Deadpool & Wolverine
Apple Cinemas Xtreme
Hartford
July 28, 2024
How do I talk about this movie without spoiling it?
I can’t tell you what happens, outside of the obvious: Deadpool (played with the wit and humor you’ve come to expect from Ryan Reynolds) teams up with Wolverine (the indomitable Hugh Jackman) to save the world. There’s Macguffin, who through a bunch of plot threatens all of existence. Typical superhero movie stuff there, but it hardly matters.
No, what matters is the massive amount of heart and love that this movie represents. It’s been well-documented that Ryan Reynolds spent years trying to convince studio bigwigs to give him a budget for the original Deadpool. His task in the third movie of the franchise was to convince Jackman to return to the role he’d retired from after 2017’s Logan, where Wolverine apparently died. Of course, these are comic book characters we’re talking about here. No one is ever truly dead.
So Reynolds got his pal to return to the claws, and it’s clear from the opening scene to the end that Reynolds genuinely loves Jackman and what he represents as Wolverine. There were superhero movies before 2000’s X‑Men that introduced the Australian theater actor to the rest of the world, and there have been bigger, more successful superhero spectacles since. But no one, not even Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, is bigger superhero royalty than Jackman. He made the possibility of superheroes on the big screen real, and Deadpool & Wolverine gives him the room to be both Logan and Wolverine — with genuinely funny commentary from Deadpool along the way.
It’s not too much of a spoiler to tell you that Deadpool and Wolverine don’t exactly get along when they first meet, and this is one of the areas where the movie shows off its phenomenal creativity. Unencumbered by the MCU’s PG-13 requirements and featuring two essentially immortal protagonists, Deadpool and Wolverine find ever more hilarious ways to inflict gruesome wounds on each other in each of their fight scenes. It’s a joy to simply listen to their one-liners as they stab, shoot, slam and skewer each other over and over.
It’s also not much of a spoiler to tell you that this movie had actual emotion to it as well. I didn’t expect to be moved to tears during a Deadpool movie, but that’s my own fault for not respecting Jackman’s game. The Deadpool franchise has always had a heart of gold at the center of its fourth wall-breaking shenanigans. But Hugh Jackman — and this is no disrespect at all to Reynolds — can act his ass off. It’s one thing to feel Wolverine’s anger and rage. But when I felt Logan’s loss, it elevated the movie into the pantheon of not just good superhero movies, but good movies period.
Naturally the movie is funny as hell, with tons of laugh out loud jokes and gags that both fans and newcomers alike will enjoy. There are cameos that don’t just check off the “Ooh look who it is!” box, but instead feel like a celebration of decades of superhero films. There’s corniness and cliche in the best possible ways, in keeping with the tradition of a genre that is slightly corny, slightly cliche, but that makes us love it all the more for it. Go now to watch this movie before it gets spoiled for you. I promise there are moments you’ll want to see with no knowledge on the big screen.
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Deadpool & Wolverine is playing literally everywhere.
Jamil heads to Elizabeth Park for a concert in the roses.
