Spoilers Deadpool & Wolverine (Spoilers)

[TiQuinn]

So, exactly how dystopian it is, we don’t know.

It was dystopian enough that AI driven trucks ram human driven cars from the road because it was more essential for them to get to wherever they needed to be versus avoid accidents.

 

[payn]

It was dystopian enough that AI driven trucks ram human driven cars from the road because it was more essential for them to get to wherever they needed to be versus avoid accidents.

Eh. I think its more dystopian from a mutants perspective than a human one. I think some embellishments were made to give Logan a contemporary western feel.

 

[Tonguez]

One constant irritant, for me, was the premise that the Deadpool movies and Logan are set in the same universe, and the events of Logan have already occurred. Like, that's the central concept of the plot: this timeline has lost its anchor character and is thus collapsing (in itself a ludicrous premise, but set that aside).

Logan is set in a dystopian near-future (consider the highway scene, for example) where mutants are all but extinct, Xavier was ancient and falling apart, and the few remaining mutants are hunted fugitives, whereas Deadpool is set in a world that resembles our own, and where the X-Men still live in the X-mansion and are heroes.

And how would everyone know about the events of Logan anyway? Like, it seems to be common knowledge and Wolverine is this giant hero because of it.

They didn't even attempt to hand wave the disjunction.

the movie outright told us they would not be respecting the legacy of 'Logan', Deadpool was working outside the Fourth wall for the whole movie, thus was fully aware that they were part of the Fox Universe which was now being dumped and selectively aligned with the Sacred MCU Timeline

The whole thing is a well crafted farce thus there is no need to handwave any disjunction

and besides the X-Men movie timeline was already a convoluted mess - so much so that Days of Future Past already gave us an actual dystopian time travel movie

 

[Staffan]

the movie outright told us they would not be respecting the legacy of 'Logan',

The first thing the movie did was to dig up Logan's corpse and dismember it. I believe there may be a wee bit of symbolism there.

 

[Morrus]

And how would everyone know about the events of Logan anyway? Like, it seems to be common knowledge and Wolverine is this giant hero because of it.

They didn't even attempt to hand wave the disjunction.

Deadpool breaks the 4th wall. I guess if you didn't get that in the 1st and 2nd Deadpool movies, you probbaly wouldn't get it in this one, but Deadpool is aware he is in a movie and he is aware of the other movies. It kinda the core premise.

 

[Clint_L]

Deadpool breaks the 4th wall. I guess if you didn't get that in the 1st and 2nd Deadpool movies, you probbaly wouldn't get it in this one, but Deadpool is aware he is in a movie and he is aware of the other movies. It kinda the core premise.

Yes, I understand that, because I'm not an idiot. 4th wall breaks do not mean the story has to be incoherent. They go back at least as far as Tristram Shandy or perhaps the Canterbury Tales in English literature alone, and encompass a healthy chunk of the literature of the past five decades. You can have a meaningful story and character development with a postmodern structure. The first Deadpool film, for example. At a highbrow level, the novel The Sympathizer, which I just finished.

Story-wise this film attempts to have its cake and eat it, too. The first two Deadpool films manage to break the 4th wall while still having a coherent story (more or less...less in the case of the second film). This third entry tries to both be part of canon and completely farcical at the same time, with the result that it isn't really a coherent story so much as a series of wacky scenes, with some serious ones thrown in for...contrast, I guess? Someone compared it to Airplane, but I don't think it's that, exactly, because it's trying to be more than pure farce.

For example, Deadpool being aware that he is in a movie and aware of the other movies might affect how he feels about Logan, but we are told repeatedly that that version of Wolverine is a hero in Deadpool's entire world. Is everyone in that world aware that they are in a movie, and aware of the other movies? Are they aware that their setting is simultaneously a near future dystopia but also not really, and that Colossus is both dead but also hanging out with Deadpool or at the X-Mansion with the rest of the gang, who are also both dead and not dead at the same time? Is everyone in on the joke? We are given no evidence of it. Ultimately, the stance of this film is basically, "none of this makes any sense; just go with it and laugh at the dick jokes and cartoon violence." Which are mostly good enough that, fair enough.

Overall, it suffers from the same problem I have with almost all of the recent MCU films and television shows: I can't get seriously invested because the story is incoherent and so none of the relationships really mean anything.

It's basically a bad film elevated by star power. It's a testament to how good Reynolds and Jackman are that I had a fun time in spite of the pointlessness of the film, so that puts it ahead of most of the phase 5 stuff. But it doesn't give me much hope for the MCU going forward.

MCU films used to have content. They need to get back to stories with meaningful stakes.

Edit: here's what I mean by meaningful stakes. Avengers: Endgame has meaningful stakes. But not because the universe is in peril, because we know that it isn't, not really. We go in knowing Thanos will lose and the MCU heroes will be restored. No, it has stakes because we are heavily invested in the character arcs of our heroes, and especially Steve and Tony, and we don't know whether they are going to make it or not. And one of them doesn't! But even though he doesn't get what he wants - a happy ending with his family - Tony gets what he always needed, a life that transcended his enormous ego to finally really mean something. He died a worthwhile human being. And Steve, by learning to be just a little bit selfish, gets what he truly needed, as well, the love of his life. That's the difference between a good story and whatever Marvel has been doing lately. Nothing in Deadpool and Wolverine means anything, and so the best it can be is high quality thrills and low quality, but effective, laughs. Which is not nothing! Overall, I give it a thumbs up because I had fun.

But it could be a lot more. When Scorsese made his "thrill ride" criticism of Marvel movies, I disagreed with him. I thought they were more than that. I don't think that about the current ones.

