16 Comments

As someone who loved the first DEADPOOL unequivocally (at the time, it felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the moribund MCU and whatever DC was trying to do) and was reasonably entertained by the second, it’s so strange to me that my interest in this new one is practically nil. Has been since I saw the first trailer. If I do go see it, it won’t be out of a sense of obligation, but rather because there’s nothing else out there.

Expand full comment

I find Deadpool's schtick to be kind of wearisome, so I was surprised by how much mileage I got from those first two. I think the timing has a lot to do with that, like you say. Apparently the second Deadpool came out in the same year as Infinity War (!). Feel like superhero movies and audiences are in a radically different place now.

Expand full comment

I'll wait till i can get it out of the library.

Expand full comment

Or it shows up on Disney Plus.

Expand full comment

The trailer being terrible might have something to do with it. There are a few funny moments in the film (too few) but all the trailer had was some pointless swearing.

Expand full comment

It does DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE no favors that it's being released hot on the heels of X-MEN '97, which succeeded (I think) in large part because it dispenses with irony completely. Part of the fun of superheroes generally--and X-Men specifically--is how absurdly heightened the stakes are, and how seriously everyone takes them: someone's ghost has been cloned in the future, and this is a crisis on par with climate change. Only a coalition of drag queens and 1920s circus strongmen can stop it! Pointing out how ridiculous this is feels insulting--you think we didn't notice?--and worse, it spoils the fun. I think Whedon deserves a lot of blame for popularizing this wink-wink-nudge-nudge style of writing, but there's a case to be made that Deadpool was patient zero. The peak of his popularity happened to coincide with the great comics crash of the 1990s. I wonder if history is repeating itself in a different medium.

Expand full comment

1990s was peak irony

Expand full comment

Yeah, I guess I'm thinking specifically of the Big Two superhero titles, which spent a good part of the decade trying to be the most XXXTREME versions of themselves--which, as stupid and cynical as that often was, at least projected a kind of operatic dudebro sincerity. I wasn't really thinking about any of the imprints like Vertigo or WildStorm, but I think you're absolutely right.

Expand full comment

I wonder if the director of Arctic Convoy watched Action In The North Atlantic? In your telling of the story, there are some "echoes" of the earlier film. (not a complaint - like William Goldman said, "Steal from the best and then make it your own.")

Expand full comment

"Deadpool digs up Wolverine’s skeleton..., then uses the bones to kill a small army of enemies... It’s not particularly thrilling or funny"

oh, come on!! how did they manage to not make this funny?

Expand full comment

History would be much, much kinder to this movie if they snipped off 30 minutes

Expand full comment

Even beyond this particular fight I'm always surprised how boring the action and effects are in most superhero movies and D & W was no exception.

Half the movie takes place in a largely rules free, multi-verse "void" and the best idea they could come up with to represent that was an empty desert strewn with some easter egg wreckage. The villain's lair was reasonably imaginative but everything else might as well have been stock footage.

Expand full comment

> Paradox wants to prune Deadpool’s own universe—which hasn’t really been the same since the death of Wolverine, its “anchor being”—from existence.

This is one thing me find deeply stupid about TVA, and MCU in general. Infinite timelines, spanning entire universe, but everything always, always, always focused on Earth from hundred years ago to present. Entire timeline is "anchored" by Wolverine? One guy in whole history of entire galaxy?

Infinity stones are foundational to entire universe and three of them happen to be in Midtown at same time? (Me do always think it would be interesting to see effect Snap has on someplace in entirely different galaxy, where no one has any idea who Thanos or Avengers or and have no way of knowing where everybody went or why they came back.

Expand full comment

SPOILER I guess:

It will not surprise you that Paradox may not entirely be telling the truth here...

Expand full comment

A great movie for boyfriends to explain all the references to their girlfriends to (source: the guy next to me when I saw this last night)

Expand full comment

Additionally, kudos to the AMC I saw this at for minimizing the amount of trailers before the movie (only 4 before as opposed to the standard 6-9)

Expand full comment