The Pitch: Your friendly neighborhood Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), at the beginning of his fateful team-up with new pal Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), isn’t in the best of places. Having put aside his vigilante ways for a quiet existence, Wade Wilson is happy to have good friends in his life, but said life feels like it’s lacking meaning — it definitely doesn’t help that his minor existential crisis led to longtime love Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) ending their relationship.
Wade gets a good reason to snap back into action, though, when agents from the Time Variance Authority sweep him back to their headquarters, where an official by the very plausible name of Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) informs him that Wade’s timeline is about to be mercy-killed. So now Deadpool’s gotta search the multiverse to find a Wolverine (2017’s Logan, streaming on Disney+, reveals the fate of his world’s Wolvie) who can help save his timeline — and more importantly, the people in it he loves.
He might need some additional help. From other… familiar faces. There’s no Taylor Swift cameo. But beyond that, everyone’s fair game.
These Timelines Can Get So Confusing: It’s worth doing whatever you can to avoid spoilers for the cameos packed into Deadpool & Wolverine, which doesn’t disappoint when it comes to delivering some truly wild and hilarious deep cuts. Expectations on that level are of course pretty high, considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s overall love for in-jokes and references, not to mention the Deadpool series’ deeply meta storytelling. Yet Mr. Pool’s official entrance into the MCU leans harder than ever on details designed to be appreciated by long-standing fans of these films and series.
There’s so much of that packed into the film that it’s probably for the best that the emotional arc of the film is a very, very simple one: Deadpool is lacking purpose, until purpose literally knocks on his front door and tells him his universe is ending. It’s a smart choice on the part of the five credited writers on this film, who maybe leave some key details a little vague as to how cast members from these various universes connect, but still keep the focus on Deadpool and Wolverine, together at last.
A Nice Pair of Smooth Criminals Down Under: In this review, I’m trying to avoid mentioning so many of the movie’s more surface-level delights — the deepness of some of these deep cuts, not to mention the degree to which Deadpool’s running meta-commentary winks at very real issues within the MCU. However, it feels safe to say that if you are buying your movie ticket because you want to see Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool fight Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, an army of trained professionals have worked very hard to make your dream come true. (Maybe more than once, over the course of the film’s two-hour and seven-minute runtime.)