Deadpool & Wolverine

It's funny. I watch everything. Everything. From Slow Cinema masterpieces like “A Ghost Story” and "Memoria" to every new Adam Sandler movie to all the random art and schlock in between.

Comic book movies, South Korean revenge stories, queer Western romances, science fiction slapstick comedies…all movies deserve a chance to me. I think judging a film specifically on its genre is a losing enterprise that keeps people from not only discovering gems they might never have found otherwise but also closes them off from new ideas and experiences.

Obviously, not everyone likes horror, musicals, or superhero movies, and that’s perfectly acceptable, but to dismiss an entire genre as disposable isn’t the way. Lately, there's a narrative being pushed by critics and some audiences that I don’t appreciate, especially when it comes to comic book movies- that the genre is aimed only at the lowest common denominator. People who watch superhero movies are either kids or adults suffering from arrested development.

I got the s*** kicked out of me growing up for being into comics. It was the least cool thing back then. It was still dorky as hell when the OG of superhero movies, “X-Men,” came out in 2000 and it wasn't much cooler when "Iron Man" was released eight years later.

People forget "Iron Man" was actually a risk when it came out. Marvel Studios was so desperate for cash by that point that the company had sold the rights to all their most popular characters, including Spider-Man, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and Daredevil. Iron Man was a B-list character at best when Kevin Feige and team launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was an underdog starring Robert Downey Jr., a massively underestimated actor who could barely get insured to make a movie at that time.

Sure, it’s hard not to be cynical toward Disney and Marvel and all that corporate synergy, but what Feige and Marvel have achieved with the MCU is actually singular in the history of motion pictures. And for fans of comics, serials, and long-form storytelling in general, the run from "Iron Man" to “Avengers: Endgame" is probably something I won’t see the likes of again in my lifetime.

Since “Endgame,” Marvel’s output hasn’t been as consistently great (“The Eternals,” “Quantumania” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” are a few low points), but with Deadpool, The X-Men and The Fantastic Four under the MCU umbrella for the first time, it seems like the rough patch might be over. In particular, the new release “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the first movie in the MCU with these characters, does something really beautiful with the idea of storytelling and billion-dollar franchises that I find genuinely moving and bracingly original.

MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW:

If you are sick of Ryan Reynolds and his fast-talking shtick, “Deadpool & Wolverine” won’t be a cure. But it has a central idea I find completely fascinating as a writer and someone that cares about the art of storytelling. Without getting into specifics, a large portion of the film takes place in a realm called The Void (which you’ve spent a little time in already if you watched the “Loki” series on Disney+). In that series, The Void was mostly populated by variants of Loki and random Easter Eggs that nerds like me poured over with a fine-toothed comb.

But in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” most of the people who live in The Void are characters from comic book movies that either flopped or were never made. Discovering who those characters are is part of the fun of the movie (especially if you’re well-versed in superhero movie trivia), and I won’t spoil that here. There’s something bittersweet and touching about the concept of a world full of heroes that either never were or have been long forgotten.

Movies are a business, obviously, and a big one. But “Deadpool & Wolverine” takes the meta knowledge of Hollywood and its flops and failures and re-writes some of its mistakes into an uncynical ode to the lasting power of stories and, most importantly, characters. Superheroes and villains, when done right and treated with intelligence and respect, contain the possibility of being this era’s mythology -- remembered long after we (and modern society in general) are long gone. Stories of good and evil never fade.

END SPOILERS

If this feels like way too much thinking to put into a “Deadpool” movie, you’re in luck because “Deadpool & Wolverine” is also filled to the brim with d*** jokes, sword fights, and a dog so ugly she’s beautiful. Hugh Jackman is a welcome addition as a different version of Wolverine that doesn’t undo any of the pathos of 2017’s “Logan.” There are plenty of jokes throughout the film that Jackman will be playing Wolverine until he’s 90, and I don’t hate the idea.

I don’t think superhero fatigue is a thing (especially since “Deadpool & Wolverine” has already made north of $800 million), and I also don’t think comic book movies are the death of cinema. Great “adult” movies flop every week, and bad superhero movies do as well (looking at you, “Madame Web”).

There’s no formula that predicts exactly what movie audiences will turn up for because, if there was, Hollywood would just make that same movie over and over. Regardless of whether it’s your type of movie or not, I don’t have much patience for gatekeeping and elitism in cinema.

Until the day Hollywood cracks that formula, we’ll keep getting masterpieces, trash and the entire spectrum in between. And that’s good. There’s room for it all -- at least in my world.

Grade: B+