Fox/ Marvel Watch: Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Watched:  08/03/2024

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Shawn Levy

SPOILERS

And also a forewarning - this is going to be scattershot.  There's so much going on in this movie.

So, this was Avengers Endgame for the versions of Marvel characters we've been getting sporadically from 20th Century Fox since 2000.  

A bit of background:  In the long, long ago, it was unthinkable that Marvel would produce their own media content.  Literally, Stan Lee's job, starting in the 1970's, was to live in LA and shop licenses to Marvel characters and hope that a studio would pick them up and make a movie, TV show, musical, whatever.  You might get a low-budget Punisher movie or Sony dinking about thinking about doing a Spider-Man, and simply not pulling the trigger. There was some success, but it was uneven and never really landed in the world of feature films.

With Iron Man, Marvel set themselves up as their own studio, but prior to that, for more or less decades, they carried on, sending Stan out to kiss studio chief rings and gadfly his way around Hollywood, mostly getting cartoons and some TV made.*  And at some point, Columbia/ Sony got Spider-Man, and 20th Century Fox got X-Men and Fantastic Four.  

I think what essentially happened to change things was that Gen-X, that had come up on 1980's-style comics written for an older audience, was allowed to start making movies.  Boomers and the Greatest Generation had made fun of superheroes starting with Batman in the 1960's, while Gen-X nerds found comic shops, Uncanny X-Men, Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen - and quietly plotted.

The initial shot that kicked off the modern comic-movie-era is often left out of the discussion, but 1998's Blade was @#$%ing great (and one of the best movie-going experiences of my life).  Pitched less as a superhero film and more of a supernatural/ horror/ actioner (which makes sense if you remember New Line Cinema) - it showed studios you could do this and not have to wink at the camera. 

X-Men (2000) was a weird, wild risk for 20th Century Fox.  And primitive as it may seem now, in comparison to mediocre TV movies (we had a Hasslehoff-starring Nick Fury movie!) and dead-on-arrival Marvel films (Punisher, Pyun's Captain America) which I kind of thought was the fate of Marvel material, it was absolutely eye-opening to see a version of the X-Men on screen that was anywhere close to the comics, showing a concept to people that I didn't really think they'd embrace.  But they did.  To the tune of box office success and so many subsequent films, I've missed a few (and I kind of watch *everything*).  

Fox also flexed their Fantastic Four license in two different ways over three movies.  And it was stunningly clear how out of their depth they were across all three movies, delivering what felt like two TV movies and a body-horror film, neither of which understood the basic concepts that made the comics popular since 1963.  Oddly, the Roger Corman-produced ultra-low-budget version may get the idea better, but is hampered by budget and 90's cheese.

I don't think that Disney purchased 20th Century Fox a few years ago just to get the X-Men and Fantastic Four back in the fold, but I also don't think it wasn't part of the arithmetic that made Disney want the company.  But, damn, I figured they'd have done something with either or both well before now.

Likely, this is it for Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds in their most famous costumed personas (pretty crazy when you realize Reynolds has been Deadpool, Green Lantern, Other-Deadpool and that guy in Blade: Trinity).  Which is fine.  Neither is a kid anymore. 

If Marvel wants to do something new and not be beholden to a quarter-century of pre-existing material, they need a clean slate.

Anyway, that's a lot of preamble, but so was watching movies since 2000 that all informed this movie.  

Sure, you can watch this movie without all that.  It'll be a significantly less rich experience, but you'll get about 50% of the jokes.  

I saw the movie a week after release, thought I'd been completely spoiled, and I was frankly shocked at how much I didn't know going in, as the movie is simply packed wall-to-wall with references to both the Fox movies and MCU.  

I'm assuming you've seen the movie and are aware of this series' 4th wall breaking, ultra-meta approach, but, man - this is literally a movie about what's been going on with Disney, Marvel and Fox.  What goes from a stray, cheeky comment here or there becomes the plot itself in short order.   

