Reviews for Deadpool and Wolverine are in – and they’re incredibly divisive.
The film marks the sarcastic superhero’s first foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and features Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson, and Hugh Jackman returning as Wolverine after his character was supposedly killed off in Logan in 2017.
A trailer for the movie’s release broke records, racking up 365 million views in 24 hours.
Directed by Night at the Museum maker Shawn Levy, the film follows the superheroes as they begrudgingly team up to defeat a threat to their home universe.
The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey was left unimpressed by the film, calling it a “tedious and annoying corporate merger of a film”, and assigning it a paltry two stars.
“It’s a marvel just how desperate this film is,” quipped The Telegraph, seconding Loughrey, and providing it an even lower and very lonely one star.
However,Variety called the bromance an “irreverent send-off to Fox’s X-Men movies”, suggesting that the movie focuses on giving fans closure. Looking backwards, the film “works best as an irreverent homage to what’s come before, as opposed to the prototype for future superhero movies”.
“Director Shawn Levy (who has helmed Reynolds twice before) is stronger at comedy than he is with action, which means these sequences aren’t nearly as well orchestrated as The Matrix stunt maven David Leitch’s work on Deadpool 2. The visual effects are iffy, and city streets have rarely looked more like a backlot.”
But ultimately, the publication’s critic Peter Debruge said the film “serves as a welcome corrective to the superhero overload of the past 15 years”.
“Now that the Disney-backed Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to be running on fumes, the entire genre could use a shake-up, and this jester-like character is just the guy to do it,” wrote Debruge.
The format of the film has been praised as “shattering the fourth wall into a million pieces”, according to The Guardian critic, Peter Bradshaw, who gave the movie a middling three stars.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled
“Deadpool was always the satiric turn – but this is a movie which more or less orders the audience to stop taking any of the proceedings seriously,” he wrote.
Reynold’s performance has been lauded as “often funny, sometimes very funny, periodically entirely unbearable, often a weird and interesting mix of the three”. Ultimately, The Guardian says: “It’s amusing and exhausting”.
With many inside references to the state of the film industry, and Marvel’s recent misfires, Empire lauded the movie as proof that the “franchise still has life in it”.
“As the film itself acknowledges (albeit half-jokingly), Marvel is currently at a low point’, after a string of misfires. Deadpool and Wolverine is a strong answer to the question of whether the franchise still has life in it. It states a confident yes, and does so by putting character first and Universe second.
“Deadpool and Wolverine is laser-focused on its title pair and everything people love about them. There’s no eye on the next chapter. No teases of what’s to come. It’s all about right now and making sure the audience has the best time possible.”
Deadpool & Wolverine is in cinemas from 25 July.