Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’

The Big Picture

Deadpool & Wolverine
disrespects a legendary Marvel character in Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine/Logan.
Throughout the movie, Deadpool also pokes fun at Blade, Johnny Storm, and Gambit.
Deadpool mocks the MCU and its weak spots, showcasing its unique blend of disrespect and underlying respect for characters.

Sometimes a kiss with a fist is better than none, and Deadpool & Wolverine seems to have followed that philosophy. The film markets itself as a sloppy love letter to the Fox Marvel Universe and, more specifically, to Hugh Jackman’s over 20-year-long run as Wolverine. You can’t say it doesn’t pay proper respect to those that paved the way for Marvel’s possibly-starting-to-wane success, but it spends an inordinate amount of time actively spitting on the same grave it’s laying flowers on. It makes for many of the best moments of the film, if only because it shows that Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) hasn’t been completely neutered by being invited into Disney. The film is at its funniest when it owns how unconcerned it is with potentially pissing off fans, best exemplified by the opening title credits sequence with Wade utterly defiling Logan’s skeleton to take down the TVA.

Deadpool & Wolverine Wolverine joins the “merc with a mouth” in the third installment of the Deadpool film franchise.Release Date July 26, 2024 Runtime 128 minutes Writers Rob Liefeld , Fabian Nicieza , Paul Wernick , Wendy Molyneux , Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin Studio Marvel Studios Expand

Why Does Deadpool Kill TVA Agents?
When Deadpool gets abducted by the TVA and told by TVA agent Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) to find and kill the Wolverine (Jackman) from his timeline, Deadpool instead decides to steal a TemPad and go find that Logan so they can save the timeline. Deadpool winds up teleporting to the forest where the finale of Logan occurred, thinking he’ll find Logan still alive, thanks to his regenerative healing powers. But alas, Logan is fully dead and buried right where his daughter, X-23 (Dafne Keen), left him as nothing but an Adamantium skeleton. Upon finding the skeleton, a smorgasbord of TVA agents arrive and request Deadpool to come quietly with them. Predictably, he persisted, and in a stroke of mad genius, he uses every last one of Logan’s 206 metal bones to kill every last agent that comes his way. Oh, and in the middle of all this, he somehow takes time out to dance to *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye,” just to flex on them.

Deadpool Completely Disrespects Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, and ‘Logan’

The disrespect started way before the fight. When Deadpool finds Logan’s skeleton, he’s so angry that he isn’t alive that he pounds the skeleton with his shovel. He noodles with Logan’s jaw while giving him a bad Australian accent, poking fun at Hugh Jackman’s real-world nationality. Before Deadpool actually decides he’s going to use the skeleton as a weapon, we hear Deadpool in voice-over assert that he, in fact, will not respect the legacy of Logan, despite it being a perfect ending. Not only that, but the way he uses the bones is flagrantly juvenile, constantly going for nut shots and shoving Logan’s claws up dudes’ asses and ripping Logan’s teeth out to use as bullets. Chopped limbs and yeeted bodies abound, with some juicy neck breaks thrown in that would have Zack Snyder’s Batman grinning. The intercutting of him dancing, combined with the song choice, adds more insult to injury, making Logan’s corpse a lubrication for puffing up Deadpool’s ego as a troublemaker.

So what’s the big deal? It’s more Deadpool being irreverent and crass and gross, exactly what made his first two films such smash hits. But those two films largely remained quite glib about character deaths, never really keeping a character we cared about dead (see: Wade time-travelling to save Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) from being killed) or killing characters we had no attachment to or thought were stupid in gratuitous fashion (see: the slaughter of the X-Force in Deadpool 2). But with Logan’s death, there’s an actual risk of insulting an entire fandom by making light of it, since Logan has been properly anointed as a highpoint in the superhero genre of the past few years.

Logan was a film that got even the most superhero-averse critics of the genre to acknowledge how it felt like a “real film” and had Hugh Jackman giving one of the finest performances of his career, and even got some rare love from the Academy with an Adapted Screenplay nomination. Not to mention the way Hugh Jackman’s popularity as Logan is so vital to superhero films even flourishing as the dominant Hollywood force in the first place, with the entire Fox X-Men franchise being built around his presence. To make light of his exit, let alone (once again, for emphasis) gleefully use his entire skeleton as a weapon of mass destruction is a potentially treacherous way of opening a film that’s supposed to be an earnest tribute to the highs and lows of the Fox era of Marvel.

