Movie Review - Deadpool & Wolverine

Deadpool & Wolverine [2024]

So yeah, what is there to say about this movie? Hailed as the movie that 'saved the MCU' during its less-than-stellar Phase Five, Deadpool & Wolverine does admittedly put a to of focus back on the characters and the superheroes, and did so in a drought of good superhero content. Admittedly a good chunk of it is due to star power -- Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds, and their respective characters, are extremely popular. But among the comic-book fandom, having the major properties like the X-Men be properly integrated into the 'main' MCU has always been a massive pipe dream.

But, of course, the Multiverse ended up being a whole load of teases that never paid off (with the sole exception of Spider-Man: No Way Home), and that's even if they do anything with it in the first place.

And this movie... isn't exactly the 'canon-welding' event that people wanted, but it's close enough and, more importantly, fun enough that the movie was a really great experience. There is, admittedly, a rather impressive amount of comic-book-movie you need to understand before watching this movie... but it also kind of works in-universe, which is impressive. They do give an info-dump on a lot of what you need to know just to follow this movie, but basically, the TVA from Loki decide to bring Deadpool over to the 'sacred timeline' of the primary MCU universe. Turns out the TVA agent Mr. Paradox is actually there to prune the rest of Deadpool's universe. And Deadpool ends up escaping, recruiting 'the worst' Wolverine. Hijinks ensue as they lampoon every aspect of the MCU and Fox's movie franchises, and they eventually encounter and fight against Cassandra Nova and even recruited a bunch of superheroes whose movie-series were long-cancelled.

And... written on paper, I really didn't think the movie would work well... but it somehow did. Just like the animated Spider-Verse movies, this movie is chock-full with cameos and references that should, by rights, overload the movie... but we move from one to the next with such ease and so much focus on our main characters -- Deadpool, Wolverine and Cassandra Nova -- that the rest of the cameos just become entertaining background noise, but a huge 'fuck, I remember that guy, that's Azazel!' or 'holy shit, Age of Apocalypse got referenced'! A lot of the jokes are, I think, fun enough that alternative joke interpretation kicks in even if you don't 'get' it. Most of the jokes also don't stick and overstay their welcome, and the actual self-deprecation that Deadpool does towards Disney-Marvel is actually quite refreshing.

After a similar "mid-action you must be wandering how we got here" to his first movie, Deadpool brings the movie to a quick recap of Deadpool 2's ending. We establish that Deadpool has done a lot of time-traveling with Cable's time machine... and a huge chunk of this movie has Deadpool basically feeling like a loser. He actually shows up in the 'Sacred Timeline' and tries to interview into the Avengers and gets rejected by Happy Hogan. And over the next six years, Wade's obsession over this has costed him his relationship with his girlfriend Vanessa. This leads to a rather happy birthday party, still, where all of Deadpool's colourful friends show up... 

...only for agent of the TVA to appear. With a glorious joke where Deadpool mistakes them for strippers, they eventually bring Deadpool to the TVA headquarters, where both Deadpool and the audience get a huge exposition about what the TVA does, the existence of the sacred timeline and the multiverse. It's a bit of a clever bit of exposition, and thematically it even works with where Wade is as a character at the moment. He's offered a place on the 'sacred' MCU timeline, or Earth-616... but the rest of his universe is going to be pruned.

(Which, of course, is a cheeky allegory of how some people expected the Disney/Fox merger was going to go, with a pick-and-choose methodology to the character-actor combos that make it to the MCU). 

Mr. Paradox, who is technically the main antagonist of this movie but quickly gets subsumed by a different, more immediate threat, also explains that the 'Anchor Being' of Deadpool's corner of the universe, Wolverine, has died.. and that his universe is doomed either way. Again, another allegory to the 'death' of the whole Fox-X-Men movie series, but presented in a way that makes sense in-universe. 

Unwilling to accept that his universe is doomed, and in a way that he is, once more, not as important as he thinks he is, Deadpool steals a Tem-Pad from the TVA and goes off to... the grave where Wolverine is buried at the end of Logan. Now Logan is probably one of the best superhero movies ever made, and always noted to be a perfect cap-off to the Wolverine's cinematic history as actor Hugh Jackman retires. And... I both love and hate that this movie actually desecrates that ending by having Deadpool literally dig up Wolverine's corpse and ne utilize said corpse in the subsequent action scene... but I also appreciate that they didn't resurrect this Wolverine specifically and that they acknowledge how well this movie ended. 

Because, yes, this is where the movie opening happens, with the TVA agents charging in at Deadpool, and Deadpool weaponizing Wolverine's adamantium skeleton to deliver a brutal, R-rated beating to the TVA agents to the tune of 'NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye". 

This then continues to a heavy-on-the-fanservice sequence as Deadpool jumps from one universe to the next trying to recruit a Wolverine to bring home as the Anchor Being of his universe. Going from Age of Apocalypse to Patch to Old Man Logan to a gloriously comic-accurate brown outfit Wolverine, all of these sequences end up with Wolverine beating the shit out of Deadpool. 

Ultimately, Deadpool recruits a Wolverine -- one that's going to be our Wolverine for the rest of the movie. And for the first time in cinema, this Wolverine wears a proper superhero outfit! Admittedly it's a 'MCU-ified' version of the classic yellow and blue, but the colours and the mask are right. Can't complain too much. 

The two return to the TVA, but apparently anchor beings can't be so easily replaced. Additionally, Paradox identifies this Wolverine as "the Worst Wolverine", one that failed to save the rest of the X-Men, pouring more salt to the wound. However, Deadpool realizes the inconsistencies in Paradox's claims, and deduces that he's acting without the knowledge of his supervisors. 

Paradox zaps Deadpool and Wolverine, sending the two tumbling into the desert realm where everything 'pruned' by the TVA go to -- the Void. Here, Deadpool and Wolverine get into a pretty fun fight, which Deadpool defuses by telling Wolverine that the TVA would have the technology to undo the deaths in Wolverine's timeline. They get interrupted by villains, however... and very fun villains, too -- using a mixture of returning actors or lookalikes, the entire villainous faction is made up of former X-Men villains like Pyro, Toad, Juggernaut, Azazel, Lady Deathstrike and Sabretooth. 

A group of such villains arrive in what Deadpool describes rather accurately as a 'Mad Max' parody, leading to a fight between Wolverine and Sabretooth. For as much as Deadpool hypes it up as a fight between rivals, this particular fight ends very quickly and abruptly, although to be perfectly fair it did get an actual spotlight on it. (I really did miss Liev Schreiber version, though).

We also have one of the most glorious cameos ever, as one of the denizens of the Void is a guy in a hood that sounds like Captain America, acts like Captain America... and Deadpool is excited to hear his catchphrase of "Avengers Assemble"... but it's actually Chris Evans' other superhero character! The Human Torch yells "flame on!" and flies into battle but gets trounced by Pyro.

Again, this is the kind of ridiculous but loving references to he superhero genre as a whole that should not have worked... but it does. 

Deadpool, Wolverine and Human Torch get captured and taken to the overlord of the Void, Cassandra Nova. Human Torch gives us some backstory on her, revealing how she's been ruling the denizens of the Void with an iron fist (or, well, creepy psychic fingers) and how there are a lot of universes with their own heroes and villains that were pruned and sent to the Void. Oh, and she is the evil twin sister to Professor X, and the movie showcases her mindfuckery very well with the visual effect of fingers literally wiggling through your face. 

Thanks to some seemingly ill-advised comments on Deadpool's part (which as the post-credits show, turn out to not be actual lies) Cassandra kills Human Torch very graphically, stripping the skin and flesh off his bones and turning him into a pile of graphic goop. Cassandra's psychic powers prove to be extremely powerful even without the aid of her army of superpowered mutants, but the fight is interrupted when the giant cosmic smoke monster that lives in the Void, Alioth, show up. It's a pretty fun nod to the MCU without overloading the show with even more cameos. 

Escaping Alioth with a Sentinel boot, we get a sequence where they meet more Deadpool variants, like "Nicepool" (who is just Ryan Reynolds without the cancerous makeup he wears as Wade) and Dogpool (played by "the world's ugliest dog", and is a good dog), which is mostly just there for gags and to set up the appearance of the Deadpool corps later on. 

At this point, Deadpool accidentally lets it slip that he isn't certain that the TVA is actually able to fix timelines, leading to a very furious Wolverine attacking Deadpool, in a nice subversion of their little bonding moment. It's around this time that we also learn of this "Worst Wolverine's" backstory, where he also views himself as a bit of a loser thanks to being unable to save the X-Men of his timeline. The two of them fight, giving us the biggest Deadpool/Wolverine fight in this movie which, again, is pretty fun choreography that makes full use of the two characters' healing factors. 

They wake up and find themselves in a resistance base, which, in another glorious cameo, is made up of other actors whose superhero movies and franchises are cancelled and have reverted back to Marvel. We've got Blade from the Blade trilogy, Elektra from the Daredevil movies, and Gambit from a movie that didn't even get made. It's just so nice to see Wesley Snipes back as Blade, y'know? Blade and Elektra are played straight, while the movie has a lot of fun with the funky accent that Gambit has. The last member of their group is Laura "X-23" Kinney, all grown up. 

