I’ve been weighing this rating in my mind overnight, sliding it up and down between TWO AND A HALF and THREE AND A HALF. It’s so strange because I love a decent amount of it, but there’s also bits I just hate or wished they went for more. Deadpool & Wolverine is a total mess of a movie, while often a total blast, with repetitive action scenes, genuinely fun surprise extended cameos, and delivers on the promise (kinda, but not really) of bringing Wolverine & Deadpool to the MCU.

I liked it, but didn’t love it. 

Deadpool & Wolverine has some of the best (and worst) jokes & gags from the character of Deadpool, and as Ryan Reynolds is as good of a Deadpool as you’ll ever get, sitting through over two hours of it can be a bit much. Thankfully, this movie also has Hugh Jackman, who is just outstanding as Logan once more… and I felt satisfied with how they acknowledged Logan while moving onto a different variant of the character.

Oh, and I did really enjoy Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Paradox, and since he makes it through this, I’d love to see him back again. Emma Corrin is fun as Cassandra Nova, even if the character is underbaked, and the effects of her powers is a really fun & creepy take on telepathy. 

The fact that we get a montage of Deadpool fighting various Wolverines, followed up by a fight between Deadpool and the Wolverine we’ll be with for the rest of the movie, and then again, another fight between the two of them one-on-one… is just ridiculous and feels so repetitive, but there’s also the opening credits fight, the Oldboy-styled horizontal-oner, and the big fight at Cassandra Nova’s lair, all of which are good, so basically… it’s a mixed bag when it comes to the action. 

I also just want to say that I’ve seen people compare one specific extended cameo (not even really a cameo since they have significant screen time, but I digress) in this movie to DC horribly reviving dead actors as CGI monstrosities in The Flash and that is just ridiculous.

I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that The Marvels post-credit scene has a character arrive in the Fox X-Men Universe and then that is not acknowledged, mentioned, or followed up on, at all in this movie. I maintain that Marvel needs to delay Avengers: Secret Wars, as it feels like right now, they're really just dragging their feet with the whole thing in terms of actively building towards a larger story here, as this movie has zero effect on the MCU by the end of it. I guess the argument against that would be, having Deadpool, Wolverine, and… the others… in the Fox X-Men Universe, The Fantastic Four in their own universe, and then Earth-616/Earth-19999 as the main one does set the stakes higher for what will occur in Secret Wars, but there’s still A LOT to do in order to get that all set up. 

OKAY! I’ve written way more for this than planned lmao, but yeah, I enjoyed Deadpool & Wolverine. The MCU will always have a place in my heart since I grew up with these movies and love the characters, so I’m not taking the “this is an affront to cinema!” approach here. It’s a fun, messy, fourth-wall-breaking multiversal story that your mileage will vary depending on your attachment or care for characters from the Marvel movies outside of the MCU and how much you can take of Deadpool.

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