Review: Is ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ worth watching?



The Marvel Cinematic Universe has all but ruined its name with the string of insufferably woke movies it’s produced in the last few years.

Lauren Chen has pulled no punches when it comes to roasting the franchise for its in-your-face progressive agenda in films such as "The Fantastic Four," "Madame Web," "The Marvels," and "Echo."

But “Deadpool & Wolverine,” starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, may have just broken the curse.

“This is a very good movie,” says Lauren.

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And even though the film hops around the multiverse — which Lauren says is a plotline Marvel has “overplayed” — “Deadpool and Wolverine” is nonetheless “a very fun sequence.”

As for the two main characters, “they play off of each other very well,” says Lauren, adding that the fact that Reynolds and Jackman are friends in real life shines through the interactions between their characters.

Another fun part of the movie is the numerous superhero cameos — all of which are played by well-known celebrities, such as Jennifer Garner, Channing Tatum, Wesley Snipes, Chris Evans, and Blake Lively.

However, that’s not to say the film is without its flaws.

For example, the “tongue-in-cheek comedy” that characterizes Deadpool films is a bit overdone, according to Lauren.

“More isn’t always more,” she says, adding that “some of the fourth wall breaking, some of the snarkiness ... did kind of feel like too much.”

As for Cassandra Nova’s character, played by Emma Corrin, Lauren was pleasantly surprised. Initially, she was disappointed in the casting choice because she couldn’t picture Corrin coming across as a menacing villain, but the actress delivered in appearing “unhinged” and “creepy.”

“By the end of it, I was genuinely disappointed that [Corrin’s character] wasn't a bigger part of this film,” she says, noting that Nova would have made a better antagonist than Paradox, who was “needlessly evil” and had vague motivations.

Paradoxically, one of the best things about “Deadpool & Wolverine” also happens to be its most limiting feature — and that is its unmitigated fan service.

Not only is the film chock full of “fun references” to other Marvel superheroes, but it also includes references to “superhero films spanning the past 20 years.” This aspect of the film is certain to thrill longtime superhero movie watchers. However, the cameos could easily alienate younger generations, who haven’t been alive long enough to see all the movies, and “normies” who just don’t watch superhero movies that often.

These people are “going to miss a lot of what's happening because they just haven't seen these other films,” says Lauren.

To hear more of Lauren’s review (spoilers included), watch the clip above.

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Deadpool and Wolverine, bankable heroes of a bankrupt culture



Until this week, the R-rated film with the biggest box office in America was "The Passion of the Christ." In a damning indication of where the culture has gone in 20 years when Mel Gibson’s magnum opus debuted, the new record holder is the latest and greatest exercise in intellectual property exploitation known as "Deadpool & Wolverine" — a movie panned and reviled for its shamelessly irony-poisoned fan service, which happens to lean almost entirely on trashy juvenile humor.

For these reasons, most critics — from the trad right as well as the intersectional left — have rushed toward moral condemnation of the film. But they’re vastly outnumbered by the film’s paying audience, increasingly protected by a dissident-ish media sphere of Rogan-esque righties and disgruntled liberals who’d just as soon hold fire on a Hollywood stinker that at least avoids wokeness.

But the bankruptcy of the culture lit up by "Deadpool & Wolverine" isn’t reducible to ethics or ideology. There are lessons to this film’s success that should be clocked by anyone with a serious interest in pumping up America’s aesthetic and artistic vitality.

Once upon a time, that kind of heroic calling inspired even the more morally compromised of Hollywood’s executives to take big swings — and, often, to take big profits. Unfortunately, the spiritual message behind so much of our once-great cinema was too warmed-over of a new age trip to survive the pressures placed on us by the digital revolution.

The first is shockingly simple: Marketing doesn’t just work, it’s mission-critical. A movie as annoying and vacuous as this has done extraordinarily well because its stars and its studio insisted on putting it in front of the target audience. Today, most of media culture is captive to a FUD-driven (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) obsession with organic virality. Corporations, brands, and news organizations resist big marketing spending or simply don’t know how to effectively market their products, pinning their hopes on the belief that throwing content at the wall and seeing what “blows up” is a viable business model. Alas!

Meanwhile, ad agencies have consolidated their power into a handful of cartelized entities — flexing their market power to impose across the internet of content news “safety” standards that conform to their hyper-woke principles. The kind of good content that millions and millions ostensibly crave simply cannot make a dent in a culture controlled by propaganda cartels ... unless that content is effectively marketed. It feels miserable to be in a place where we have to speak of having the courage to market, but here we are.

That’s not the only lesson our vulgar superheroes are teaching us. Vince Vaughn recently went off on why the R-rated comedies finding big audiences are IP retreads like "Deadpool" and not the kind of fare he rose to fame with — original narratives about timelessly relatable human predicaments and situations. It’s a risk-averse double bind. Not only do the consolidated media corporations want to extract every last drop of value from the properties they already own, they also want to avoid placing costly bets on talent that don't pay off.

There are important exceptions to that rule: tech companies in the entertainment business. Amazon spent huge amounts on its "Lord of the Rings" project and considered its very mixed success an essential first step in continuing to use its market advantages to find or unearth bankable new talent that can deliver fresher, more meaningful entertainment. Netflix and Apple, the other major tech firms in the content game, also have the war chest to make similar gambles.