Deadpool glosses over the death of Human Torch, and manages to convince these other heroes to team up with him to fight against Cassandra Nova. We get a nice dramatic scene where Laura walks up to Logan, and while Logan isn't convinced that he can be the hero that Laura wants to see in him, Laura tells Logan that he is the Wolverine whatever things may be. It's a pretty nice, dramatic character-driven moment.

The assembled heroes charge into Cassandra's base, and this is the big badass fight scene which I really don't want to describe beat by beat. But having all of these heroes fight against the X-Men villains, with powers being accurately represented? It really is extremely fun to see. X-23, Blade, Gambit and Elektra fight against the rest of the evil villains, which gives us a lot of fun action sequences. Most notable is Elektra killing Bullseye, which is a small moment but a very nice one for her. Blade also takes down motherfuckers like a mofo. I am a huge Hugh Jackman/Wolverine fanboy, but seeing Blade of all people get so much screentime is a blessing.

While this is going on, Wolverine and Deadpool go against Cassandra... at which point we're treated to some creepy mind-fuckery. Wolverine is forced to contend with the dead X-Men he failed to protect in a creepy misty tombstone-hallucination, while Deadpool gets shoved into a hallucination where his closest friends talk him down... but the imagined Vanessa telling Deadpool that he'll never fucking matter ends up jolting him out of his reverie. With their allies killing Juggernaut and getting his helmet, Deadpool and Wolverine manage to disable Cassandra and they have her dead-to-rights.

However, Pyro, having been in contact with Paradox, betrays and leaves a mortal wound on Cassandra. And in a rather stupid -- but in-character -- move, Wolverine has a "what would Professor X do" moment and resolves to save Cassandra, convincing Deadpool to remove the helmet. While Cassandra does hold her word long enough to send Deadpool and Wolverine back to Deadpool's home universe, she quickly kills Pyro, finds out about the Time Ripper, and goes off to enact her multiverse-destroying plan. Which... I think it is important that we do show that for all the gore and cynicism that our heroes in this movie show, they are still heroes at the end of the day. 

The final act takes place in Earth-10005, Deadpool's dimension, as Cassandra Nova kills Pyro and steals the Dr. Strange portal ring to travel there. Having learned of the "Time Ripper" device that the TVA owns, Cassandra reveals her master plan of utilizing the Time Ripper to destroy all timelines and return it to the Void... which... okay, sure. She's not the most right in the head, as established by Wolverine's attempt to spare her and talk things out. 

Cassandra also summons her final army -- the Deadpool Corps, made up of various Deadpool variants. We've got a bunch of comic-book cameos, and again, it's a fun sequence that highlights the absurdity and creativity of comic-book artists. We get some black comedy as Nicepool gets killed by Deadpool's actions, before our two heroes bond over their shared cause and friendship, and charge into battle. We get a cool sequence of Deadpool variants being mangled and mauled as the fight goes through a bus, and the seemingly killed Deadpool variants all getting back up because of the healing factor. The arrival of Deadpool's buddy Peter ends up causing the Deadpool Corps to disperse, however. 

Deadpool and Wolverine charge in to try and stop the Time Ripper, but Paradox tells them that even with their healing powers, trying to stop the device would kill them. We get a pretty fun "who gets to sacrifice himself" as the theme of being the biggest loser plays out, and it almost seems to lead to Wolverine (who's played by an actor who retired once, and comes from a universe without X-Men anyway) going to do it... but of course, friendship prevails and Deadpool charges in, and the two of them together manage to stop the device, overload Cassandra Nova and survive in the process.

And shirts explode. Of course shirts explode. 

The movie ends with Hunter B-15 from the TVA arriving to arrest Paradox, and thank Deadpool because his actions have saved the deterioration of his universe. Wolverine ends up staying in Deadpool's universe and bond with him and his friends... and even Laura gets to stay with them. A nice ending!

And... is the movie messy? It sure is. Cassandra isn't the most well-realized villain. The TVA stuff, ultimately, felt pretty superfluous. I personally think that the last chunk of the movie feels a fair bit like padding, although I also realize the need to have Logan and Wade have a proper moment of them confronting their 'loser'-ness and bonding together, just the two of them. I love most of the cameos, and while I don't think all of the jokes landed, it was still a great experience that does, first and foremost, focus on the struggles of the heroes and who they are as characters before anything else. This movie has way more cameos and easter eggs (this list below isn't anywhere near the full depth of what the movie did) that your average Marvel movie, but unlike something like What If season 3, it doesn't really detract from the actual story they're trying to tell with Wade and Logan as characters. I'm not sure if this is the movie that'll get general audiences to give the new MCU a chance, but it sure is a nice way to get many fans back.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene: A long, protracted scene of Human Torch actually cussing and talking shit about Cassandra Nova while being captured, showing that Deadpool didn't actually lie about him. 
• Continuity Placement:

• The events of this movie take place specifically some time after the post-credits scene of Deadpool 2, in which Deadpool uses Cable's time-slider to revert the death of Vanessa. 
• The timeline of Logan gets revisited briefly way after the end of that movie, where Deadpool visits Logan's grave. 
• The events on the TVA's side of things happen after Loki season 2, where the TVA is purged of Kang's influence and B-16 is in charge. The Void and Alioth are both established in that series -- with Deadpool even correctly noting that Alioth was last seen in "Loki, Season 1, Episode 5". 
  
• The scene with Happy Hogan, lining up the timelines, would've taken place slightly after Spider-Man: Homecoming, explaining his kinder attitude to Wade as well as his appearance.
• Live-Action Cameos:
• Blade, played by Wesley Snipes, was the star of his movie trilogy from 1998-2004. Ryan Reynolds himself starred as a supporting character in Blade: Trinity.
• Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner, was a supporting character in 2003's Daredevil and had a movie in 2005's Elektra.
• Human Torch, played by Chris Evans, is the incarnation from the 2005-2007 Fantastic Four movies. The joke here is, of course, that Chris Evans would go on to play the MCU's incarnation of Captain America. 
• X-23/Laura, of course, makes her debut in Logan.
• Deadpool's supporting cast, namely Vanessa, Blind Al, Colossus, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Yukio, Shatterstar, Peter, Dopinder and Buck the Mercenary make brief appearances in the beginning and end of the movie. Shatterstar is notable because he was apparently killed in Deadpool 2.
• The various X-Men villains who form Cassandra Nova's minions, played by reprised actors include: Pyro (from the first 3 X-Men movies) and Sabretooth (specifically the incarnation from X-Men).
• Various returning villains based on older X-Men/Fox movies characters not played by reprising actors include: , Juggernaut (X-Men III), Blob (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Lady Deathstrike (X-Men 2), Azazel (X-Men First Class), Toad (the appearance from X-Men), Psylocke (the incarnation from X-Men III), a gender-flipped Quill (X-Men III), Callisto (X-Men III), Bullseye (Daredevil) and surprisingly, The Russian (Punisher 2004).
• 'Meta' Live-Action Cameos:
• Gambit, played by Channing Tatum, is a reference to the fact that Channing Tatum was tapped to play Gambit for a movie that infamously had a long history of troubled production -- a fact that Gambit lampshades several times in the movie, noting that he "wasn't sure if he was pruned or not", and mentioning "stories that hasn't been told yet". 
  
• One of the Wolverine variants (the one working on a motorbike) is played by Henry "Superman" Cavill, who himself was a very popular casting choice for Wolverine before the announcement of Hugh Jackman's return. Deadpool disses DC comics a bit, noting that they'll treat him much better than "those assholes down the street".
• In addition to the other characters that actually make a physical appearance, Blade and Elektra mention Magneto, Quicksilver (these two are presumably variants from the Fox X-Men movies), Daredevil (from Daredevil 2003) and the Punisher (from any of the 3 movies that Fox produced from him).
• Wade makes a joke about 'which one' when Blade and Elektra mention the Punisher, noting that he's always been played by four different actors across three movies and a Netflix series. 
• While the visuals are consistent with the sling-rings from the MCU, the existence of Dr. Strange sling-rings is likely a reference to the 1978 TV movie made for the character. Yes.
• At one point, Blade notes that "there's only ever gonna be one Blade", while Deadpool looks at the audience, either noting that the MCU has a Blade movie already in the pipeline... or lampshading that that Blade movie is also in production trouble. 
• Comic-Book Cameos:
• Wolverine variants:

• The Wolverine in this movie has a yellow-and-blue suit that's based on his first major appearance in Uncanny X-Men and would become extremely popularized by X-Men: The Animated Series. It was almost a running gag in the original X-Men movies that it was near-impossible to get a superhero suit on Wolverine. As the movie progresses, the suit's sleeves get torn off and Wolverine dons the mask, making it even more comic-accurate. 
  
