Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
There has been massive hype around this movie and media coverage has been crazy. I have seen everything from people making life-size cakes to a movie tie-ins with a Stray Kids music video. This doesn't even count all of the products that have been popping up everywhere. With all of the hype could this movie live up to it?...
For me it did. For Mommy Geek no. She was actually super disappointed and thought that this movie destroyed the image of the characters. This perspective is easy to have if you don't understand all of the complexities around not the movies, but larger Marvel history. Many times in the movie there are references to Fox vs. Disney. Understanding the complexity around how Disney took over from Fox and how they are trying to undo the damage that Fox did is key to understanding a lot of this movie. One thing that Fox had done was kill off Wolverine in a way that was a total let down. Yes, he did for a good cause, but the way they did it just did not fit into his healing abilities and destroyed the possibility for future use of the character. Having Deadpool bring back a Logan to his timeline allows for a continuation of a much beloved character. In the movie it is even joked about Hugh doing the part until he is 90 due to Disney and I'm all for it. There were also references to the other movies and Marvel TV shows. Things got even more complex when you start to dig into all of the cameos.
Spoilers coming up! One of the major cameos was Chris Evans. I think I made the same mistake as most when I thought that he was Captain America, but he was actually reprising his character of Johnny from the Fantastic Four. (Also make sure you stay for the very end of the credits because there is an end scene after the blooper reel/memory reel.) Many of the cameos I liked. They brought back Wesley Snipes as Blade, but one of the lines they made a mistake. They were talking about how there were several different versions of the different characters, but they said there was only one Blade as in Wesley Snipes. I know that everyone tries to forget the Blade TV show, but it did happen and for that one Sticky Fingaz played Blade. This was either done on purpose as a slight to the TV show or the writers didn't know about it. The one cameo that actually bugged the crap out of me was Gambit. They brought in Channing Tatum in to do the role which was a big mistake. They should have brought back Taylor Kitsch. He did a great job with the role and it would have made more sense since he had already been in a Wolverine movie. Channing Tatum's version was annoying.
Then you have the movie itself. I was hoping to see what would happen when you threw two characters that are basically immortal and have attitude issues into a ring and the movie did deliver. At one point they were fighting for a whole night. The movie was super bloody and violent as you would expect and filled with what seemed even more bad language then the previous Deadpool movies. I did find it odd to see as many kids as I did in the theater, and I mean young kinds that were under 13 in appearance. The extremes that this movie pushed things actually left me wondering why it didn't have an NC-17 rating. Many times the violence was funny, like early in the movie when Deadpool uses the dead Logan's body to fight off time cops. Then there was when Johnny goes splat....I'm all for kids seeing a little violence since it is a part of our lives, but the extremes that the film went to was not for kids. The most I can say on this aspect is that the special effects were good and challenged the imagination of what damage could be done to a body.
There were also a few things that seemed out of place. One that felt odd to me was how badly Deadpool's rejection by the Avengers and the X-Men impacted him enough to send him into a depression and become a car salesmen. I felt that they could have come up with something a little stronger to start out the movie. This didn't fit into the character of Deadpool that the previous movies had built. Also when they had the birthday party for Wade there was also one character in the room that I had no idea who he was supposed to be. It turns out that the character was supposed to be Shatterstar, but there should have been more to his presence and there was no real interaction with him in the scenes he appears whereas Deadpool interacts with the other party guests. Him being there was just weird and awkward.
Then there was all of the different Deadpools. I wish they would have played around with them a bit more in a more complex way with longer interactions. Even 5 more minutes of more one on one time with the different ones would have been cool. Like seeing more of Babypool could have been funny. Also the movie killing Cassandra Nova seemed like they got rid of a villain a little too early. In the X-Men she was a thorn in their side for awhile and they could have made more use of her.
Overall I did like the movie, for adults. There were several small things that they could have done better and they should have made it more for general audiences instead of depending on playing off of inside knowledge which many watchers would not get. 4 stars out of 5 or a B.
Pictures From the Theater:
Picture 1 From: "Deadpool & Wolverine" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6263850/
Comments
Post a Comment