Watching “Deadpool & Wolverine” reminded me of my great-grandmother. I knew Dona Leontina, born in the early 20th century, even before the Titanic sank, until I was about 12 or 13 years old. My favorite game with her was to let out a loud swear word out of the blue. “BOY, WHERE DID YOU LEARN SUCH THINGS?!” she would exclaim, followed by a laugh. That moment felt like a transgression to me; after all, at the age of 8 or 10, I believed it signified that the child Caio was fading away to make way for a more rebellious version capable of shocking the elders. Silly me…
Deadpool arrives in the Disney and Marvel family with the same tone: like a kid saying, “Hey, hey, I’m talking and doing outrageous things,” the false transgression is limited to an endless string of swear words and flashy sequences of blood splattering everywhere. All without a hint of new ideas, recycling what worked before, not daring in its discourse, and hoping that the audience’s affection for the characters will mask all the issues.
In the mindset of an 8, 9, or 10-year-old Caio, the quintet of screenwriters – Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, and Shawn Levy – turns “Deadpool & Wolverine” into a big mess where the desire for one more joke prevails above all else. If only the jokes were good, that would be one thing, but the humor alternates over 2 hours and 7 minutes between “symphony of f-bombs,” all possible code names for cocaine (“hey, I’m doing this at Disney”), and various possible and impossible permutations of penis, vagina, and ass (“hey, I’m doing this at Marvel”). For anyone still stuck in the era of “Pânico na TV,” this is certainly a treat.
The situation becomes even more critical when even the elements that worked in previous Deadpool films or Marvel Universe entries fail to resonate. Take the self-mockery of the industry and the comic book universe: not only does the trailer reveal the jabs at Fox, stripping away the force from the less lazy sequel, but “Deadpool & Wolverine” plays it safe by toying with the ill-fated multiverses and the Marvel slump since “Avengers: Endgame,” something even the least observant MCU fan can point out.
The fourth wall has never been so trivialized as it is here – the joke about the romantic comedy “The Proposal” may well be the peak of Ryan Reynolds believing with all his might that he is the most important star in Hollywood (someone tell him?). Finally, the fan services galore – from Wolverine’s costume to the appearance of certain characters, including one that wasn’t done in the best “The Flash” style with Nicolas Cage – are so blatant they’re embarrassing, trying to cover up the flaws.
In this sea of mediocrity, the long-awaited reunion between Deadpool and Wolverine after the lackluster “X-Men Origins,” from 2009, loses much of its impact. Nothing diminishes my impression of Hugh Jackman being there just for the fat paycheck: the Australian seems uncomfortable playing the straight man to Reynolds’ comedy, only standing out in the dramatic sequence alongside Corrin, revisiting the hero’s role. To make matters worse, no action scene is truly exciting and they even start to feel repetitive – when they fight in the car to the tune of “You’re the One That I Want” (a predictably cheesy soundtrack, I might add) after brawling next to the Fox logo, it just makes you want to throw in the towel.
Ending with a fifth-rate emotional speech about making friends as if it were a self-help drama, combined with a lazily assembled post-credit sequence, “Deadpool & Wolverine” turns out to be much more conservative than any Marvel and Disney production in recent years. The quest to serve exactly what the target audience supposedly wants causes Shawn Levy’s production to betray the supposed transgressive profile that the Deadpool series pretends to sell. In the end, like me with my great-grandmother, it ends up deceiving itself – at least I was a kid with a long life ahead and not a bunch of grown men spending millions of dollars.