• "Patch", the Wolverine that wears a white suit and an eyepatch, is the alias that Wolverine uses while in Mardipoor in his first solo comic-book run.
• The blue-and-red one-armed Wolverine is an extremely faithful nod to Age of Apocalypse Wolverine, a comic-book variant who hails from a bad future ruled by Apocalypse. 
• "John Byrne brown" Wolverine is a combination of his second-most iconic superhero outfit from the '90s (yellow and brown), and Wolverine's first appearance as someone sent to fight the Hulk. The Hulk's face reflected on the Wolverine's claws is a homage to The Incredible Hulk #340.
• The crucified Wolverine in a field of skulls is taken from a scene where he was tortured by the Reavers in Uncanny X-Men #251.
• The old Wolverine is a truer-to-text adaptation of Old Man Logan. 
• "Cavillrine", in addition to being an actor gag, also uses one of Logan's more iconic civilian outfit (a 'wifebeater' shirt and jeans), which Hugh Jackman himself wore in some of the earlier movies.
• While obviously exaggerated for comedic purposes, 'comics-accurate Wolverine' is a reference to how Wolverine is meant to be one of the shorter members of the X-Men as opposed to Hugh Jackman's physique.
• Deadpool variants:
• 
  Dogpool, Lady Deadpool, Kidpool and Headpool were the original members of the Deadpool Corps -- which, yes, is a thing. It's an amalgamation of multiple different Deadpools from the multiverse. Lady Deadpool is voiced by Ryan Reynolds' wife Blake Lively, while Kidpool and Babypool are played by their 2 children. 
• The robotic Deadpool is Deadpool 2099, hailing from that series of future comics.
• The ronin Deadpool is The Fool, from the '5 Ronin' alternate universe set in ancient Japan.
• The Deadpool with a gas mask is Golden Age Deadpool, featured in the 2010 story of the same name. 
• The cowboy Deadpool is based on The Deadpool Kid, a variant from a wild west universe and a minor member of the comics' incarnation of the Corps.
• Pyro wears an outfit based on his Ultimate comics incarnation. In the movies that he shows up in, Pyro only wore civilian clothes.
• Among the 'Mad Max' vehicles used by Cassandra's minions is the Fantasticar, albeit one that's based more on the comics than its portrayal in the Fox movies. 
• The backstory of "the Worst" Wolverine is somewhat similar to the one in Old Man Logan, although the source of his angst is a bit lessened -- instead of being brainwashed into killing the other X-Men, Wolverine was instead absent when the other X-Men were killed, and in his rampage of killing their enemies, he kills a bunch of civilians instead.
  
• Past-Movie Continuity Nods [MCU]:
  
• Happy's office contains the 'Proof that Tony Stark Has A Heart' plaque from Iron Man; the martial arts stick that he and Tony played around with in Iron Man 2, the partially-unfinished Captain America shield from Iron Man 2, the Mark V suitcase suit from Iron Man 2, and a photograph of Tony Stark and Peter Parker that Tony looks at in Avengers: Endgame.
• Peter's face is, however, obscured by a toy Iron Man mask due to licensing reasons for Spider-Man. That toy Iron Man mask was worn by a kid in Iron Man 2 -- who was later retconned by some directors to be a young Peter Parker. 
• Cassandra Nova's forces are based on the skull of Ant-Man in his Giant-Man form.
• Among the random stuff seen in the Void, many of them have appeared previously in Loki. New additions include a more truer-to-the-comics winged Thor helmet, the ice-cream truck from Moon Knight, Red Skull's pimped-out car from Captain America: The First Avenger, the mural of Scarlet Witch from Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Thanos's throne from the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
• In addition to various archival footage from the movies, the scene of Deadpool and Thor uses edited footage from Thor: The Dark World, in the scene where Thor mourns over the apparent death of Loki.
• When Deadpool is confronted by the Hulk, he (mis)-quotes Loki's line "I'm a god/Marvel Jesus, you dull creature" from The Avengers, and gets punched right after saying the line just like Loki. 
• As Deadpool and Wolverine jump into the TVA portal, he says "on your left", a nod to Captain America's line from Captain America: The Winter Soldier and paraphrased by Falcon in Avengers: Endgame. 
• The end of the movie where Deadpool discuss Shwarma is a nod to the famous post-credits scene to The Avengers, and the surge of popularity that the movie caused to Shwarma... with Deadpool mockingly noting that 'The Avengers discovered Shwarma!'
• Past-Movie Continuity Nods [X-Men and Other Movies]:

• While they do not appear, various characters name-drop other X-Men: Professor X, Magneto, Quicksilver, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm and Beast all get mentioned at some point in the movie.
• Deadpool recruits Wolverine in a bar fight, a reference to how Wolverine's very first scene is in a bar in the first X-Men movie.
  
• Deadpool's intense performance of 'NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye" actually is a very obscure reference to a line from Wolverine where he was irritated by the song in X-Men 2.
• The song that plays in Deadpool's birthday, "Angel of the Morning", was the song in the opening credits of his first movie. 
• Deadpool mockingly tells the TVA agents that 'pegging isn't new' for him. It happened to him during the sex montage in Deadpool. 
• Deadpool notes that Human Torch does a "superhero landing", having lampshaded the three-point landing in Deadpool with his antagonist Angel Dust. 
• Laura and Logan's quiet conversation has a callback to some of the more dramatic lines from Logan, with Laura noting that Logan is "always the wrong guy... until [he] wasn't."
• Right before the final battle, Laura pulls out the convenience store sunglasses that she famously wore in Logan as a younger child. 
• The samurai Deadpool's arms grows into a 'baby arm' similar to what happened to our Deadpool in Deadpool. 
• In addition to all the X-Men, parts from the Sentinel robots as they appear in X-Men: Days of Future's Past can be seen strewn around the Void, and one is used to escape Alioth. 
• Blade and Deadpool briefly note that they don't like each other much -- a cheeky nod to how Wesley Snipes and Ryan Reynolds had an infamously hostile relationship during the filming of Blade: Trinity. 
• Blade gives an epic rephrasing of one of his most iconic lines from the 1998 Blade movie: "some motherfuckers are trying to ice-skate uphill."
• Cassandra Nova in the comics is the evil twin sister of Professor X, who, depending on the writer, was the 'evil from birth' twin of Charles Xavier or a psychic entity called a mummudrai that infiltrated the womb of Charles' mother. Regardless of the origin, a young Charles Xavier was able to sense the evil in her since she was a baby, and used his psychic powers to force a miscarriage. Cassandra survived, however, and menaced the X-Men afterwards.
• Mr. Paradox in the comics is a minor, evil future version of TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius. 
• The Ant-Man skull's mouth-roof has '24601' engraved on it, a nod to Hugh Jackman's leading role in the Les Misérables movie adaptation.
• As usual, the 'sacred timeline' is identified as Earth-616, the traditional moniker for the primary Marvel comics universe. 
• Comic-book artist Rob Liefeld is referenced in the foot massage parlor that is very prominently shown in the final battle. Hilariously, Rob Liefeld is apparently known for not being the best at drawing feet.
• A picture of Stan Lee is used in an advertisement poster for 'You Friendly Neighborhood Cleaner: Stanlee Steamer', a double-reference to Spider-Man's moniker.
• The pizza place that Logan and Wade eat at is called "Feige's Famous Pizza", a reference to Kevin Feige.
• Deadpool notes that the "power in the Marvel universe is about to change forever", which is an echo to Dwayne Johnson's much-mocked attempt to hype up the Black Adam movie for the DC cinematic universe. 
• Deadpool also mocks the 'whole multiverse thing' multiple times -- when the Deadpool Corps show up, and immediately after when Deadpool reacts negatively to Nicepool noting that he loves the 'post-Endgame' content. Marvel's performance and meandering during the Multiverse saga has been a huge source of frustration by the fans because the MCU has mishandled the multiverse in their many different projects.
• Nicepool also seems to be a bit of a lampoon on some of the MCU's "forced comedy" moments that it has (not unfairly) been accused of in its later years, like name-dropping random pop culture references without actually tying it into a joke.

Movie Review: The New Mutants

The New Mutants [2020]

Sometimes movies get screwed by the studio that produces it. Sometimes it's a matter of the studio demanding reshoots or that the movie have a certain tone to be marketable. Sometimes an actor or character had to be recasted or written out of a movie. And then sometimes you get the absolute clusterfuck of a movie like The New Mutants, which, through no fault of the people actually making the movie, was delayed so many times. Coming out as a spinoff to several poorly-received sequels (X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix) was bad enough, but when the the Fox/Disney deal came through with the rights for the X-Men reverting back to Disney/Marvel, it also meant that this movie... well, quite literally didn't have a future. Toss in the fact that the movie was delayed a stunning four times due to the pandemic and the contract requiring that the studio release it in theatres, and this being an R-rated superhero movie... and honestly, I'm a huge X-Men fan, and it took me nearly a year since 2020 to actually remember to look up whether this movie has released or not. 

And the result is.... surprisingly average? The movie runs 90 minutes, and it's pretty coherent with what sort of story it wants to tell. Removing my X-Men comic book fanboyism for a minute, I can appreciate that at least the movie felt coherent. A group of young mutants find themselves trapped in a facility that claims itself to be a hospital, but turns out that it's a prison and that there's something sinister happening. Meanwhile, weird shit starts to happen in the facility, caused by the mutant powers of one of the children. Other than the jumpscares (which, surprisingly, there aren't that many of) there really aren't too many surprises about what's going on here -- the major plot twists of the movie is pretty much telegraphed within the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the movie. The doctor is actually evil, the spooky stuff come from Dani's fear-inducing powers, and all the five kids end up working together to fight a bigger evil. 

