DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

Gareth Higgins on DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

Deadpool & Wolverine is the first Marvel movie in years that I’ve wanted to write about - that doesn’t mean it’s good, but what it represents is important. Interesting, interminable, terrible and brilliant, it reminds me of both one of the smartest satires of cinematic violence (Inglourious Basterds) and some of the laziest Saturday Night Live skits.

Comic book movies can be intelligent, visually captivating, and morally wise (Ang Lee’s Hulk, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984, and The Dark Knight trilogy), but I don’t demand profundity. I do want to be entertained. Someone recently pointed out that one of the meanings of “to entertain” is “to offer hospitality” - so while I don’t expect a Deadpool movie to feed me the way Dead Poets Society, Dead Ringers, or The Dead do, it’s legitimate to want to feel like a guest; a person, not just a consumer. This third Deadpool film - it’s definitely not a Wolverine film - has Ryan Reynolds return as the titular wisecracking-without-the-wisdom superhero. Deadpool is the id of Marvel, a repository for unexpurgated desire, scatalogical humor, and nihilistic violence. Deadpool & Wolverine is one of the most graphically violent films I’ve ever seen (if by “violence” we mean depictions of combat and blood) - though because almost nothing in the film has any meaningful consequences, the effect of the violence is strangely muted.