I'm, frankly, shocked that Disney let this movie get made in some ways, but in other ways, I also know: Disney loves money.  Nonetheless, it's amazing to see Disney shrug it off, knowing it's not like the Marvel fanbase doesn't know everything that gets mentioned in the movie.  But I've also never seen anything like this before.  It's absolutely wild.

Superhero movies came to being simultaneous with the democratization of film discussion and para-engagement via the rise of social media and explosion of websites.  What started as personal blogs (ahem) changed to "professional" blogs, which sometimes paid people.  The web only enhanced what were the natural tendencies of comics dorks to obsess over minutia, industry news, etc... and passed that along to superhero movie fans who've never lifted a comic book.  This movie, and the ongoing commentary, doesn't happen without the sea of superhero movie online discussion.  

But all of this is academic.  

The movie itself is fun, it celebrates several somethings people both love and... maybe don't care about (ex: Elektra).  And it happily pulls it all together and gives it a happy ending we didn't expect to see.  The ideas in the movie are insane, but very much in line with the world of Deadpool and Wolverine from both comics and movies.  

My expectation was that it was going to be Deadpool and Wolverine chasing a MacGuffin in someone's hands as they hopped from world to world in pursuit.  Bringing everything to one spot was a bit of a surprise, so I guess I knew far less about this movie going in than I expected.  Sure, there's some of that - I loved the Wolvie-classic-takes stuff they did (which made me realize I was the sole comic reader in the audience, laughing at each variation). but more than half occurring in the void was pretty welcome to defy my expectations, and narratively made the most sense.

The villains of the movie (the TVA one, Paradox) is one of the more fun villains in a bit, and I actually loved how they did Cassandra Nova, even if she was pretty divorced from where I first saw her (and actor Emma Corrin was so good in the part).  

Look, Deadpool as a character could suck.  The constant wackiness and snark shouldn't work.  I genuinely do not know how Reynolds does it, and I fear the next time they try "funny superhero".  

But having the 4th wall breaking character beg everyone to end their multi-verse stuff on screen was... well, maybe Deadpool is all of us.  Even if I had a good laugh at the army of Deadpools.

Jackman is certainly Jackman, but it's odd how much of a back seat he takes in the film despite being centered and his co-star status.  I wouldn't say he doesn't seem into it, but if your character's whole thing is being the strong, silent type, a pairing with Deadpool is gonna do that.

That said, seeing the actual Wolverine costume with the full mask on screen - and working like crazy - is one of the more frustrating bits of superhero media detritus I'll be unpacking for a while.  Like...  sigh.  I don't think we get superhero movies like what we have without those leather X-gimp-suits, but I've been embarrassed of how embarrassed studios have been of the actual costumes most of my life, so it's been nice of Marvel to put their best on this.

This movie doesn't happen in a vacuum - and I'm pretty glad I watched it.  I didn't love a significant number of the movies that it referenced, but I also can appreciate everyone wanting a shot to put a bow on that work, from Jennifer Garner to the, reportedly, oft-frustrated Channing Tatum who really, really wanted to do a Gambit movie at one point and kept getting the rug pulled out from under him.  And I am thrilled to see Snipes as Blade one last time.

I dunno.  There's a lot going on in this movie, but you also can't talk about it as just a movie.  It's not going to spark think pieces outside of comic-movie circles - it's not a movie about humanity's relationship with tragedy or some universal theme beyond "it's nice to help out".  But to have a movie that is *directly* commenting upon the state of the industry rather than just showing the machinery of the studio by accident and/ or winking at commentary is a hell of a thing.  

This movie is not meaningless if you've never seen any superhero movies before, but it means so much more if you're of a certain age and have been on this ride since Famke Janssen scanned an adamantium bone or watched Blade lop off vampire heads.  

But it's also not setting anything else up.  It's just... done.  And we get a nice goodbye for what's been a wild ride young Signal Watch did not ever expect to see.

*there's plenty more to discuss some time, but at one point, Marvel was more or less owned by New World Pictures, a Roger Corman company, and STILL we didn't get any movies out of that