Sitting in the movie theatre on Friday night, the day after this movie’s release, I was in the most crowded theatre I’ve been in since moving to the Keweenaw. Judging by the raucous laughter throughout the movie, the whoops and cheers when it ended, and the fact exactly zero people got up to leave when the credits hit, it was obvious the theatre was filled with exactly the target audience. I broke my “no sequel” rule once again for:

MOVIE: “Deadpool & Wolverine” (2024, R, 127 min, watch it: in theatres only)

Full disclosure: I’m a comic book fan. Back in the late 1980s, I got a grab bag of comics from a big box store, found issue 39 of someone called Wolverine, and I was hooked. While I’d read the occasional comic throughout my childhood, I was now in search of a comic book store to grab every issue upon release. Though that collecting fever has waned over the years, I still have all my comics. Back in 2000 when “X-Men” was released, I was stoked.

Forgive me for one more memory lane trip before circling back to this movie. Comic book based movies started long ago with the first really mainstream one coming from DC in 1966 with “Batman: The Movie” and then a run of Superman movies starting in 1978. They were campy but favorably remembered movies. Batman took center stage in 1989 and, through the years, DC has racked up forty-eight movies with two more on the horizon. Marvel really didn’t get started until “Blade” in 1998 and the aforementioned “X-Men” in 2000 (despite a series of horrible movies starting with the 1986 “Howard the Duck”). However, over the years, Marvel based movies have now totaled eighty-five released with four more on the horizon. That’s close to four movies per year for Marvel themed characters!

As Disney has found with many of their procured franchises, flooding the market with material oversaturates and people will stop caring. While comic book movies haven’t ground to a halt, they have certainly slowed down. Releasing a new Deadpool movie was something I personally didn’t think Disney would do, but they greenlit the movie and the R-rating.

Everyone in the cast of “Deadpool & Wolverine” made sure to take advantage of that R-rating to an excessive degree. Even for a Deadpool movie, the language and gratuitous violence was through the roof. Would the movie have suffered at all from toning this down? Not even remotely, in my opinion, and they should’ve. I’ll admit Deadpool movies really need an R-rating or the character just doesn’t work, but the over-abundance of blood and foul language could easily alienate an otherwise welcoming portion of the audience.

If, like a majority of the audience I saw the movie with, you can get past that element, what about the actual storyline? I was figuring even if Disney went ahead with a “Deadpool” movie, there was little chance it would make it into the ranks of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) which Marvel has worked diligently to create. When I was greeted with the opening Marvel fanfare and Deadpool’s tendency to break the fourth wall and go meta on a multitude of levels, I’ll freely admit I had a grin that never left me as the movie played out.

That doesn’t mean the movie is for everyone. When I decided I would go see this movie to review it despite being the third in the Deadpool series, it was a calculated gamble. The first two movies had some inside jokes throughout, but for the most part, you could watch them independently of one another and most of the other Marvel-related movies that were out at the time. I thought the third would do the same, but with the integration into Disney, Marvel, and the Multiverse, I was so, so very wrong.

Having Wolverine in the movie was hardly a surprise as his name got equal billing in the title. For those watching the trailers carefully, many more could be seen. Not only are there connections to the MCU, but also to a vast majority of the other 20th Century Fox Marvel movies that were made before Disney absorbed them. There were even inclusions of movies that didn’t ever get made, that were little more than rumors on the wind. There were even references to movies yet to be made. Material released only to Disney+ made an appearance as well. The connections were unexpected, often hilarious, and seemingly endless.

Do you need to be aware of those connections? No, you can enjoy the movie with blissful ignorance to a multitude of the jokes since Deadpool movies always have a firehose of jokes washing over the audience. In order to fully appreciate everything this movie is doing, however, it certainly helps. Let me end with one example that shouldn’t spoil much about the movie…

Jon Favreau reprises his role that started when he directed the first “Iron Man” movie, Tony Stark’s then chauffer, Happy Hogan. In talking with Deadpool (for reasons I won’t go into because that certainly would spoil something), he tells the titular character to not shoot too high but find his place. Then, his character quips, “Look at me. I found my place, and now I’m happy.” Okay, innocuous enough line and funny because his character is named Happy.

However, would knowing that Jon Favreau actually made his Marvel based debut in the 2003 movie “Daredevil” as Matt Murdock’s friend Foggy Nelson change anything? To me, it certainly adds another dimension. Moving from 20th Century Fox’s ill-received movie to the acclaimed start of the MCU and finding his place comfortably in the Disney movie machine is definitely a meta level reference one could intone from the comment. And this movie is absolutely filled with them.

So, is this what to watch for you? I know this movie is not for everyone and would never suggest it to be. Anyone who enjoys the history of what Marvel movies have been since the late 90s should have a ball of a time watching this one though. Again, I’ll point out, this is no family movie in any sense and the language and violence are significantly high. For me personally, this was a marvelous movie that was wholly unexpected. I completely understand that there will be many who simply skip it, and there is nothing at all wrong with that choice.

Kent Kraft is someone who has not only watched all the DC and Marvel movies (and imprints of both) but reviewed and ranked them. Remove the comic portion and he’s also an avid fan of comparing movies based on books to the source material. Stay tuned for an upcoming article from me: “To Watch or to Read? That is the Question!”