The movie primarily follows Danielle Moonstar, waking up after the town she lived in is apparently wiped out by a hurricane. She wakes up in the weird asylum-facility surrounded by forcefields, and the other kids in the place are weirdoes. In quick succession, we're introduced to the other New Mutants. Rahne Sinclair is a religious girl that's plagued with guilt after being beaten half to death by the local priest who thinks she's possessed by a demon -- and Rahne later mauls the priest in self-defense. Ilyanna Rasputin is a massive bitch with a little dragon sock-puppet who immediately gets hostile with Dani, and we learn that she's traumatized as a child by what's heavily implied to be sex slavers. Sam Guthrie is a coal-miner's son who accidentally caused an explosion that killed his father; while Roberto da Costa is a rich kid who we later learn accidentally burned his girlfriend to death. 

And the movie is very, very slow paced. There's a quick info-dump about mutants, and then there's the odd mystery of who Dani is and why the facility has a forcefield around it, but, again, the movie is pretty transparent about telegraphing that Dr. Reyes isn't very nice with her solitary confinement cells and clearly contacting some enigmatic master. Meanwhile, the fact that everyone in the asylum starts to have nightmares after Dani is there, and constant showcases of 'psionic power' on Reyes' computer screens, really makes it pretty obvious that it's Dani that's behind the nightmares. 

I do like the concept of what's going on, on paper. We learn bits and bytes of what Rahne, Ilynana, Sam and Roberto are willing to share, but the true depths of their childhood traumas aren't something they face until Dani brings them to life literally -- Rahne gets branded again by the priest that attacked her as a kid, Sam has to relive the day he blew up his dad's coal mine, Roberto gets stalked by the burning zombie corpse of his girlfriend in the pool, and Ilyanna's nightmarish smiley-faced tormentors form some tangible antagonists for most of the finale. 

It's just that... we learn about the traumas these characters suffer in the past, and they kind of open up to each other, but we really don't learn anything about who they are. Dani and Rahne are the only ones with any real semblance of characterization, although it's mostly just their romance, really... all the kids are some variation of generic heroic cipher when not expositioning or reacting to their past traumas. The boys, in particular, feel particularly extraneous and I really didn't get a feel for their characters up to the end of the movie. Ilyanna is perhaps the most entertaining, but that's probably because (unnecessary racist jokes notwithstanding) she actually gets to act out both the role of the alpha bitch of the cast, but also someone more vulnerable. 

The antagonist of the movie are also frustratingly vague. Dr. Reyes doesn't really have that much of a personality beyond being the evil doctor pretending to be nice, but it's pretty obvious that it's all an act. And she doesn't act nearly sinister enough to be either scary or entertaining... and despite all the notes pointing to 'Essex', we don't actually get Mister Sinister in this movie. No, the final 'big bad' is just a monstrous CGI demon bear conjured by Dani, who eats Dr. Reyes and just roars around for the other four New Mutants to use their powers on until Dani wakes up. Beyond the neat showcase of Magik's demon-arm manifesting and maybe Sunspot's first 'flame on', the visuals aren't really all that spectacular either. 

And...  and I feel like the movie could've worked a lot better if it tried to either focus on the young adult growth side, or the psychological horror side, or even just the regular horror side. None of these parts of the movie, I feel, stand out powerfully enough to make New Mutants feel too novel. Heck, the only real novelty of this movie is having a lesbian romance between the two main characters, which, admittedly, is probably the first of its kind we've seen on a theatrical film. But with everything else... I feel like other superhero shows like Legion, Swamp Thing, Constantine or WandaVision does all the psychological or horror stuff so, so much better.

And let's not even get into just how much they change from the comics. I'm not even a particularly huge New Mutants fan, but even I know that they basically cut out one of the main New Mutants, Karma (who is a lesbian in the comics) and just slapped her ethnicity on Rahne (who isn't). Dr. Reyes was also a heroic character in the comics; Dani's powers involved making mirages instead of being a fear-nexus; Magik's backstory had nothing to do with sex slaves; Magik wasn't casually racist; Lockheed wasn't associated with Magik; Sunspot was black... a couple of changes are obviously expected when adapting a work of fiction into the screen, but there were so many odd changes that they made. Toss in the fact that the movie was pretty lukewarm... but at least if you decide to watch this movie, it's a coherent story. 

Movie Review: X-Men: Dark Phoenix

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

It's really sad when a movie that is already struggling in its production ended up just getting kicked over and over again because of circumstances out of this control, because there's no other way of going about this -- Dark Phoenix was a massive trainwreck, and I'm not saying that because two different sorts of trains got absolutely fucked in this movie's action scenes. 

Even before the whole drama with the Marvel/Disney merger and acquisition of Fox, and the signal of the end of Fox's X-Men movies, Dark Phoenix was already fighting an uphill battle. Its previous movie, X-Men: Apocalypse, was met with utterly underwhelming reviews and was criticized for being just all style and no substance. There are neat X-Men action scenes, but that's about it. The fact that the continuity in the X-Men movies are kind of a doo-doo mess doesn't help, either. But then when the announcement came that the follow-up movie was going to adapt the Dark Phoenix arc once again, remining fans of the pretty dire and messy X-Men: The Last Stand, and it doesn't look good. 

And then came the Disney/Fox merger, Fox's complete apathy towards marketting this movie (and poor, poor New Mutants, if that movie will ever see the light of day) and Dark Phoenix being pushed off to a later date, almost half a year late of its original airdate, while reshoots were done to accomodate changing the movie to what's supposed to be a finale... and honestly, the movie's backgroud drama was kind of disastrous. 

And having watched this movie... wow, what a mess. And I don't mean that it's messy in an entertaining way that X-Men: The Last Stand was. Because as messy as Last Stand was, all of the actors are earnest, and even if you have no idea what the fuck was going on, every scene at least attempted to move the combination of the Dark Phoenix and mutant cure plotlines forwards, and Wolverine, Magneto, Jean Grey and Professor X to some degree ended up getting relatively cohesive character arcs. 

Not so in Dark Phoenix. Ostensibly, focusing solely on the Dark Phoenix subplot instead of making it a random tacked-on B-plot in an already full movie should have given it the gravitas, character focus and depth that The Last Stand severely lacked, but instead all it did was made the Dark Phoenix movie so god-damned boring and so hard to be invested in. Hell, the changes made to fit with the original comic book arc ended up making the character of Jean Grey feel even more muddled, because they didn't really go all the way into actually exploring what made the comics' (IMO overrated, but still better than this movie) Dark Phoenix arc captivating in the first place -- the fact that Jean Grey was so intoxicated with the power of the Phoenix Force that she straight-up blew up an alien planet and essentially has a bit of a god complex. 

Not so here. And while Sophie Turner seems to at least give a bit of an effort, Jean's character arc in the movie is messy and I'm never really sure what they're trying to tell. After the pretty laughably stupid space rescue mission (more on that later), Jean absorbs the massive giant alien cloud of flames (not to be confused with other terrible CGI comic book movie aliens like Parallax or Gah Lak Tus), she starts accidentally causing her powers to be unleashed, which, in turn enhances her mental powers so much that she ends up remembering a memory that Professor X has repressed -- the fact that Jean accidentally caused the death of her mother in a car crash due to not being able to control her young powers, and also her father is still alive but doesn't want anything to do with her. 

And as Jean meets her father, she goes into a full-on angry tantrum, feeling betrayed by her adoptive father figure and her biological father, and goe so crazy she accidentally kills Mystique (more on that later too) in the most anticlimactic way ever. Subsequently she gets rejected even by Magneto's mutant outcast colony because, well... she tries to straight-up murder a bunch of military men who arrived to arrest her. Again, we're never actually given any real, conclusive explanation on whether this is actually a split personality, or Jean succumbing to her powers and desires, or Jean just not being able to control the sheer amount of power, and the movie itself sort of goes back and forth about this, making things even more muddled.

And then Jean meets Vux, a member of the D'Bari alien race, who wants to utilize the Phoenix Force to terraform Earth because, well, evil aliens, I suppose. They just honestly show up with minimal explanation, and are terrible stand-ins for either Skrulls or the Shi'ar. Vux ends up playing as a weird corrupter figure for Jean Grey, eventually revealing her true colours in trying to straight-up steal the Phoenix Force from Jean... and, again, the wequence of dialogue and events that lead to this point really felt wooden and stiff and just there because the plot demands it to happen. Jean being just kind of confused about everything that's going on around her really doesn't help matters out either. We never know if the Phoenix Force is possessing her, or if it's amplifying Jean's suppressed anger, or anywhere in between. Sophie Turner acts as a confused character which is pretty accurate to how Jean must be feeling, but the surrounding movie really only tells us "what" the Phoenix Force is (alien smoke magic thing) without covering the who, why or how. 

So after a brief multi-way battle between the X-Men, the Brotherhood, Jean and Vux, as well as the MCU (the Mutant Control Unit, although the acronym has to be on purpose), all the mutants are taken on a train to a detention center, only for a massive, massive army of J'Bari to show up and lead to a long action scene. Thanks to the power of a motivational speech, Jean ends up being completely good and being in control of the Phoenix Force, saving everyone, killing the remaining aliens, and then carrying Vux out into orbit and blowing up because she... uh... has a handle on her emotions or something? And throughout it all I can't feel that they had a decent storyline in their hands, but end up absolutely squandering it by giving an absolutely bland performance, not helped by atrocious pacing and muddled motivations. Her death felt like it just happened, yknow? We don't quite spend enough time knowing who this Jean is as a person that snuffing her out after a movie of her being a bland background character and another movie of her being half-possessed-maybe... it's nowhere equal to some of the more tragic and audience-gripping deaths in other superhero movies.

