‘Deadpool and Wolverine’: The carnival monkey that revitalizes Marvel with self-parody | Culture

If around 2015 they had told the specialists and fans of the comic book world that the Marvel Cinematic Universe was going to enter a dangerous drift of satiety, both due to the low quality of some of its latest proposals and the hyperinflation of titles, that the saga of the X-Menthen commanded by Fox, would be sunk in misery after several failed productions and a total artistic disaster like that of Dark Phoenixand that the person in charge of getting them all out of the mess was going to be a cornered-in-the-corners Marvel character called Deadpool, they would have died of laughter. Or maybe of fright.

But that’s how it is. After a period of lethargy with fewer releases, Marvel returns with the self-parody of the most loudmouthed superhero in the universe, that Deadpool who triumphed with his two installments in 2016 and 2018 (782 and 785 million dollars in revenue, respectively), trying to give new shine to his tone of action comedy of parodic self-awareness, summed up in one of the great phrases of the first installment: “Who did this Deadpool fuck to have his own movie?” Eight years later, conceiving himself as a simple “fair monkey”, he not only has his own movie but his own franchise, this time from the hand of Shawn Levy, a specialist in effervescent and Dionysian youth cinema since the saga of Night in the museumand accompanied by one of the big names of the X-Patrol: Wolverine, whom the films had already killed in the twilight Loganand which is now being resurrected because the house of comics and superhero movies can do anything.

In fact, true to that self-flagellation spirit of Marvel in the Deadpool aspect, this third installment, Deadpool and Wolverinebegins with a string of jokes about the complex creative situation. A line that continues throughout the entire film, especially in a very entertaining first half that gives way to a much more serious and uneven second half, although without reaching empty grandiloquence, which brings together all kinds of metalinguistic jokes with which to feed the fans: metanarratives (“no, in the end an extra is going to kill me…”; “shut up, man, you don’t even have a line!”, in response to a hint of a reply); business (“fuck you, Fox!”, and the ruins of the logo of the historic 20th Century Fox, absorbed by Disney, in the middle of an action sequence); psychological-social, about the usual dramas of generation Z; or unrelated to the story itself but around its creators and performers (explicit winks to Kevin Feige, the boss of all this, to James Mangold, director of Loganand for Hugh Jackman’s “career in musicals”), among many others.

Deadpool and Wolverinehowever, has a danger: fans of the films who are not comic book readers may not care, but a certain circle of comic book connoisseurs will probably find the jokes of the self-proclaimed “Jesus Christ of Marvel” a dagger in the center of their sentimental formation around the comics. For those who are convinced that the Marvel universe is only a step below the shakesperianoas for those who love refreshing things and know how to differentiate between arts, but who do not like to be bothered with jokes about their myths and the lack of internal logic.

And they may even be right, because in that supposedly demystifying territory Deadpool and Wolverine It is on the verge of being annoying. A film for connoisseurs, who are legion anyway, it looks like an overwhelming success and, of course, it also has the courage to go all out, even with black comedy. For example, this last button in the form of dialogue:

—I’m going to show you something. Something big.

—That’s what my monitor said too. scout.