But by and large, media executives know they’re quite replaceable if the projects they’re responsible for don’t work out. That leads to a strange kind of content bottleneck: Cautious execs converge on mediocre projects that are also “safely” woke — ideally, woke enough to attract each stripe of the woke flag but not so woke that the normies are scared off.

The result is an arts and entertainment culture dominated by corporate content that’s too ideological and formulaic to serve the primary purpose of film and television in America, which is to help people make spiritual or psychological sense of the present world they’re in personally and socially. This is a strange kind of cultural bankruptcy, masked by an equally uncanny kind of cultural inflation — debasing the value of our cultural currency and creating a bubble that must pop. Hopefully, it pops before our ability to make sense of our shared world in the present moment breaks down completely.

In the meantime, there’s one more harsh lesson about our aesthetic and artistic poverty to learn from the dysfunctional Marvel duo. The deepest reason why Hollywood isn’t making the kind of richly human R-rated comedies Vaughn and many others fondly remember is because writers and auteurs need to create them — and this requires from writers and auteurs a profound understanding of not the past or the future but the present.

Today, our present place and time is a scandal in the old sense: a stumbling block that sends away many — even the smartest and most creative — to retreat into nostalgia, futurism, or fantasy, places in alternate times where one doesn’t have to deal with our present reality, where our personal and shared spiritual fates are busy being decided.

The only way our culture will artistically and aesthetically restructure out of bankruptcy is for a lot of money to be reallocated toward identifying, developing, supporting, and rewarding the very few writers and auteurs spiritually strong and attuned enough to face the reality of our present place and time. These precious artists meet us with love and suffering amid our miseries and hopes and put soulful visions to screen that let wide audiences join creators in joyfully and painfully communing through images that measure up to our real lives.

Once upon a time, that kind of heroic calling inspired even the more morally compromised of Hollywood’s executives to take big swings — and, often, to take big profits. Unfortunately, the spiritual message behind so much of our once-great cinema was too warmed-over of a new age trip to survive the pressures placed on us by the digital revolution. Now is the time for artistic visionaries who see the truth of our spiritual condition, and for the deep-pocketed companies and individuals that can bring their visions to life, to summon some fresh courage of their own and get to work.

'Deadpool & Wolverine' makes the MCU fun again



"Welcome to the MCU. By the way, you're joining at a bit of a low point," says Deadpool at one point in his much-anticipated (by him, at least) team-up with Wolverine.

Turns out, admitting you have a problem is more than half the battle.

It’s satisfying to see a director of Levy's talents play in the Marvel universe for the first time, nailing the requisite epic scale while keeping things fun.

After years of declining audience interest, Marvel Studios has delivered a much needed win in the form of "Deadpool & Wolverine," the third installment in the Deadpool trilogy and the first proper inclusion of the X-Men into the MCU.

Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is living a peaceful existence retired from superhero-ing and struggling to find meaning in his life. Enter the TVA (short for Time Variance Authority, an organization introduced in the streaming series "Loki"). Turns out, the TVA could use a man like Deadpool to fix the timeline.

When the Merc with a Mouth realizes he'll have to destroy his universe in the process, he pivots to saving it instead. To do so, he recruits a disgraced, alternate-universe Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). As the two unlikely friends maneuver through the multiverse, the chaos that always surrounds Deadpool follows them.

At the heart of this ultra-violent, ultra-irreverent film are surprisingly sincere themes of friendship and redemption. In their shared struggle to find new meaning in their lives, these two heroes end up saving not only the entire universe in a bloody, action-packed climax, but each other.

It's one of the best bromances ever captured on film, with both Reynolds and Jackman giving career-best performances. It is one of the most earnest and emotionally satisfying stories we have seen from Marvel Studios since "Spider-Man: No Way Home."

WARNING: SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON

The film also lovingly pays tribute to the 20th Century Fox era of Marvel with cameos from Blade (Wesley Snipes), the Human Torch (Chris Evans), Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Pyro (Aaron Stanford), and Gambit (Channing Tatum, who finally gets to play the character after many failed attempts at a solo film).

Even Laura/X-23 (Dafne Keen), from what was supposed to be Jackman's final bow as Wolverine, makes an appearance. She confirms that the Wolverine of "Logan" is indeed dead while inspiring this version of Wolverine to become the hero he's always been capable of being.

While these throwbacks are fun, they do sometimes make the film's pacing suffer. Still, it's hard to fault "Deadpool & Wolverine" for its commitment to maximum fan enjoyment.

I must also single out director Shawn Levy, a filmmaker with great family films like "Cheaper by the Dozen," "Night at the Museum," and the Reynolds-starring "Free Guy" under his belt. It’s satisfying to see a director of his talents play in the Marvel universe for the first time, nailing the requisite epic scale while keeping things fun.

It's safe to say that with "Deadpool & Wolverine," the MCU has officially bounced back from the wokeness-fueled nadir of "The Marvels." Will the studio build on the momentum and good will?

Only time will tell, but the recent Comic-Con bombshell that Robert Downey Jr. will play Dr. Doom in both "Avengers: Doomsday" and "Avengers: Secret Wars" is certainly a hopeful sign. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the party is just getting started.

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