‘Deadpool & Wolverine’: Abbott & Costello of the Multiverse

R | 2h 8m | Action, Comedy, Comic Book | July 26, 2024
It’s Deadpool, of course (Ryan Reynolds). He’s down in a grave, digging up the remains of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Which really means—all that’s left of Wolverine from the Fox Marvel Universe.
And Wolverine’s quite dead. Deadpool hangs out and chats with Wolverine’s dug-up adamantium metal skeleton (Bugs Bunny would definitely do this) running his typical ADHD-on-steroids, bratty-but-charming mouth, with his child-like ability to hold endless conversations with himself.
And then, paramilitary agents of the TVA (“Time Variance Authority”) come for him. Using pieces of indestructible Wolverine bones, Deadpool proceeds to whack them all into oblivion. The best part of this weaponry-improv is when he uses a tibia and fibula (the thigh bone is connected the shin bone) as a pair of Wolverine leg-nunchucks. That’s good stuff.
We then flashback to all the ways Deadpool’s life had gone down the toilet. He’d hung up his red-black super-antihero suit for good and was selling secondhand cars. His awesome girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) moved out. Deadpool was depressed. But he’s still got few superhero friends who throw him a little birthday party.
When the TVA first came knocking (prior to sending the field agents after him) they invited him to meet Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfayden). Paradox is a TVA bureau chief—basically a middle-management efficiency expert (kind of like a movie studio accountant).
But instead of behaving, the ever-rebellious Deadpool goes hunting for another Wolverine; one from a different dimension. Why? Because Wolverine was the so-called anchor to the Deadpool-and-X-Men universe, and Wolverine’s death in “Logan” resulted in the end of the timeline. So Deadpool wants to find a new anchor to replace the old Logan and save his universe. But this is not how the TVA prefers to do things. Got all that?
Deadpool soon tracks down in a bar in some other godforsaken universe, “The Worst Logan” of all the Logans. After an epic battle of Wolverine claws versus Deadpool katana swords, they both end up in ‘The Void” where discarded superheroes (such as 2005’s Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner) reside, along with an Ozymandius-like statue of the 20th Century Fox logo protruding from the sand. Very clever.
Also residing in The Void is Channing Tatum, playing Gambit, while wearing the silliest, shiny, purple costume (not to mention a rubber headband and bouffant hairdo) ever seen in the multiverse. He also speaks with an amazingly garbled French accent, but with the cool panache that only someone with Tatum’s superhero comedic chops could pull off. Maybe Ryan Reynolds could pull it off too. Robert Downey, Jr. definitely could.
Nova’s grand vision is of course some multiverse-ending blah-blah-blah, but we all know nobody cares—the Deadpool fan club is only here for the rampant scatological blasphemy and Ryan Reynolds’ rare hetero ability to consistently and hilariously play hopscotch with homoerotic humor.
The showbiz and entertainment insider jokes are nonstop: Reynolds and Jackman make endless fun of themselves, Jackman’s Broadway song-and-dance-man career is skewered, and both parties’ early, embarrassing movies are trotted out.
Deadpool’s first juvenile but R-rated action-comedy was a massive hit. The sequel, not so much. One can’t call “Deadpool & Wolverine” a great movie, but it is a real summer blockbuster; it’s got that kind of energy and fun. It’s an affectionate and immensely silly—but also cartoon gore-splattered—commentary on the whole never-ending comic book world.
It provides the fan club with an opportunity to laugh at it and at themselves, while delighting at a staggering abundance of Marvel comic book-nerd Easter eggs for diehard fans, such as the fact that this is the first movie where the original Wolverine costume is featured.
The cosmology, ontology, and entelechy of all that is highly suspect. It’s been described elsewhere that multi-universes mean, rather, that as you stand there looking up at Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and Mars orbiting the sun through your telescope, you’re looking at much larger versions of the atomic particles orbiting the nuclei, that make up the next, larger layer of the cosmos. So the you’s in that next-up bigger universe are exactly the same as you down here. “As above, so below.”
The same goes for the you’s in the microscopic universes below this one. Which means that if you’re, say, an American electrician in this dimension, there are no Chinese astrophysicist or French drag-queen versions of yourself in other dimensions (a drag queen Deadpool shows up here). Therefore, the multiverse as described by the MCU is attempting to be about “diversity.”
While certain ancient traditions agree with the idea of endless multiple universes, it has more to do with spiritual reality than with deviant variations. Is all this intentionally misleading? Hollywood is not stupid. Hollywood has been to known to have agendas. Food for thought.
Admittedly that all sounds pretty virtue-signal-y. *Shrug* What are ya gonna do? We’re all currently headed to hell in a hand-basket anyway. Maybe it’s Ryan Reynold’s and director Shawn Levy’s fault. They’re both, after all—Canadians.