Being very much DC inclined practically since birth, I never had too much exposure to the Marvel world until certain characters really broke through to the mainstream. Even then, the ones I gravitated to the most were the admittedly "normie" picks of Spider-Man, Deadpool, and the X-Men, and my interest came and went based on what was happening in those franchises at a given moment.

Before this year, there were the brief (but very enthusiastic) dips back into Spidey territory with No Way Home and Across The Spider-Verse, but Far From Home had (initially) left me cold back in 2019, and while I enjoyed Once Upon A Deadpool and will stand by Dark Phoenix, I never felt compelled to revisit any of the mutants since.

But then, like the stars were aligning, there was the pitiful death of DC on film last year, the phenomenal X-Men '97 in the spring, seeing every single Spider-Man film on the big screen in the lead-up to summer, and now Deadpool & Wolverine being a strong contender for my favorite movie of the year, and I've loved getting reacquainted with these characters and remembering why I was drawn to them in the first place.

And it's one of those things where, yeah, they are totally the most bland, obvious, "normie" picks for favorites you could possibly have, but it's like being a big DC fan and seeing everyone hype up Batman.

They really are that fukkin' cool.

Bumping this up to a four-and-a-half, though after revisiting the first two Deadpool films last week, this might be against my better judgment.

Deadpool & Wolverine is undoubtedly my favorite MCU movie, and I love the script, the comedy, the performances, the needle drops, and all that really visceral stuff the most out of any Deadpool, and this could very well be the Deadpool I wind up deferring to the most in the future.

All of that being said, it is easily the visually weakest of the trilogy.

I don't know how much of it is the MCU machine still compromising filmmakers (though Raimi, Zhao, and Coogler seemed to get a decent amount of style through in their stuff), or this big comic book blockbuster only wrapping production in January (and all of the VFX crunch that that implies), or the franchise's previous helmers with their VFX and action comedy backgrounds having more of "The Sauce™" (as the youth say) than the director of Big Fat Liar, or maybe it's a bit of all three. Whatever the reason, if they'd just gotten things looking as good as the other two, this would probably get a full five out of me, and that's my biggest (and really only) disappointment.

I do still love Deadpool & Wolverine very much, and regardless of whatever shit kept it from looking the best it could've, I'm glad Feige (apparently) gave Reynolds and co. (seemingly) total freedom in every other respect.

I just really, really dig this thing.

"Gubernatorial."