The secondary characters don't really help out either. Quicksilver, easily one of the most powerful mutants in the established X-Men team, get knocked out after the first act and just straight-up sit the entire movie out. We don't even get any definitive conclusion -- not even a throwaway line -- to the fact that Magneto's his dad! Storm, Nightcrawler and even Cyclops to some extent are just there, showing up to show off their powers in action scenes, bu also the first to get jobbed and taken out in quick sequence by the villain of the action scene. Nightcrawler gets a slight attempt at characterization when he finally gives in to his anger when a soldier he befriends gets killed by the soldiers, but other than Nightcrawler going on a rampage in killing the aliens with a blade and teleporting them in front of trains, we don't get much of a payoff. Cyclops is just there as handsome-love-interest that has even less personality compared to his mind-controlled couterpart in X2.

Meanwhile, Mystique is... I'm not sure how much of the writing aroud her is based on actor Jennifer Lawrence's own insistence, or the script writers going all out in trying to capitalize on keeping the popular-thanks-to-Hunger-Games actress in a heroic heroine role. She's essentially unrecognizable in this movie as Mystique, either the version from the comic books or the evil-mutant-with-the-willingness-to-be-good deal that she was supposed to be from the old trilogy as well as First Class. She's essentially a generic superhero team leader, and is there to rant at Charles Xavier a bit in an honestly poorly-scripted argument. That "X-Women" line was completely out of the left field and is the clumsiest way ever for a movie to go "haha look at how progressive we are, right?" mostly because it doesn't even fit the conversation. 

Mystique also ends up dying after the first act, probably because the writers really have no ide what to do about her, and the fact that she was the character killed by Jean accidentally while giving a long, long speech ends up... not really panning out, huh? Jean and Mystique share maybe two or three sentences together throughout this movie and the previous one. Compare it to Jean's accidental murder of Cyclops and Xavier in Last Stand. As poorly done as that movie was, at least I felt more when Jean's attempt to be happy with her lover ended up poorly due to her lack of contrl of her powers. Here, Jean and Mystique's closeness is an informed attribute, and I feel absolutely nothing from that scene. Mystique's death is essentially there to motivate Beast and Magneto, I feel, and since we never actually got any proper payoff to Mystique's whole "flirt the line between good and evil" and we just take the most boring way to handle this, it's a pretty lame end to this version of the character, particularly with her actress really visibly not giving a shit about what's going on.

Magneto himself basically goes through the exact same story arc that his character went through in Apocalypse. He tries to live peacefully (in Genosha instead of a cabin in the woods), then a tragedy happens (Mystique instead of his wife and daughter), and he goes super duper crazy and murderous, and then thanks to a Speech(TM) he fights with the good guys in the end. His arc in Dark Phoenix, however, was so phoned in and bland that it's easily the worst Magneto's been over the different Fox X-Men movies that he feels as much of a distraction as the aliens themselves. 

Xavier, meanwhile... I felt like they were trying to do something with Xavier, y'know? With Mystique and later on Beast expressing doubts about Xavier's capacity to lead, him definitely being all ego-happy and too prideful about the fact that the X-Men have became celebrity superheroes, as well as the revelation that he repressed Jean's memories... it feels like we're about to dissect the wise old Professor Xavier as a well-meaning but flawed individual, emphasizing on the flaws like his ego and his control freak. Which is a great direction to take the character to, because I've always felt like Xavier in the comics was pretty damn flawed as a character. But then... they sort of... also abandons this halfway through the movie? He apologizes to Jean for the repressed memory (which turns out to be a-okay because Jean's dad is scum anyway) and everyone else just kinda-sorta never really mentions his sins again? It's like they initially wanted to do something brave and set up Xavier as a bit more of a more flawed character, but then went back and made all of his scenes from the midpoint onward completely heroic. It's weird. Likewise, the argument that Xavier is only 'using' his students ends up being sort of... bizarrely thrown in? Sure, he did take more risks than is advisable, and nearly damn well killed Jean, but it's sort of for the greater good, and his risk-taking isn't even really punished at all. I dunno. It's just weird all around. 

Hank, meanwhile, is just... there. I sort of understand that he's driven with grief and guilt and anger at what he perceives to be Xavier's failure as well as Mystique's death, but going straight into working with Magneto, hanging out with his little murder squad and snarling and jumping around and causing havoc in the streets? It's one thing to attack Jean, it's another to do the honestly pretty stupid looking "rawr lookit me I'm an angry monster" act in the streets. His brief betrayal and willingness to murder one of their teammates is also utterly swept under the rug and never mentioned again. 

We get a bunch of random background mutants introduced -- Selene and Red Lotus, who act as Magneto's henchmen. They basically show up to fight the X-Men in the streets and that's neat, but then quickly get killed by the J'Bari in the train fight. Oops? Selene, at least, has absolutely nothing in common with her comic book couterpart, so eh? Also, Dazzler makes a brief cameo in the X-Mansion performing, which is funny. None of the other mutants that Apocalypse hinted at was going to show up -- Psylocke, Wolverine, Jubilee, Caliban -- ended up even being mentioned here. 

And... credit where credit's due, at least the action scenes when Magneto's group and Xavier's group attacked each other to try and reach Jean is pretty cool. And the train battle's pretty awesome, particularly when Magneto starts crushing train cars and whatnot. But then the rest of the movie is just so underwhelming. The Phoenix Force is just a mass of glowing clouds and it's not interesting at all. That particularly long scene in Genosha with Magneto and Jean trying to push away a helicopter is laughably hilarious thanks to the two actors clearly just trying to pantomime wacky effort faces. The final scene of Jean in full control of her powers is just bland and boring. 

And that space scene... yeah, the execution was neat, but honestly, they had Quicksilver there. Why wouldn't they teleport Quicksilver and Jean into the shuttle on their second run through? Why wouldn't Quicksilver do the same zippy-instant-astronaut-suit on Jean? I dunno. It just feels particularly contrived. 

Honestly, with the exception of the two larger action scenes, the whole movie is very, very bland. I can easily say without hesitation that this is the weakest and blandest of all of Fox's X-Men material, and, yes, I'm including Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine and Apocalypse in that ranking. With all of those movies, we at least get the sense that the writers were trying to tell a story with the characters. We get the sense that things are happening. In Dark Phoenix, characters just sort of do whatever, the plot just does whatever, and the movie itself ends up just being such an underwhelmingly boring and bland mass of confused directionless mess. Jean, Xavier and Hank's storylines are all over the place, Magneto's story is a carbon copy of his past couple of movies, Mystique is redundant, the aliens are redundant, and the secondary characters could be removed with minimal change to the movie. 

And... and honestly, it's pretty sad that the X-Men movie franchise ended up with not a bang, but a sad, sad whimper. I realize that part of it is due to a lot of studio mandates and general behind-the-screens drama thanks to the acquisition, but man is this movie bad. Ignore this movie, and pretend the Fox X-Men movies ended with the positive, excellent movie that is Logan. 

Movie Review: Deadpool 2

Deadpool 2 [2018]

The sequel to the 2016 highly successful venture into the raunchier side of the R-rated genre, Deadpool 2 returns with many familiar faces to X-Men fans for more hilarity. Deadpool and characters like him are a tricky thing to get right. Characters like Deadpool that take some parts of the world they live in seriously and not other parts are extremely tricky to properly write, but Deadpool  2 brings back a strong follow-up, while still working to build up the small corner of the Sony X-Men movies continuity (soon to be... Disney's? I dunno how that's going to work) by bringing back multiple characters that appeared in the original Deadpool.


The main emotional core of Deadpool 2 isn't the wacky, juvenile, devil-may-care antics, although there certainly are a lot more of those. While the movie starts off with a silly, eyeball-rolling "let's blow myself up to shove a big middle finger in Logan's success", which is not a joke that works for me, around five minutes in, Deadpool's love interest, Vanessa, gets killed as a result of a bunch of vengeful mercenaries. And then the same scene plays, but Ryan Reynolds and Moneca Baccarin's performances as the man behind the wise-cracking mask and his love interest are so powerful that it's a genuinely touching scene that shapes the rest of the movie without bogging it down and turning it into a drama-fest.

Deadpool basically tries to kill himself, but being essentially immortal thanks to his regenerative ability, he isn't able to do it, only managing to glimpse Vanessa beyond the veil (a neat little nod to comic-book Deadpool's actual love interest, the literal personification of Death), and has basically became somewhat suicidal. He still cracks jokes, of course, but it's a bit more morbid, with the only real clue he has from the ghost of Vanessa about how they could be together leading him to properly join the X-Men as a trainee.

