The Big Picture

Deadpool & Wolverine
reunites Marvel characters, but overused nostalgia impacts story development.
The film brings back classic Fox characters for their send-off but struggles with ensuring they have a meaningful presence.
MCU’s reliance on nostalgia, seen in the film, detracts from individual project potential and story cohesiveness.

One of Marvel’s biggest successes in quite some time, Deadpool & Wolverine, is also one of the biggest films of the summer and 2024. The unlikely buddy picture sees Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) team up with a Logan variant (Hugh Jackman) to stop the destruction of Wade’s world by the Time Variance Authority. Along the way, they come face to face with a fiercely malevolent villain, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), have hilarious and raunchy banter, and join forces with many long-lost Marvel characters. While it’s undeniably epic to reunite with some of the best Pre-MCU characters, it is hard to ignore a larger lingering problem that has plagued many of Marvel’s theatrical outings as of late: An over-reliance on nostalgia that sacrifices important story and thematic elements.

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

Nostalgia Clutters ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’
One of Deadpool’s most appealing elements is his fourth-wall-breaking antics. His over-the-top references touch nearly every corner of pop culture, including the company shake-ups that kept the character in limbo for so long. As the MCU’s most meta-character, the film took the cinematic universe’s penchant for mash-ups to the next level, bringing back many formerly retired characters from the days of 20th Century Fox. The titular characters were joined by Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), Daredevil’s Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Logan’s Laura/X-23 (Dafne Keen), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and (perhaps most surprising of all) Gambit (Channing Tatum) from the canceled X-Men spin-off.

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While it’s incredibly exciting to see the original stars return to the roles that have faded into superhero movie history, it does create an incredibly filled roster in a movie that already had a lot of plot to juggle. With two powerful villains and a collapsing universe on the line, a lot more time is spent with the returning characters, as opposed to the “here and now.” Cassandra Nova specifically suffers from not getting enough screen time. From the moment she appears, she’s clearly one of the most malevolent MCU villains to ever grace the screen, with abilities that would make the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) squeamish. Emotionally, she has deep complexities hinted at, though audiences never get enough detail to feel for her in the same way as other MCU baddies. By the time she meets her end, it’s a shame to see her go before she’s had a real chance to shine. The same could be said about many of the highly anticipated characters that were advertised to audiences. Lady Deadpool created quite a stir when she was revealed to be a part of the adventure. Yet, she is just another one of the Deadpool variants and ends up being forgettable, and a little disappointing. But the debut characters weren’t the only ones who deserved better treatment.

The Fox Characters in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Deserved Better

The main reason the film brought back so many Fox characters was to give them a proper send-off. While it’s certainly a thoughtful way to bring them back for one last hurrah, it isn’t all that well planned. Garner is certainly fantastic as Elektra, but the Daredevil film was never all that popular with audiences (and currently holds a 43% critic rating and 35% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes), which hurts a lot of the sentimentality of the role. In the case of Johnny Storm, he did come from a mostly well-received classic, which makes his bloody ending jarring. The argument could be made that this Johnny is perhaps a variant and not the same one from the Fantastic Four films, but without that confirmation, it makes rewatching the original movies rather bleak.

The characters do indeed get an epic battle, as Deadpool and Wolverine fight Cassandra to get back to Wade’s universe, but considering that this isn’t the final stand, it feels like a hallow farewell to the legacy players. While a nostalgia reel rolls during the credits, it’s hard to feel the level of melancholy that the filmmakers intended with such flat execution for characters that weren’t always the most beloved from the beginning. But Deadpool & Wolverine can’t be blamed for its nostalgia problems. After all, it’s one of the best entries from the MCU since Avengers: Endgame. The fault, instead, lies with the MCU as a whole.

The MCU Relies Too Much on Nostalgia

Ever since the Infinity Saga came to an end, the MCU has been less consistent critically, a falter that Deadpool & Wolverine acknowledges. While many have expressed their discontentment with the Multiverse Saga story as a whole, the films have attempted to recover with the use of nostalgia. While it’s always fun to look back, the problem has been growing ever since the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home. Uniting Tom Holland’s Peter Parker with those of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield generated a lot of great buzz from moviegoers, films and shows that followed began bulking up on the reminiscence factor, and it’s ultimately hurt the potential of those individual projects. In fact, Spider-Man itself didn’t hold up for some once they looked past the fan service, with Forbes saying the film “gets caught up in nostalgia and fan service,” and Collider pointing out that the filmhas a direction problem with major players like Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), getting lost in the mash-up.

Thor: Love and Thunder is perhaps the worst offender, as it fails not just its villain, Gorr (Christian Bale) but its nostalgic character, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Jane’s return as Lady Thor was an exciting way to reinvent the character, but killing her off to set up Thor’s relationship with Love (India Rose Hemsworth) makes Jane’s involvement feel like a letdown. While Deadpool & Wolverine doesn’t offend in the same way that its predecessors do, it does point out that the MCU’s nostalgia problem is ongoing.

Deadpool & Wolverine is an extremely entertaining ride, but its reliance on nostalgia continues a troubling trend for the MCU. Instead of focusing on building up their struggling Multiverse Saga, the cinematic universe continues to rely on reminding moviegoers of better days. With the announcement that Robert Downey Jr. is returning as Doom, it seems the trend will continue for some time to come.

Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing in theaters. Click below for showtimes.

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