I’ve been somewhat of a defender of the MCU movies post-Endgame. I found hope in the sparks of life and weirdness in movies that were more and more at ease embracing the fact that they are based on comic books. Even if the films weren’t good, they were at least visually alive in a sense; or at the very least fun.

The last bit is key. The last bit is what’s missing from Shawn Levy’s abysmal Deadpool & Wolverine. Far from being entertaining or good Deadpool & Wolverine is not a movie or even all that funny. It is instead the MCU doing what it does best, using sentimentality to try and cover the pungent stench of rank cynicism

Deadpool & Wolverine is a mess. A big ugly, boring, mess. No surprise it comes with a script with so many writers that if you add one more name then they have a full infield. More than likely this is merely Marvel being forced to admit instead of assigning the story to one writer they instead farm it out to several and then cobble the results together like Fankenstein’s monster. This is exactly what Deadpool & Wolverine feels like, like a series of ideas, amputated and stitched together to form some kind of freakish self-perpetual self-referential machine.

But nothing works because the arms are where the legs should be and the eyes are placed somewhere in the back. Like everything else with the MCU, the marketing is more important than the actual product. Make no mistake, Deadpool & Wolverine is a product. By itself, this is not the biggest deal. After all the MCU is nothing but one long branding exercise. The problem is that is the cheapest-looking product with the least amount of anything resembling joy.

Read my full review at The Fandomentals