During the first outing with returning characters Colossus (who is as fun as ever, as the straight man to Deadpool's Deadpool) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (who doesn't actually do much, but has gained a girlfriend in a revamped version of Yukio) Deadpool ends up having to talk down a rampaging mutant boy, a kid with temper issues called Russell "Firefist", Deadpool ends up attempting to do the 'hard heroic choice' of killing the abusive headmaster of the boarding school, and ends up arrested alongside Russell. Working into the whole "man, I want a kid" conversation between him and Vanessa earlier on, Deadpool ends up being torn on whether to protect Russell, or to push him away from his dying, decrepit self.

AND THEN CABLE SHOWS UP! With a glowing eye, a grim disposition, a metal arm, a bunch of big-ass guns and Josh Brolin's grim face, Cable is epitomizes 90's badass no-nonsense this-is-serious-business superheroes, which makes him a glorious foil to the wise-cracking I-don't-give-a-shit Deadpool, a reason why the two ends up being paired up in the comics. Cable wants to kill Russell because he grows up to be a murdering psychopath in the future that kills Cable's own family, and he spends much of the second act as an antagonist. Meanwhile, Russell goes down a bit of a dark well himself, and thanks to some of Deadpool's mis-attributed advice, he ends up befriending the biggest guy in the mutant prison, the fucking Juggernaut himself.

The third act of the movie begins with Deadpool forming his own X-Force team, which... doesn't actually do as much as the trailers imply them to be. Every single one of them other than Deadpool and Domino dies around three minutes in, although the X-Force sequence is easily the funniest part of the movie, from the interview (the Vanisher; Peter; Dopinder's huge FUCK; Shatterstar being ultra-edgy) to the grisly and hilariously violent ways that they are killed off, even Peter!

And then we get a pretty fun little car chase as Deadpool and his new ally Domino attempt to rescue Russell while fighting off Cable, with a lot of fun being had with Domino's lucky abilities and Deadpool's own unkillableness. Russell heads off with Juggernaut, refusing Deadpool's aid, and then Cable shows up at Deadpool's base and offers his aid and explains chunks of the plot... and all through this, the movie is making fun of Deadpool's little regenerating baby legs which is just as uncomfortable as you think they are.

The secondary characters get a fair bit of development, even though this is mostly the Deadpool show. Dopinder gets a fun bit going through the movie and wanting to be a mercenary and getting constantly denied in increasingly silly ways, before finally living the dream at the climax of the movie. Colossus goes from being a stickler for the rules to eventually relenting and deciding to 'fight dirty' to help save his friends and the mutant children. Yukio and Negasonic... they're just kind of there, I suppose. Weasel too.

And then the climax is... it's pretty neat, I suppose, although it does devolve into having a bit too many characters at a point. We get a lot of cool mutant fighting stuff, Colossus fighting Juggernaut is amazing to behold, and Deadpool insists that he can get to Russell while Cable is in a full-fledged "shoot first" mode. Eventually, after Deadpool takes a bullet for Russell and an overly-long death scene, we get two neat moments from Cable and Deadpool -- Cable as he resolves to give away his one ticket home and prevent Deadpool's death, and Deadpool as he meets up with Vanessa and acknowledges that he needs to be there in the land of the living for his new family.

(And then the post-credits scene show up and it goes straight to insanity)

And... and it's a very enjoyable movie. It works in the X-Men mythology with a relatively okay storyline (like the original Deadpool, it's honestly a pretty basic 'finding one's humanity' story when it boils down), and makes great use of its minor characters like Colossus and Dopinder. And it's lathered from head to toe with a huge fuck-ton of fanservice and comedy that I genuinely don't think anyone who hasn't watched as many superhero movies as most of the geek community would even get half of the things going on in Deadpool 2. It's a weird, wacky movie as all Deadpool outings are. It makes fun of the concept of death and redemption while simultaneously weaving a storyline that's pretty profound regarding both of them, and that's definitely far, far more solid of a theme than I expected a Deadpool story would be.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
(Oh boy! I'm not going to do any 'origin' Easter Eggs here)

• Stan Lee cameos on a billboard. 
• After the call-back of the studio not being to afford cameos from the big-name actors (which is a nod to a joke in Deadpool), we get cameos from the X-Men First Class/Apocalypse versions of Professor X, Beast,  Quicksilver, Cyclops, Storm and Nightcrawler. 
• Dopinder's taxi has an advertisement for Alpha Flight, which is the name of the Canadian superhero team in the X-Men comics. 
• The orphanage that Russell is in is called Essex House, a reference to Nathaniel Essex, better known as the X-Men villain Mr. Sinister. 
• X-Force is, of course, an actual mutant superhero team in the comics, and not just an on-the-spot name that Deadpool makes up. Also, Shatterstar's origin story about being an alien from Mojoworld is 100% true to the comics. 
• After being blasted by Russell, Deadpool's black-and-gray suit is a dead ringer for his costume as part of the X-Force. 
• Deadpool and Cable has shared multiple crossover titles in the comics, which is why they are associated with each other. Deadpool wanting to protect an innocent child who could potentially become a world-ending threat is taken from an arc in Uncanny X-Force where he protects Kid Apocalypse. 
• Shout-outs to other superhero movies:
• During his fight with Cable in the prison train, Deadpool pulls off the same move during his introductory sequence in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, right down to the bullet-slicing slow-motion bit. 
• One of Deadpool's excuses for being late is that he "got into a fight with a badass in a cape whose mom was also named Martha", which, of course, is lampooning the memetic mockery of the climax of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
• At one point, Deadpool asks Cable if he "came from the DC universe" due to how dark and serious he is, something that has been a huge, huge complaint about the Snyder-directed DC movies. 
• Deadpool compares Cable's metal arm to the Winter Soldier multiple times during their first fight. 
• Deadpool calls "Thanos" once, which is a nod to both characters being played by Josh Brolin. 
• Deadpool goes "I'm Batman" at one point during his fight with Cable. 
• When his power is taken away, Deadpool notes that he's a bow-and-arrow away from being Hawkeye. 
• Deadpool calls Domino the "black Black Widow". 
• When fighting Juggernaut, Deadpool recites "hey big guy, the sun's getting real low", which is the mantra that Black Widow uses to calm Hulk down in Avengers: Age of Ultron. 
• During the post-credits scene, Deadpool goes to X-Men: Origins Wolverine and shoots the extremely poorly-received Weapon XI Deadpool dead multiple times. He also goes back to the real world and shoots Ryan Reynolds as he is reading the script for Green Lantern. 
• In Deadpool's childish doodles, Wolverine is drawn with the tag 'Prisoner 24601', the number of Jean Valjean from Les Miserables, a character played by Hugh Jackman in the 2012 cinematic adaptation. 
• Deadpool only being able to visit the love of his life in brief moments when he's dead is, of course, a reference to his comic-book counterpart's relationship with Mistress Death, the literal personification of death itself. 
• Juggernaut being a massive brute who will only take orders from a single person he has befriended is a nod to his relationship with Black Tom Cassidy in the comics -- of course, in this movie, Black Tom gets killed without even sharing a scene with Juggernaut. 
• Juggernaut makes a brief reference to how his helmet keeps out his telekinetic brother is a reference to how his step-brother is actually Professor X, a fact that many adaptations tend to gloss over.
• Irene Merryweather, the reporter covering the Essex House incident, is a love interest of Cable in the comics and a supporting character in the Deadpool & Cable comics. 
• Cable notes that his daughter is called "Hope", which, of course, is a reference to his adopted daughter in the comics, Hope Summers. 

Movie Review: Logan

Logan

I watched Logan last week, and, shit, it does live up to its reputation as one of the best superhero movies ever made. Perhaps the hype surrounding it might be a wee bit too much, but damn, it's still a great movie. Now Logan is meant to be a sendoff not to the main character Wolverine, but also to longtime X-Men stars Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart, ending an era as two of the longest-running superhero actors in live-action. They've been doing this for nearly two decades, and have became the definitive versions of Wolverine and Professor X for an entire generation. But they're not getting any younger, and it's far better to retire their characters at a high note.

SPOILER WARNING, by the way, if you haven't seen this movie.

It's also R-rated, so instead of Wolverine dropping "fuck" once or twice in the movie, the character gets to drop it every other scene. Even Professor X gets in on the profanity, dropping f-bombs here and there and seeing a character we've known and loved as the wise old mentor be reduced to anger and cussing really shows just how far we've gone from the more upbeat X-Men movies we're familiar with.

And it's a very, very different beast to the X-Men movies, just like the excellent mind-fuckery Legion TV series we've gotten this month. It doesn't get fully gritty and humourless the way Batman v Superman or Dark Knight Rises did, though, and through it all it still feels like an X-Men movie with a message of optimism even in the face of overwhelming odds, and despite the more downbeat and depressing note it has, it doesn't feel like a deconstruction of an X-Men movie. Rather, like Wolverine himself, it's a more... mature version of an X-Men story.

In this alternate future of 2026 (good luck trying to fit this in the X-Men movie timeline, guys -- I certainly can't) big, badass Wolverine is no longer the immortal, unstoppable killing machine we all know and love. No, he's an older, aged man driving a limo cab around. There aren't any huge school for mutants, or colourful costumes, or even giant Sentinel robots running around hunting mutants like Days of Future's Past. Age has caught up to the Wolverine, and all the more fantastical elements of the comics are briefly gone. His attempt to fight the gangbangers needs more effort than Wolverine would have done in other movies. He even has difficulty popping his claws, and the super-fast regeneration isn't working as well as it should. Things are worse and wore as we learn that Professor X is delirious, kept inside a water tank with drugs in order to stop him from unleashing psychic bursts to everyone around him -- where normal old people have slight tremors or seizures, Professor X's mind causes psychic quakes. It's a sorry state for the once leader of the X-Men... which is all gone now, save for the irritable sun-hating albino Caliban, the only other ally Logan and Charles have in all this.

