become, Deadpool & Wolverine feels like a sign that the days of genuinely exciting Marvel movies might just be behind us.

As a fourth wall-breaking character familiar with the haphazard way he made it to the big screen, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) has always been aware of the MCU’s existence and the legal reasons he couldn’t be a part of it. Much like Deadpool & Wolverine’s target audience, though, Wade keeps up with the industry trades, and news of Disney’s Fox acquisition has left him thinking differently about himself as the film first opens.

It’s not exactly that Wade’s unhappy in his quiet, post-Deadpool 2 life working as a car salesman with Peter (Rob Delaney), living with Blind Al (Leslie Uggams). He’s comfortable occasionally hanging out with the X-Men’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (Stefan Kapičić), the same way he’s cool just being friends with his ex-fiancee Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). It’s just that now that Wade knows he’s in play, he can’t help but feel like he could be doing more with himself if Kevin Feige let him become an Avenger like Captain America or Thor.

Deadpool & Wolverine assumes you’re so invested in the MCU that simply mentioning Loki’s Time Variance Authority is enough to make the new film’s fiddly ties to the Disney Plus show make sense. But for more casual viewers — those who only check in for Marvel’s bigger events — the connections will be much less clear. The way the movie hurriedly introduces TVA agent Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) just minutes into its first act to explain the importance of one universe’s Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) feels likely to muddle what’s going on, rather than clarify how Deadpool & Wolverine is supposed to fit into the larger picture.

Though Fox’s Deadpool movies were anything but grounded, there was a cohesion that made it easy to understand how characters got from point A to point B and what motivated them to do the things they did. Here, Wade spends quite a bit of time mugging to the camera about how excited he is to finally be in Disneyland cursing up a storm like an overeager teen new to the art of profanity. But the sheer number of dick jokes and digs at Marvel’s flops play like an ineffective distraction from how little story there is to latch onto as Wade dives into the multiverse in search of a Wolverine variant suitable to serve as the “anchor being” a dying reality needs to survive.

Very few of Deadpool & Wolverine’s small gags are funny enough to elicit laughter, but the movie feels like it’s onto something promising with its metatextual send-up of how prominent a part of the X-Men Wolverine became as a result of Fox’s films. Logan-centric movies like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine were part of what turned the franchise into an unintentional joke and made it surprising that Deadpool wound up working so well. But as accurate as Wade’s assessments of Fox’s missteps are, they ring somewhat hollow coming from a Feige-produced project given how Marvel Studios built the MCU with a very similar approach that positioned characters like Captain America and Iron Man as its load-bearing centerpieces.

Deadpool & Wolverine stops short of blaming Fox’s downfall on the popularity of Jackman’s Wolverine. But it’s an idea that’s baked into the essence of the blue and yellow-clad Logan variant who — relatably — spends most of the film seething about wanting to be left alone. And while the movie winds up being unexpectedly lacking in the way of big action set pieces, it gives Jackman just enough space to demonstrate emotionally why his older performances as Logan made it seem like there might never be a role quite so perfectly cast.

Something similar can be said for Reynolds whose latest outing as Wade is… annoying, but pitch-perfect for the character as he reckons with the reality of not exactly being the gravitational center of his own film. But whereas Jackman (the duo’s straight man) is well positioned to shine as the film moves between its comedic and dramatic modes, those tonal shifts often leave Reynolds feeling somewhat one note. It’s as if all Marvel’s really comfortable letting Deadpool do is point out something that’s just happened onscreen and tell you why it’s hilarious.

Similarly disappointing is how, despite all the screen presence Emma Corrin commands as classic X-Men villain Cassandra Nova with her nauseating brand of telepathy, she’s yet another instance of Marvel squandering a promising character in a film that doesn’t seem to know what to do with its antagonist beyond making her seem like someone with a far more interesting story to tell. 

Deadpool & Wolverine feels like it’s starting to find itself right when its big cameos begin showing up as the film’s way of paying homage to all of the Fox projects that paved the way for it to eventually exist. It’s legitimately funny to imagine the fate of the universe being left up to Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Laura (Dafne Keen), Deadpool, and Wolverine of all people. But as was the case with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, every single one of Deadpool & Wolverine’s guest appearances feels engineered to keep viewers from thinking too long about the existential crisis Marvel is trying to laugh its way through.

Despite its insistence that it’s the long-awaited cavalry, Deadpool & Wolverine seems to understand that it could never hope to single-handedly get the MCU back on track. But with Marvel knowing that it has backed itself into something of a corner, the studio is clearly banking on nostalgia and hype to tide its stand over — all while it continues to find a more sustainable long-term path forward.

Deadpool & Wolverine also stars Karan Soni, Shioli Kutsuna, Wunmi Mosaku, and Lewis Tan. The movie hits theaters on July 26th.

Correction, July 23rd: An earlier version of this article misstated that Fox’s first X-Men movie released in the late 90s rather than the early aughts.