Deadpool & Wolverine
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(MA15+, 128 minutes)
4 stars
Everybody is in dire need of a good laugh and to chill out by at least 75 per cent right now and the latest Marvel film got me most of the way there.
The film brings Hugh Jackman's Wolverine character back from the dead, he having died quite a noble death in the 2017 film Logan. One of the film's recurrent themes is Hollywood draining every dollar to be made from a piece of intellectual property, even if its characters have supposedly died.
The joy of the Deadpool character in its original comic book form is that he is aware of the world he is living in and is self-referential.
In the film universe where Ryan Reynolds plays Deadpool, that means the character talks directly to the camera, makes fun of Marvel and how poorly its films have been received lately, makes fun of its parent company Disney, and refers to Reynolds' own past films and private life.
It can be a bit disconcerting, pulling you out of your suspension of disbelief, but I think the Deadpool films do this meta-referencing really brilliantly.
As Deadpool & Wolverine begins, the former superhero Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has been dumped by his former girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). He is trying to live a normal suburban life as a car salesman to prove to her he can live without violence.
But Vanessa and everyone Wade loves are about to get wiped from existence - an agent from the universe's watchdog Time Variance Authority, called Mr Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), pulls Wade out of his timeline and tells him that his Deadpool alter ego is needed to save the universe.
The task for Wade is to find a way to replace the dead Wolverine/Logan (Jackman) whose death has ruptured the timeline, and he jumps from universe to universe looking for a Logan still living and who is up to the task.
What he eventually finds is a Wolverine who is broken by not having achieved any of the feats we've seen in previous Wolverine or X-Men movies and whose friends and loved ones have all died.
The two men team up, one hoping to save his dying universe, one hoping to bring his back, and neither particularly interested in the actual task the TVA have handed to them.
That plot summary is a lot more linear than the actual experience of watching this film.
"Welcome to the MCU," Wade says to Logan at one point. "By the way, you're joining at a bit of a low point."
The screenplay, by many writers including Reynolds and the film's director Shawn Levy, lays joke after joke that are hilarious to the film world's legion of fans and to anyone who keeps up with show business news.
This film gets to formally merge the intellectual property of the X-Men films and characters and it uses plotlines and MacGuffins from the Doctor Strange films and the Loki television series to bring everything back together - while also referencing that Disney buying Fox and being a voracious exploiter of IP is actually behind everything.
Even the film's title has a kind of brattish humour about it, using the ampersand logogram (not the word "and") which plays havoc with low-rent website text editors.
The film is technically great, so much fun CGI wizardry without it looking rushed or unpolished which has been the criticism levelled at the last dozen MCU and DC films.
Reynolds is charming and funny, but he graciously allows Jackman to be all those things too.