The Beat’s Gregory Paul Silber has been accused of having a bit of an… obsessive personality. In Silber Linings, he takes a humorous look at the weirdest, funniest, and most obscure bits of comics and pop culture that he can’t get out of his head.
Spoilers ahead for Logan and Deadpool & Wolverine.
Like many of you, I saw Deadpool & Wolverine this week. On one hand, I enjoyed it. It had some solid fight scenes, was delightfully (if sometimes cloyingly) meta, and I laughed at most of its rapid-fire jokes, many of which were quite filthy. You already know if you want to see this movie from the title alone; if you like Deadpool and/or Wolverine, you’ll probably have a great time.
On the other hand… well, let’s get into it.
The last time we saw Wolverine on the big screen was in 2017’s Logan. Emphasis on “last” because at the time, it was hyped as Hugh Jackman‘s final outing as the title character that he’d been playing since the original X-Men film in 2000. It was similarly touted as Sir Patrick Stewart‘s last hurrah as Professor Charles Xavier. Both actors eventually did return, first with a brief yet memorable Professor X cameo in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and this year with Jackman as one half of Deadpool & Wolverine, alongside Ryan Reynolds in his third outing as the titular “Merc With A Mouth.”
As much as I love Jackman and Stewart in their respective roles, I was initially irked that in bringing these characters back, it somewhat diminished the sense of satisfying finality that Logan once boasted. That’s hardly the only thing that made it my second favorite superhero movie (next to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse of course). With so many blockbusters over the past few decades endlessly teasing sequel after sequel, there was something special about a superhero movie that actually ends.
It ended on a high note, too, especially considering the wildly fluctuating quality of the other X-Men films. There were some real stinkers in there, like 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Logan was so good that it made sticking with the title character through all those movies, good and bad and mediocre, feel worthwhile.
Another part of what made Logan work so well was that it was less concerned with being a superhero movie than just being a great movie, period. I rewatched it last week, and was struck by how it managed to be grounded without seeming embarrassed by its own genre. Logan is so moving and earnest that it’s one of only a handful of movies that made me cry: I was BAWLING by the end when Laura (Daphne Keen) turned the cross on Logan’s makeshift grade into an X, honoring her clone/father’s legacy as a signature member of the X-Men.
With all that being said, you might assume that I resented Deadpool & Wolverine for dishonoring Logan‘s legacy. Deadpool himself said as much, before breaking into a brutal and hilarious fight scene set to N*Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye” while using Logan’s adamantium skeleton as a weapon. They may have desecrated the corpse of one of the great superhero deaths of all time, but in spite of myself, I had a great time from the get-go. I was laughing too hard to care about what all this multiversal madness and corporate merger shenanigans meant for Logan.
Deadpool & Wolverine is not as great as Logan, but it’s the most fun I had with a superhero movie in a long time. I look forward to seeing it again, largely because I had to have missed several jokes because I was too busy laughing at the last one. The humor is that dense and layered, despite largely revolving around crude scatological and sexual quips.
In-jokes about corporate mergers and failed superhero movies from decades ago might sound tedious, but they’re so brash and bold that I couldn’t help but laugh to the point that I had to catch my breath at certain points. Deadpool has long been known for his metafictional self-awareness; he knows that he exists in a fictional universe (several of them, in fact). But this was the first Deadpool movie that really felt like it was taking full advantage of that facet of Wade Wilson’s characterization.
There was plenty of fourth-wall breaking in the previous two Deadpool movies, but I would hardly call the films themselves meta. After all, the fourth-wall breaks didn’t amount to much more than jokes. They’re funny movies, and there’s nothing wrong with a joke just for the sake of the joke itself, but the meta-ness of those films didn’t have a whole lot to say. That changed with Deadpool & Wolverine.
As cameos abound, one of the themes of Deadpool & Wolverine seems to be that every story matters to someone, no matter how critically reviled or commercially unsuccessful. The 2003 Daredevil film may not be fondly remembered, but damn it, I liked it, and I was glad to see Jennifer Garner reprise her role as Elektra.
That Channing Tatum Gambit movie never even happened, but it was in various stages of development for so long that there were surely fans delighted to see Tatum in the classic costume for his surprisingly substantial D & P role. Even the mid-credits scene, a series of outtakes from a bygone era of early 2000s superhero films, felt like a statement of intent: sure, those films might not have the streamlined big-budget appeal of the MCU, but they were apparently fun to make and still have passionate fans.
Just like how every superhero is somebody’s favorite, every superhero movie is somebody’s favorite. Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t my favorite, but it certainly won me over, and I suspect it will be a fan favorite among many others for decades to come. And while it may have literally and figuratively desecrated Logan‘s corpse, both movies stand on their own as great superhero films.