Deadpool Also Pokes Fun at Blade, Elektra, Johnny Storm, and Gambit

While this makes for one of the funniest scenes in the whole film, it stands as an important mission statement for the film’s intentions: it may love the characters of Logan and the Fox-era Marvel properties, but it will show that by mercilessly mocking them in borderline hurtful ways. Deadpool is, after all, a kind of nag, who must denigrate even the few people he actually cares for, because he isn’t comfortable being 100% sincere about any of his emotions. It’s a vote of confidence that Deadpool (both the character and the film) doesn’t hold back on mocking even the very people the film wants the audience to think fondly of, almost as his way of inducting them into his version of the cool club. Take the first person they encounter in the Void: Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), who seems to have gotten a revamp as a Bronx-affected jerk with a bad pompadour and attitude. While feeling more like Evans’ post-MCU characters like in The Gray Man than the Johnny Storm he actually played in the Fox Fantastic Four films, Evans is so in his zone of continuing to play a-holes that it’s utterly delightful. Johnny spends so much time getting knocked down a peg that it borders on character assassination, ranging from Deadpool being disappointed he isn’t Captain America to him getting immediately trounced in combat by the vastly inferior Pyro (Aaron Stanford). The only reason that it doesn’t come as profoundly insulting is that it gives audiences one more chance to see Chris Evans go “flame on,” which is a guaranteed pop, and the film quickly proves that everybody gets an equal amount of dirt thrown on them.

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When Deadpool and Logan meet some previous era Marvel characters, which include Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and Gambit (Channing Tatum), the film makes sure to get good zingers off at the expense of each of them. He refers to the real-life divorce of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck by telling Elektra he’s sorry about “what happened with Daredevil,” and she shrugs it off like it’s nothing, which can be read as a sign of solidarity towards Garner. Blade insists that he’s the only Blade that will ever exist, which is potentially a pretty staggering swipe at Marvel Studios’ complete inability to get the Mahershala Ali reboot off the ground, while also gassing up how vital Snipes’ films were to making superhero films mainstream. Deadpool can barely resist laying into how awful Tatum’s Louisiana accent is, accusing him of taking dialect lessons from the Minions. Given how each of these characters wind up getting to be genuine heroes in the climax and Deadpool treats them as teammates, it communicates that a healthy level of disrespect paves the way towards Deadpool having actual respect towards people.

Deadpool Isn’t Afraid To Mock the MCU’s Weak Spots Since ‘Avengers: Endgame’
Image via Marvel

By extension, the disrespect-to-respect pipeline also applies to the film’s treatment of the current MCU and Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman themselves. Deadpool lets Logan know that he’s finally entering the MCU at a down point, referring to the numerous duds and production nightmares the MCU has recently endured. When Deadpool meets Nice Deadpool (de-aged Ryan Reynolds), it’s just a nonstop barrage of Deadpool mocking him for being too soft and treating him like a doormat, going so far as to call him “Van Milder,” a reference to one of Reynolds’ first big films, Van Wilder. At one point, Deadpool threatens someone by saying Logan will sing the entire second act of The Music Man, a shot at Jackman’s well-known background as a musical theater veteran.

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’s Disrespect for ‘Logan’ Is the Ultimate Tribute
Image via Marvel Studios

Considering the vice grip that Disney has on all things “taste” or “controversial” in terms of what they allow in their films, it’s impressive that director Shawn Levy and Reynolds threw this much dirt on so many beloved people and properties, especially since Disney now owns those Fox properties and could run the risk of sullying their new toys. But the film turns around and is so warm-hearted in its validation of those that came before the MCU, most notably Hugh Jackman, that all those digs feel more like jokes told at a career-honoring roast, where everybody who just talked trash about you for the past few hours did so out of tribute to your life’s work. Deadpool & Wolverine, ultimately, is a much more wholesome service of respect to Hugh Jackman than its deceptive flaunting of bad taste would lead you to believe, as best exemplified by starting it off by turning Logan’s skeleton into Deadpool’s own personal armory.

Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters now.

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