Deadpool & Wolverine's Most Vicious Jokes Call The MCU Out For Its Failures

This article contains spoilers for "Deadpool & Wolverine."

Shawn Levy's "Deadpool & Wolverine" is the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which now includes many TV specials, miniseries, or multi-year shows that may or may not be canonical. The first film in this long-in-the-tooth series, Jon Favreau's "Iron Man" debuted in 2008, and it's been a 15-year frenzy of mass consumption. The MCU presented cinematic blockbusters as an extended TV-like event, with each feature sold as a single episode in a larger interconnected super-narrative. Fans drooled heartily over this approach, knowing that each character introduction presaged a crossover with an existing character. 

Indeed, interconnectivity is the only gimmick the MCU has ever had. Fans often took notes during MCU movies, looking for clues as to what may be coming. The entire series became a preview for itself, only reaching a conclusion with "Avengers: Endgame," a three-hour action orgy with no fewer than 40 major characters and the death and rebirth of half of the universe. 

After "Endgame," the MCU was content to introduce new characters without the urgent story-building, preview-forward interconnectivity that previously marked it. The infamous Phase 4 contained more raw hours of content than the previous three Phases combined, and none of it really set the audience's hearts aflame, despite numerous box office hits. Phase 4 ended with no crossover event, and Phase 5 doesn't seem to be building to anything other than already-tired multiverse shenanigans, especially with all of the Kang the Conqueror complications, courtesy of Jonathan Majors. 

It's into this milieu that "Deadpool & Wolverine" plopped ... with a wink. Recall that Deadpool's shtick is his ability to break the fourth wall and comment on the movies he's in. He called the actors who play the supporting characters by name and comments on weaknesses in his own screenplays. That includes a jab at the MCU in "Deadpool & Wolverine" where he notes that Wolverine is joining the MCU "at a low point." 

The last few films in the MCU have all been disappointments to some degree. "Thor: Love and Thunder" was generally seen as flippant and lackluster, and not too many audiences fell in love with "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," a film made without the late Chadwick Boseman in the title role. Those were chased with the overblown and absurd "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," and the overlong swan song "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3." The most recent MCU film, "The Marvels" was hacked to pieces, and cost so much to make that its $200 million intake was considered low. 

Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) was called in as a fixative. Previously owned by Fox, the "Deadpool" movies served as an R-rated, foulmouthed antidote to the safe, CGI-encrusted superhero mayhem of its contemporaries. Now folded into the Disney machine (Disney purchased Fox in 2017), the makers of "Deadpool" hope to give the MCU a shot of adrenaline. If cussing, violence, and self-awareness have the potential to bring people back to the MCU, then they're worth giving a try. It's not for nothing that Deadpool refers to himself as "Marvel Jesus." The hope is that he is the Resurrection and the Life. 

And Deadpool can't do that without vocally stating his intent. Using a dimension-hopping widget, Deadpool is able to snag Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) from a neighboring parallel universe and haul him in front of his corporate overlords. He welcomes Wolverine to the MCU, currently "at a low point." When a piece of art actively calls attention to its own flaws, it's called lampshading. One cannot undo the flaws, but if one is self-aware — hangs a lampshade on it — perhaps the audience will be more forgiving. 

"Deadpool & Wolverine" is 40% lampshade.

Just as many might have feared, "Deadpool & Wolverine," for all its cuss words, CGI blood, and sexual references, feels frustratingly toothless, defanged by the Disney machine. "Deadpool & Wolverine" was the corporate-approved version of Deadpool, a character that is allowed to be crass, and even openly critical of the MCU, but who can't do anything truly daring to the status quo. 

There are jokes about cocaine, but Deadpool notes that the film's executive producer won't let him actually do a line on camera. There are jokes about anal sex, but there is no pegging scene as in the first "Deadpool." There's plenty of blood, but it's the CGI variety, looking like mere darkened splatter paint rather than a visceral, viscous fluid that comes from sliced arteries. Deadpool is a bisexual character and talks a lot about sexual activity with other men, but he doesn't do so much as kiss a man.

When Deadpool is asked what he wants to do with his life, he admits that he wants to be an Avenger. He geeks out when he sees pictures of Captain America and Thor. He, like the viewers, likely views those characters with affection. This feels out-of-character for Deadpool, who, in previous films, would happily stab Captain America in the eye. Deadpool is a misfit and works best in teams of other misfits. The fact that he wants to be welcomed into the mainstream only spells out how desperate the mainstream is to have him. 

But then, this is the mainstream at a low point. Perhaps the comment is the MCU finally sank far enough down that a bottom-feeding blood clown like Deadpool can climb aboard. Hopefully, next time he'll shake things up a little more.