Deadpool & Wolverine - What You're Missing

This is a funny film to review on Latter-Day Saint Geeks, considering it's not only rated R but REALLY rated R, but as the morally flexible heathen I am I was happy to go see Deadpool & Wolverine and can't wait to tell y'all what you may've missed. 

Spoilers. 

Quick Recap

So for those not following the Deadpool movies here's a summary: Deadpool is what happens when you give Bugs Bunny a whole ton of guns and tell him to go nuts. The irreverent Merc with a Mouth is a mutant, same as the X-Men, except he was given his powers through a shady experiment by bad guys who wanted to make an army of mutants they could control. He went through the procedure to cure his extremely aggressive cancer, which his newfound healing powers did, but it left him incredibly disfigured. 

First movie he spends his time trying to find the guy that did this to him so he could be with his girlfriend Vanessa since he thinks she wouldn't love him if he was ugly. Turns out there is no cure and that Vanessa loves him for who he is. 

Second movie Vanessa is killed as a result of his vigilante/mercenary work. In his grief Deadpool tries to find ways to negate his powers so he can finally die and be with her. He meets up with Cable, a time travelling soldier of fortune and they have their own shenanigans before Deadpool takes his time travel device and saves Vanessa. 

Still following? Okay let's get into movie three. 

Multiverse of Hilarious

In Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadpool has hung  up the suit and is a car salesman, trying to make an honest life after his time indiscriminately killing people caused his longtime girlfriend Vanessa to break up with him. Despite his depression he is grateful for the group of weirdos he's adopted along the way that make up his family. He's celebrating this when he gets abducted by the TVA, the same guys Loki was messing with in his show on Disney+. They want to put Deadpool into the MCU, which would give him a chance to be an Avenger and prove to Vanessa that he isn't just a serial killer with a sense of humor. However, the TVA manager he's working with, Paradox, tells him that he's being pulled out because his universe is degrading. Despite this being a process that can take thousands of years, Paradox has decided that he wants to prune the timeline in memory of the former TVA who patrolled the Sacred Timeline (Watch Loki for how this nonsense works). Deadpool is told that his adopted family can't come with him so he goes on his own quest to save his timeline. 

Come to find out, to my great annoyance, that the timeline is dying because its anchor being (Read "Most profitable character") is dead, which happens to be everyone's favorite sentient piece of toxic masculinity Wolverine. Deadpool hops multiverses looking for a new Wolverine to replace his, finds one that he likes, and then is dumped to the wasteland at the bottom of the multiverse where everything the TVA deems either too dangerous or too unimportant to be in the mainstream goes to die. 

Eventually the duo get out, save the world, and the girl is saved. 

Oh but wait, Spider-Fans, there's more!

Wasteland of Misfit Fox Movies

One of several running gags in the film is that Deadpool is leaving Fox and moving to Disney, along with the X-Men. We could go into the behind-the-scenes stuff on this but suffice it to say that before we had the MCU we had a whole ton of questionably connected superhero movies which internet nerds like me argue about the quality and significance of until the MGM lion chokes. When Deadpool and Wolverine reach the wasteland they get to meet a handful of former Marvel heroes in more celebrity cameos than a Muppet movie. The film then becomes a tribute to all the Marvel movies that helped pave the way for the MCU to exist at all, and a thank you for the fans who showed up to see their favorites get live-action adaptations. Even my black, jaded little heart squeed at the appearance of Wesley Snipes Blade and Tyler Mane's Sabretooth, but none warmed my heart than Channing Tatum's Gambit. 

The Gambit movie was in preproduction years ago, with hype around Tatum learning card tricks and taking accent lessons to play the Ragin' Cajuan before the movie was canned, much to my disappointment. Gambit is my favorite X-Man and after his portrayal in X-Men Origins: Wolverine I was excited for a GOOD live-action version of Gambit only to get.... Nothing. Tatum feeds my fanboy in Deadpool & Wolverine by giving us the GAMBIT WE NEED, even if just for a little bit. 

Oh and a handful of Avengers show up throughout but who cares. 

What Does This Mean for the MCU? 

Well... Honestly we don't know. At the end of the movie status quo is restored as Deadpool's universe is once again safe and still separate from the main MCU. This opens the potential for the X-Men and the Avengers to come together down the line if there's yet more multiverse shenanigans, but with the Kang the Conqueror currently being reworked it's unsure what Marvel/Disney is going to do with the mutants now. We're sadly just going to have to wait and see. 

-JOE

P.S. Notice that this post is shorter than my usual rants. You try writing about a Deadpool movie and keep it PG!