We learn, later, slowly through the movie through hints and pieces of dialogue what has happened. Professor X's mind attack had unleashed such a gigantic blast that killed the X-Men. Wolverine's being poisoned from the inside out by the Adamantium inside him, and it's reached critical mass, slowing down his body's natural regeneration powers. The government has been sterilizing people and basically choking out the mutant gene.

Logan and Caliban don't really have much that they look forward to. They just keep Charles in control, with Logan looking for money to buy the Sunseeker, a cruise ship that'll allow them to live out the rest of their days in the ocean away from everyone. It's a very depressing tone for the movie, yet at the same time heartwarming -- despite all the damage Charles is unleashing to him, despite how much Charles is indirectly responsible for the deaths of the other X-Men, despite how deteriorated Charles has became, how Charles tells Logan what a disappointment he is -- Logan is still caring for him, and we even get a couple of moments where Logan identifies Charles as his father.

Of course, things aren't that simple as a young, mute girl called Laura shows up and plunges Logan into encounters with the government once more. The leader of a band of cyborgs called the Reavers, one Donald Pierce, is a classy villain that asks for Logan's cooperation. It's a bit of a temptation that Logan never even considers giving in to -- despite how he wants to remove himself from the conflict, Laura's guardian is killed, Charles insists that they help rescue Laura... and everything goes to hell from then on. Caliban is apparently killed by Pierce (we learn that Caliban survives for quite a bit after this, but Logan and Charles never did), the Reavers besiege their little abode, and even Wolverine is taken down.

And then Laura, of course, reveals that she's not just a cute kid and unleashes her claws and her true identity as X-23. I don't know where they found the actress for Laura, but damn she's amazing. She manages to pull off the socially-distant cool girl, the psychotic bloodthirsty animal, and being just a cute ten-year-old that wants to hold hands with daddy and play with remote wheelchairs and ride horsey toys and eat pringles and generally be adorable yet badass at the same time.

While avoiding the government agents, Logan and Charles bond with Laura, but at the same time Logan also rejects all the colourful comic book optimism that the mute Laura has... for good reason, because this mysterious 'Eden' that is claimed to be a mutant sanctuary is actually lifted from the comics. Charles' naivety in the face of all this, like insisting that hope is more important than pragmatism, or asking Logan to stop to allow Laura to enjoy life's simple things, is a very interesting bit where, yes, if we're just talking about this as an action movie, Charles has kind of fucked a fair amount of things up... but without those stops, Logan wouldn't have rediscovered his own soul, so to speak.

Mind you, it's not all just soul-discovery and touchy-feely stuff. Everything is pretty well-shot, and for a relative newcomer to all this Laura is amazingly charismatic without feeling like a Mary Sue or the load. Logan discovers that, of course, Laura's actually his biological daughter -- albeit grown in a lab as a weapon -- and must come to terms with this young child who's a stranger yet also shares so much familiar things with him. Not just their geners or powers or adamantium skeleton, but also the fact that Laura's going through everything Logan went through while part of Weapon X -- only she's far younger. The bond between the two, how Logan tries to reject having Laura around him (from refusing to take responsibility and later to not wanting to hurt Laura the way he did others) is very much well-told.

While Laura is unmistakably the breakout star in the movie, and both Charles and Logan are played phenomenally in their fitting sendoff, I really must say how much I love the wry Caliban in this movie. He's just such a classy dude and I really want to punch Donald Pierce in the face for doing that absolutely agonizing-looking sunlight torture scene.

On the other hand, where Donald Pierce is pretty awesome, the movie's other antagonist, Zander Rice, the scientist at the head of the X-23 program, is more of a plot device and exposition tool, showing up for a couple of talking scenes with Caliban, Pierce and later Logan before being unceremoniously killed off. No, the final boss of it isn't even Pierce, but rather Logan has to face... himself. Or rather, a near-perfect clone of him at his fighting peak, X-24.

X-24 literally shows up out of nowhere as Charles gives a very touching final speech to Logan, before coldly stabbing Charles in the chest, making a very excellent use of the bait and switch trope. Charles' broken heartedness, and Logan later telling Charles that "it's not me, it's not me, Charles" is absolutely heartbreaking, and the portrayal of Professor X's final death is absolutely tearjerking.

I thought the movie was a bit too slow -- perhaps necessarily so to build up the Logan/Charles/Laura dynamic -- when they shacked up in the farmer's house, and later when they shacked up with the other X-23 program refugees in 'Eden'. But it all builds up to a very explosive end. Yes, the other mutants do get to play a part, including a very cool moment by the fat electrical-shooting kid Bobby and the older leader of the group, Rictor, and the Eden kids get to murder Donald Pierce in the most horrifying yet justified execution ever...

But make no mistake, it's Logan and Laura that's the real stars here. Logan manages to break out a rampage that puts all his previous rampages to shame with the aid of some green-injection steroid things, but it quickly wears off as he fights X-24, and it's clear just how outmatched Wolverine is by the evil version of his younger self. Laura and Logan's back-to-back action scene is still amazing, though, and seeing Laura just jump and leap and stab-stab-stab everything in the face, even taking on X-24 and actually winning for a bit... it's a very amazing action scene which ends with X-24's head blown apart by Laura.

The movie ends with Logan succumbing to his wounds in an absolute tearjerker of a moment. It's one of the questions that's been hanging over this movie's head ever since it's announced that it's Hugh Jackman's last performance as Wolverine -- is his character going to be killed off? Even without the thought of recasting Wolverine, seeing Hugh Jackman's Wolverine finally succumb to his wounds, dying with no regret as he has defeated the biggest threat to his daughter's survival, is a very touching end.

Logan is a pretty emotionally hard-hitting piece of superhero movie, an amazing swan song for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Patrick Stewart's Professor X. An era in the superhero movies have ended, and seeing the older X-Men movies brought to a close with this absolute gem of a movie is just amazing. 

Movie Review: X-Men Apocalypse

X-Men: Apocalypse

Despite the relatively lukewarm reviews surrounding X-Men: Apocalypse, I actually find myself enjoying it a lot more than general consensus. In fact, I actually enjoyed Apocalypse more than I do Deadpool. Heresy, I know, I know. By no means is Apocalypse a perfect movie, and it has flaws -- a crapton of flaws -- but it has a lot of good things going on for it and really, I think why it's so lambasted is because it simply can't really compete with its absolutely awesome predecessor, Days of Future's Past. And being released on the coattails of big behemoth superhero movies Civil War and Batman V Superman (both of which I'll gie proper reviews somewhere down the year), as well as the fan-favourite Deadpool, Apocalypse is just kind of unfortunate that it's merely good, not great.

And I think the biggest problem lies in the titular Apocalypse himself. He's... honestly just there. Apocalypse's concept is really cool, a body-hopping ancient mutant with seemingly godlike powers and the basis of many religions, and intent on purging the world of humanity because he thinks that humans have wasted the potential by, y'know, being asshole humans. 

And while the movie tries to make him feel deeper by giving him a long flashback in ancient Egypt and giving him some nice recruiting scenes with Storm and Magneto, Apocalypse himself is really a generic villain. You could replace him with any other big scary villain and he would have the same impact. I mean, Apocalypse himself has never really impressed me in the few Marvel cartoons/comics that starred him -- a good part is thanks to that ridiculous blue lipstick that extends all the way to his ears -- so I guess the movie version of Apocalypse is an improvement? I don't know. 

Apocalypse has a lot of great visual scenes, destroying Cairo and turning it into sand and then into a gigantic hollow pyramid, that cool scene where he unlocks and upgrades the powers of his Horsemen, and has a cool voice, but he never really develops a personality. He seems to be all-powerful, he feels like a threat, yet at the same time absolutely fails in really conveying that sense of threat considering he spends most of his time just standing, looming, fighting mind-battles or merely blocking the attacks of the X-Men instead of actually countering them... and when he does, it's just to choke or break their legs instead of going for the kill. 

Magneto is a lot more entertaining than Apocalypse, but due to the sheer amount of screentime devoted to Apocalypse, I think Magneto's story felt a bit too rocky. That scene where Magneto's daughter cries when his daddy is seemingly taken away by the bad men -- and honestly, Magneto himself has readily surrendered -- and then an arrow stabs straight through both Magneto's daughter and wife, and Magneto just is so angry and sad as he launches the photo locket in a cathartic massacre of the policemen? I thought that was the most beautiful saddest death scene in a superhero movie I've seen in a while. Mostly because it's so sad. It's not a dramatic sacrifice, or a origin-story death... it's just a big, big tragedy as scared people try to arrest Magneto, and even the arrow loosened against Magneto's daughter was an accident more than anything.

