Hugh Jackman Is the Best Superhero Actor Ever

The following post contains SPOILERS for Deadpool & Wolverine. The movie came out more than two months ago, guys. 

Deadpool & Wolverine might be the first movie I have seen in my entire life that made less sense on a second viewing.

The first time through, I was so busy keeping track of the endless parade of cameos and nonstop Ryan Reynolds one-liners, that I didn’t fully register just how nonsensical the plot is from top to bottom. Deadpool quits being a superhero because he wanted to be an Avenger, and they rejected him — but the Avengers don’t even exist in his reality, so why should he even care? The Fox X-Men universe is in danger of collapsing because its “anchor being” died — but if that’s the case how did it exist for the billions of years before that being was born? Cassandra Nova creates a portal out of the Void because the heroes tell her that her brother, Charles Xavier, loved her and would have saved her if he knew about her — but Cassandra already told them Xavier tried to kill her in the womb. Did he love her or hate her? And on and on and on.

There really is just one thing holding this film together, and it ain’t Ryan Reynolds calling himself Marvel Jesus over and over. It’s Hugh Jackman, giving an incredibly emotional performance that is all the more impressive because it comes in Deadpool & Wolverine, a film that otherwise exists to mock superhero movies in general and itself specifically.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised Jackman is so good in this movie. For a quarter of a century, Fox put this man in movies that, with very few exceptions, ranged from so-so to absolute garbage. Time and again, he elevated the material he was handed with conspicuous dedication and fiery intensity. He brought authenticity to one X-Men sequel after another. At this point, I think it can be stated as fact: No one has been a better actor in superhero movies for longer than Hugh Jackman.

READ MORE: Deadpool Was Actually the Perfect Marvel Hero

Jackman has appeared in a couple good X-Men films through the years. The first two X-Men from the early 2000s were really the first Marvel movies in history to capture even a fraction of the flavor of their popular source material. Jackman was also the lynchpin of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the solid crossover sequel that united the two X-Men movie franchises. And he was sensational in his first swan song to Wolverine, 2017’s Logan, where he was finally given an R-rated venue to showcase the character’s full range of emotions and penchant for bloody violence.

But more often than not Jackman was the highlight of otherwise disappointing movies, like X-Men: The Last Stand, an ugly and muddled adaptation of the classic “Dark Phoenix Saga” that’s occasionally kind of watchable because Jackman is so locked in on Logan’s doomed relationship with Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey. Jackman somehow kept a straight face marching through one of the worst Marvel movies in history; his grizzled gravitas is the only thing that disaster has going for it.

He even brightened up maybe the worst of the main X-Men movies, X-Men: Apocalypse, in an unannounced cameo where he recreated Wolverine’s famous “Weapon X” origin story from Marvel Comics. Jackman had already attempted one version of this story in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (That would be the aforementioned Marvel movie that was maybe the worst ever made.) Given a second chance to adapt this popular storyline, Jackman made the most of it.

Wearing a goofy hi-tech headband and wolfish wig while stripped to the waist and covered in cables, Jackman is somehow absolutely terrifying as this savage animal of a man who tears apart a whole legion of goons with his bare hands (and claws). Jackman appears in X-Men: Apocalypse for about three minutes, never says a single word, and is still the only memorable part of the movie.

Jackman’s Marvel filmography is all the more admirable because his movies were so often disappointing; he was as impervious to bad material as his signature character is to bullets and stab wounds. He always brought his A game, even in B (or, let’s be honest, C or D) material. He’s the movie equivalent of Walter Johnson, the Hall of Fame pitcher who repeatedly led the Major Leagues in strikeouts despite pitching for the hapless Washington Senators. (Johnson’s plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame notes that he “won 414 games with losing team behind him many years.” Way to roast the Washington Senators, Baseball Hall of Fame plaque writer.)

To be clear, Deadpool & Wolverine is a much more entertaining movie than X-Men: Apocalypse or X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But on a rewatch, with the novelty of its slew of unpredictable cameos thoroughly worn off, its first 35 minutes are awfully slow-going — until the exact moment Jackman’s Wolverine joins the story.

Even after Jackman shows up, Deadpool & Wolverine is still about characters who cannot be killed; the title heroes both possess mutant healing abilities, and they have several extended fight scenes where they hack and shoot each other repeatedly with zero long-term effects. Thanks to the concept of the multiverse, which contains infinite variations of every Marvel character, death is also utterly meaningless. After all, the fundamental premise of Deadpool & Wolverine is that Wolverine is dead and Deadpool must find another Wolverine to take his place.

Deadpool & Wolverine asks a ton of Jackman: Most centrally, it needs to make us care about a character who already got one heroic death and ending to his story. The script (credited to five writers, including Reynolds) tells us — but never shows us — this new Wolverine’s tragic backstory: Humans stormed the Xavier School and killed all of the other X-Men while he wasn’t there, in response to Wolverine going on an unexplained human killing spree of his own. (Wait, human were so angry at Wolverine that they killed all the X-Men except Wolverine? This is yet another part of the movie that gets more confusing the longer you think about it. Anyway, we’re getting off track.)

The film wants us to feel something about the murders of characters who never appear onscreen — and who exist in countless other variants all throughout the Marvel multiverse. And yet, in a movie where there are essentially no stakes because the heroes can be reborn or plucked from alternate timelines as long as Marvel is willing to pay a popular actor their quote, we do come to care about this “worst” Wolverine and his pain. The only reason is Jackman, who injects so much pathos into this tortured man’s broken soul. Death should be irrelevant in Deadpool & Wolverine, but Jackman makes us feel the scar this loss left on this man.

Jackman’s work in Deadpool & Wolverine makes it the perfect coda for and tribute to the Fox X-Men universe. So many of those films were silly, yet Jackman remained devoutly committed to the reality of Wolverine’s arduous psychological journey. (He also remained devoutly committed to eating nothing but brown rice and chicken for years on end to maintain the reality of Wolverine’s swole physique.) Deadpool & Wolverine is maybe the silliest of all the X-Men movies — intentionally so — and yet Jackman gives maybe his single best performance as Wolverine in it.

Deadpool & Wolverine’s box office proves how excited audiences were to see Jackman back in this role, and he generally got solid reviews. I still don’t think he’s gotten enough credit for how great he is in this and all these movies. He’s never treated any of them like a paycheck. He’s never phoned in a moment. The guy truly is the best there is at what he does.