I went into Deadpool & Wolverine expecting a loud, overstuffed nostalgia machine with a few decent jokes taped to the outside. That would have been a fair prediction. Marvel’s recent run has made every new release feel like homework, and the multiverse has become an excuse to resurrect anything with a recognisable logo.
Somehow, this film won me over. It is messy, rude, sentimental and aggressively aware of its own ridiculousness, yet that combination works far better than it has any right to. I laughed more than I expected, cared about the emotional stakes, and left the cinema feeling that a superhero film had remembered why people enjoyed superhero films in the first place.
That does not mean Deadpool & Wolverine is flawless. The plot is a stretched piece of string, several jokes arrive with the subtlety of a ute reversing through a shopping-centre car park, and the cameos sometimes feel like a studio showing off its contacts list. Still, I would rather watch a film with too much personality than another polished Marvel product that feels assembled by committee.
There are spoilers ahead, including the major character turns, the ending and the cameos. If you have not seen it yet, save this for after a cinema trip, a streaming rental or a very long flight across Australia. For everyone else, here is why this particular Marvel experiment worked for me.
The basic setup is pure comic-book nonsense. Wade Wilson is living an ordinary life, selling cars and hiding from the heroic identity that once gave him purpose. The Time Variance Authority arrives with an offer: join the wider Marvel universe and become important again. Wade refuses to accept that his story is over, so he steals a Wolverine variant and drags him into a mission involving the survival of his home reality.
That premise could have been nothing more than an excuse for Ryan Reynolds to make jokes about Disney, Hugh Jackman and the previous X-Men films. Instead, the script gives Wade a surprisingly recognisable anxiety. He is terrified that he has peaked, been forgotten or become irrelevant. Beneath the fourth-wall commentary is a character desperate to matter.
This is where the film’s emotional centre sits. Wade wants to save his friends and his universe, but he also wants proof that he still has a place in the story. That is a familiar fear for anyone who has watched a workplace change around them or tried to stay visible in an industry obsessed with the next big thing. The superhero costume is silly; the insecurity is not.
Hugh Jackman’s return could easily have been embarrassing. The character already had a proper farewell in Logan, one of the strongest endings in modern superhero cinema. Bringing Wolverine back risked weakening that final image and turning a meaningful goodbye into another corporate encore.
The clever solution is that this is not exactly the same Wolverine. He is a failed version, a man carrying shame after letting down the people of his world. His yellow suit and claws may be fan-service, but his mood is pure regret. Jackman plays him with a weary physicality that gives the jokes a landing point. Wolverine is not merely grumpy; he is grieving his own reputation.
His chemistry with Reynolds carries the film. Deadpool fills silence because he cannot tolerate it, while Wolverine uses silence as armour. Their arguments, fights and reluctant teamwork have the rhythm of a mismatched buddy comedy. The violence is cartoonish, but the relationship gradually becomes sincere. By the final act, their sacrifice feels earned rather than programmed into the screenplay.
I expected the cameo parade to irritate me. Marvel has trained audiences to scan every frame for an actor from an old franchise, and that habit can make a film feel like an online rumour thread brought to life. Here, the appearances are still indulgent, but many of them serve the story’s theme of abandoned characters looking for another chance.
Seeing familiar faces from the Fox superhero era creates a strange kind of cultural memory. These are characters associated with a different studio, a different tone and a period when superhero movies were still figuring out their identity. The film gives them a brief moment of dignity before sending them back into the chaos. Even the absurd appearances feel connected to the idea that forgotten stories can still have value.
The best surprise is the way these characters make the film feel like a farewell to an entire corporate era. It is less interested in launching ten new spin-offs than in acknowledging the strange, uneven history that led to this crossover. As someone who grew up watching superhero films become a dominant part of pop culture, I found that surprisingly moving.
Emma Corrin brings a sharp, unsettling presence to Cassandra Nova, and the character looks exactly like the sort of nightmare that should make a superhero run for the nearest exit. She has power, menace and a wonderfully unpleasant calmness. The problem is that the film does not give her enough depth to match the energy of its heroes.
Cassandra mostly functions as a threat standing between the characters and their emotional resolution. Her connection to Charles Xavier is mentioned, but the film moves too quickly to explore what that means. The result is a villain who feels visually memorable but dramatically thin. She is dangerous because the script says she is dangerous, rather than because we understand her worldview.
The Void itself has a similar issue. It is a terrific setting for discarded characters, abandoned props and weird visual jokes, but it sometimes feels like a warehouse built to store references. I enjoyed the production design and the sheer strangeness of it, though I wanted the film to linger longer on the people who had been thrown away.
Deadpool’s comedy remains a matter of taste. The jokes are vulgar, self-conscious and often delivered at such speed that a viewer could miss three references while laughing at the first one. Some lines are brilliantly timed; others feel like they were written to produce a reaction on social media rather than deepen the scene.
Still, the film’s humour has a pulse. It mocks superhero formulas, but it also knows that audiences are emotionally invested in those formulas. That distinction matters. Deadpool can insult the Marvel machine while asking us to care about friendship, sacrifice and the possibility of starting again. The film is cynical about the business and sincere about the people caught inside it.
That balance made it more enjoyable in an Australian cinema. There is something particularly satisfying about sitting through a packed session in Melbourne or Sydney and hearing a whole room respond to a joke at once. Even the loudest gags become communal rather than merely obnoxious. A Marvel release remains a shared pop-culture event here, whether you are watching at a suburban multiplex or an independent cinema in Adelaide.
The climax gives Wade and Logan a clear choice: let themselves be destroyed while stopping the machine that threatens Wade’s universe. It is spectacular in the expected way, with glowing energy, impossible physics and an enormous amount of spandex. Yet the scene works because the characters are finally acting from something deeper than brand recognition.
Wade has spent the film trying to prove that he matters. Wolverine has spent it punishing himself for failing to save his people. Their decision to work together turns that shame into something useful. They do not fix the past, and the film does not pretend they can. They simply choose to protect someone else in the present.
I also appreciated that the resolution does not demand an immediate lecture about the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The story closes with friendship, family and a sense of relief. There are still obvious franchise doors left open, but the film allows its characters a moment to breathe before the next corporate announcement arrives.
For Australian audiences, the movie’s appeal fits neatly into the current cinema landscape. Ticket prices can be painful, especially for families, and streaming services have made waiting feel sensible. A film like this has to justify the outing, the overpriced popcorn and the lost evening. Deadpool & Wolverine did that for me because the crowd energy, big-screen action and emotional payoff were worth experiencing outside the lounge room.
I liked it because it feels less like a perfect product than a confident mess with an actual point of view. It knows Marvel is tired, knows audiences are tired and still manages to find some life in the rubble. The film’s sincerity sneaks in through the jokes, the cameos become a kind of farewell, and the central friendship gives the spectacle a human shape.
That is my hot take: the latest Marvel movie did not restore my faith in the entire cinematic universe, and it does not need to. It gave me two charismatic actors, a ridiculous road trip through superhero history and enough genuine feeling to make the fan service worthwhile. For once, I left a Marvel film wanting to talk about what I had seen rather than immediately checking the release calendar.
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