And while Magneto does show some really cool visual effects as he ripped the Earth's magnetic pole apart... his conversion really felt transparent by the moment Msytique and Quicksilver walked up to Magneto. And, yes, while I do appreciate that Quicksilver not going into the expected sappy "I'm your son" scenes with Magneto is a nice subversion... I really thought that Magneto turning on Apocalypse really felt too sudden and too predictable.

Also, fuck, the dude's probably killed a whole lot of people with his upgraded magnetic powers. And he got away scott-free! Erik, you're not allowed to complain about your people being killed during the Holocaust anymore, jeez, you probably mass-murdered way more than that with your angry tantrum.

The other mutants that Apocalypse turned into Horsemen were actually major characters in the comics, though they honestly don't get a lot to do either. The movie does make a good job of making the three other Horsemen be relevant and memorable, though. The new Storm is the obvious one, and we explore the whole 'troubled street kid' pre-X-Men version of the character. She meets Apocalypse almost by chance, and she does Storm things -- though, again, like Magneto, her defection really felt too predictable and sudden. Maybe if we had an additional scene where Apocalypse promised not to kill other mutants, and then Storm sees the hypocrisy? I don't know.

Archangel is devolved into just a jackass fighting in cage-fights instead of the more unwilling-hero type character that he was before. We get a pretty cool scene of him in his original Angel form fighting Nightcrawler, and his upgrade into Archangel is accompanied by a horrifying visual as Apocalypse replaces his wings with metal ones that actually grow out of his back. Archangel is just a cool-looking thug, though. And so is Psylocke. Kudos on somehow making Psylocke's insanely fanservicey costume work and look good on-screen, and she does have a lot of cool scenes with her psi-blade things, but ultimately Psylocke is just a very distinctive eye-candy. Archangel and Psylocke did a lot of action scenes, especially compared to the other Horsemen, but they really don't have much of a personality either. They look cool, though!

Also I'm pleased Psylocke didn't die. She really could use a bigger role in the next movie. Or get her own.

Charles... gets bald! We have an explanation! I like it that Charles in this movie takes more of a backseat, settling into his 'mentor the X-Men' role that he was in the comics. He's still prominent, and we did get some nice moments from the dude, but ultimately Charles Xavier had his time to really shine in First Class and Days of Future's Past, and I really want to get another X-Men movie that's about a team of X-Men. And by golly, we did get that. Charles himself is more a plot device than anything, with his action scenes of doing battle against Apocalypse in their minds being a nice way to give Charles something to do in the climax without detracting from the big action scenes done by the others.

And I think that's why I loved this movie so much. Unlike other movies that focused mostly on either Wolverine, Charles, Magneto and Mystique, I think this is really the first X-Men movie since X2 that focused on the X-Men as a team. We get the genesis of the classic X-Men team, even if Storm only defected at the end and Wolverine is merely unleashed upon the world. Cyclops and Jean, two of the pillars of the 'classic' X-Men team, gets introduced and had their first meeting, and I thought it was portrayed really well. Despite showing up in a LOT of the movies, Cyclops never really got much of a personality beyond being the third wheel to Wolverine's quest for Jean's love, and being the stuck-up rulebook boy scout to Wolverine's main character. Jean fares worse, going from love interest to evil split-personality villain. It's nice to see both of them actually given room to breathe and be explored as characters who bond over not being able to control their powerful powers. The duo is joined by Nightcrawler, my favourite X-Man, who finally returns to the movies after a fifteen-year absence. Nightcrawler gets a really cool intro scene as Mystique saves him and ends up tagging along until they reach the X-Mansion, and form a trio of younger mutants compared to the older cast from First Class. 

Jean (played by Sophie Turner, better known as Game of Thrones' Sansa Stark) is a bit more of a cipher than Scott, but she does show a fair amount of persnoality even if she doesn't get to do that much compared to Cyclops and Nightcrawler. We get to see her kindness with the whole Wolverine scene, she gets to embrace the super-awesome Phoenix Force... and her putting up airs of an antisocial girl because she's tired of persecution thanks to her particularly powerful set of powers are all pretty well done. Scott's pretty cool as well, and we see the most of him among the younger mutants. Scott is shown struggling to control his powers in his school, and even Charles is shocked at how powerful Scott's eye-beams ended up being (that was his favourite tree!). And he definitely is not the boy scout that he is in his adult form. We get to see him be a petulant boy -- though not so much that he becomes annoying -- before confiding in Jean, finding a friend in Nightcrawler (and Jubilee, who had like two seconds of screentime) and actually hijacking cars.

Until tragedy strikes, of course, and his brother, Havok, dies in an explosion caused by Apocalypse. Havok has been extremely supportive, and even if he never develops a personality beyond 'nice guy' even if this is his third entry in the movie franchise, his death and the impact it had on Scott really worked pretty well.

Nightcrawler is just a ball of fun scenes, isn't he? "I'm blue!" Crossing himself when he enters the room of bloodied corpses. "I have never been to a mall." That hilarious hairstyle he sports. His constant yes-manning and funny foreigner thing he does. He's just so funny, and, oh man, he shows himself to be really cool in battle too, and fighting Archangel -- who gets my vote as coolest looking horseman -- is a delight that I'm definitely rewatching many many times in the BluRay when it comes out. Nightcrawler gave us the best visuals from X2, and the X-Men movies do know how to do teleportation in a cool way, and it definitely is a great treat to see Nightcrawler back again.

Quicksilver, who makes his triumphant return after utterly stealing the show in Days of Future's Past, is still awesome. He doesn't steal the show as much, but he is in the movie a lot more. Running to the tune of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (a personal favourite song of this reviewer) the scene where he just rescues everyone in the exploding X-Mansion and doing all sorts of hilarious things is just great, showing how utterly awesome the power of superspeed is. The offhanded way that he reveals Magneto's parentage to Mystique is hilarious, and he does get a bit of character thanks to his conflict regarding whether he should acknowledge Magneto as his father. And while he ultimately does't tell it to Magneto despite getting the opportunity to, he does accept the X-Men as his new family, showing that, hey, at least Charles got through to him.

Also, Quicksilver totally OWNED Apocalypse in their fight scene. Oh man, that looked awesome and it went on for quite some time too, right up until Apocalypse broke his leg. 

Mystique and Beast both return, reprising their roles as main supporting characters from First Class and Days of Future's Past. It's still weird to have Mystique be cast as a fully heroic character in this new continuity, but I did like what they did with it. Storm and Nightcrawler both recognize Msytique as THE hero of mutants considering her role in DOFP, though Mystique herself seems to just be conflicted and emo. I don't really care all that much about Mystique here, she's just another heroine thrown in the mix, serving as de facto leader of the X-Men while Xavier is incapacitated. Man, that's weird, isn't it? Mystique, leader of the X-Men? And by the end of this movie, Mystique has gone full-blown hero and actually does become leader of the X-Men. I don't know if it's just the casting of Jennifer Lawrence that made the character do a 180 from who she's supposed to be, but at least it makes sense in-universe.

Beast is cool! He does Beast things, being smart and sensible and smart, getting great interactions with Mystique and Charles, and actually getting an extended fight scene against Psylocke, which I honestly didn't expect considering how passive he was in the previous movie. Like Mystique, though, there really isn't much to say about him. He's in the movie a lot, but didn't really, y'know, get to be developed all that much.

Moira is also in the movie a lot, but she fares the worst of the other characters. She literally does nothing other than tell our heroes one thing or another, and while the likes of Beast and Nightcrawler don't get to do much character development, they at least have distinctive fun personalities. Moira seems to just be around to remind us that Charles is straight (and not gay for Magneto, which he really should admit already) and to reverse that awful brainwashing scene at the end of First Class. But, man, Moira really felt wasted and you could literally remove her and introduce a brand-new CIA agent character and no one would really care.

Stryker is a cool mid-movie antagonist, delaying the X-Men enough so that they don't just jump straight to Cairo to rescue Apocalypse before he makes his big dramatic announcement, and I've always liked Stryker from the movies. His ultimate role, though, is facilitating Wolverine's cameo. Stryker himself gets away free, though he does get a couple of nice scenes and lines while debating with the X-Men. 

Wolverine is unleashed from Weapon X, having forgotten his memories from before (and attached to his head is a really weird device) and the movie really helps to portray Wolverine's utter savagery really well. And, yeah, the soldiers he killed are Stryker's men hunting for Cyclops, Jean and Nightcrawler, and you can't blame the kids for trying to survive, but damn, it's brutal. Jean calms Wolverine down enough before he runs away into the cold snow, but it's a cool short scene that helps set up Wolverine for a later date when we hopefully get the original classic team back together again.

There are several lesser characters that showed up too. Jubilee, like I mentioned above, had five seconds of screentime which was a shame. Caliban had a short scene too, where he was Psylocke's previous employer and runs a cool underground broker service that Mystique and Nightcrawler visited. Caliban's cool! I want to see more of him and hoped Apocalypse didn't kill him off-screen. 

In a way, the movie felt less about Apocalypse, and more about setting up the classic team of X-Men, gathering older ones like Mystique and Beast and bringing in the younger generation. Apocalypse honestly just felt like a more epic version of your classic starter villain, your Darth Mauls and Piccolos and General Zods and Zabuza Momochis, but he is enough of a threat to put all the characters in place and help to build them all together. The movie is good on that front, and while there are definitely some problems, it didn't stop me from utterly enjoying this movie.