 

[Clint_L]

On bathos in the MCU: bathos (the abrupt transition from the serious or sublime to the ridiculous) has always been the secret weapon and the curse of the MCU. It is the template that Robert Downey Jr. established with the first Iron Man film and Joss Whedon perfected with The Avengers. But it's a really tough tone to sustain, especially over multiple entries. Even films I consider very good and thematically interesting, like Thor: Ragnarok, cross the line because of it - for example, at the end where the punchline "...or maybe not" is dropped right after Asgard explodes. Because the few remaining survivors just watched their home planet blow up - funny, amirite?!

Good films deploy bathos sparingly, and not when we need to really feel the stakes. Pepper Potts doesn't crack wise while Tony is dying. The best MCU films are ultimately sincere when it counts. I think the first Deadpool film is sincere when it counts. But the MCU has increasingly become like a parody of itself, so that the balance between seriousness and comedy is out of synch and frequently inappropriate. Deadpool and Wolverine tries to have some sincerity, especially in Logan's arc, but it's all ultimately a gag. There's nothing to chew on when it's over.

 

[briggart]

One constant irritant, for me, was the premise that the Deadpool movies and Logan are set in the same universe, and the events of Logan have already occurred. Like, that's the central concept of the plot: this timeline has lost its anchor character and is thus collapsing (in itself a ludicrous premise, but set that aside).

Logan is set in a dystopian near-future (consider the highway scene, for example) where mutants are all but extinct, Xavier was ancient and falling apart, and the few remaining mutants are hunted fugitives, whereas Deadpool is set in a world that resembles our own, and where the X-Men still live in the X-mansion and are heroes.

And how would everyone know about the events of Logan anyway? Like, it seems to be common knowledge and Wolverine is this giant hero because of it.

They didn't even attempt to hand wave the disjunction.

Logan is set in 2029, Deadpool and Wolverine in 2024, so Logan events haven't happened yet in this universe, unless they were also messed up by the time travel at the end of Deadpool 2.

My impression was that the whole 'Wolverine's a hero and the timeline is collapsing without him' premise is itself a 4th wall thing: Logan is a hero to us and he was the anchor point of the Fox X-Men franchise. Granted, the Fox Universe is collapsing and being erased due to Marvel acquisition, not Wolverine's death, but I took it as a reference that the both Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix were not well received and were possibly the worst entries in the franchise (except maybe Wolverine: Origins, but they already made a lot of fun of it in the other Deadpool movies).

 

[Falkus]

Yeah, the whole thing is a metaphor for film franchises getting killed by corporate suits.

 

[Morrus]

Yes, I understand that, because I'm not an idiot. 4th wall breaks do not mean the story has to be incoherent. They go back at least as far as Tristram Shandy or perhaps the Canterbury Tales in English literature alone, and encompass a healthy chunk of the literature of the past five decades. You can have a meaningful story and character development with a postmodern structure. The first Deadpool film, for example. At a highbrow level, the novel The Sympathizer, which I just finished.

Story-wise this film attempts to have its cake and eat it, too. The first two Deadpool films manage to break the 4th wall while still having a coherent story (more or less...less in the case of the second film). This third entry tries to both be part of canon and completely farcical at the same time, with the result that it isn't really a coherent story so much as a series of wacky scenes, with some serious ones thrown in for...contrast, I guess? Someone compared it to Airplane, but I don't think it's that, exactly, because it's trying to be more than pure farce.

For example, Deadpool being aware that he is in a movie and aware of the other movies might affect how he feels about Logan, but we are told repeatedly that that version of Wolverine is a hero in Deadpool's entire world. Is everyone in that world aware that they are in a movie, and aware of the other movies? Are they aware that their setting is simultaneously a near future dystopia but also not really, and that Colossus is both dead but also hanging out with Deadpool or at the X-Mansion with the rest of the gang, who are also both dead and not dead at the same time? Is everyone in on the joke? We are given no evidence of it. Ultimately, the stance of this film is basically, "none of this makes any sense; just go with it and laugh at the dick jokes and cartoon violence." Which are mostly good enough that, fair enough.

Overall, it suffers from the same problem I have with almost all of the recent MCU films and television shows: I can't get seriously invested because the story is incoherent and so none of the relationships really mean anything.

It's basically a bad film elevated by star power. It's a testament to how good Reynolds and Jackman are that I had a fun time in spite of the pointlessness of the film, so that puts it ahead of most of the phase 5 stuff. But it doesn't give me much hope for the MCU going forward.

MCU films used to have content. They need to get back to stories with meaningful stakes.

Edit: here's what I mean by meaningful stakes. Avengers: Endgame has meaningful stakes. But not because the universe is in peril, because we know that it isn't, not really. We go in knowing Thanos will lose and the MCU heroes will be restored. No, it has stakes because we are heavily invested in the character arcs of our heroes, and especially Steve and Tony, and we don't know whether they are going to make it or not. And one of them doesn't! But even though he doesn't get what he wants - a happy ending with his family - Tony gets what he always needed, a life that transcended his enormous ego to finally really mean something. He died a worthwhile human being. And Steve, by learning to be just a little bit selfish, gets what he truly needed, as well, the love of his life. That's the difference between a good story and whatever Marvel has been doing lately. Nothing in Deadpool and Wolverine means anything, and so the best it can be is high quality thrills and low quality, but effective, laughs. Which is not nothing! Overall, I give it a thumbs up because I had fun.

But it could be a lot more. When Scorsese made his "thrill ride" criticism of Marvel movies, I disagreed with him. I thought they were more than that. I don't think that about the current ones.

I dunno, man. It's Naked Gun or Airplane. It's not supposed to be taken seriously.