BEFORE: What do you know, I went to a movie theater, for the first time in a year - I think the last movie I saw in a theater was "Asteroid City", despite the fact that I'm technically at a movie theater to work two or three times every week. But, I'm working, and as I keep saying, "Don't get high on your own supply." Every film ever made is streaming, and even if it's not, it's on the web somewhere, and even if it's not, it will be in just a few months. So, remind me why I should pay $20 for a ticket and another $20 for popcorn and a drink? Just asking. I didn't pay $20 for the ticket, though, because I'm in the AMC program and there are discount tickets on Tuesday, which not everybody knows about, because they publicize this fact, but not to the point where the company is going to lose a lot of money, they only want the RIGHT people to know about this, and I've been in the program since I worked there three summers ago and then left after three months. So I paid $7 plus fees, so $9 instead of $20. Yeah, I'll pay that to watch a first-run Marvel movie.
I treated "Deadpool & Wolverine" like a nexus movie, the cast is so huge that there must have been a dozen ways to get here, like I could have come straight from "The Son" but I held off another few days so I could cross another couple of indie films off my list, but the road here was always going to be through Hugh Jackman, who carries over from "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl", and this is because I didn't want to look at the cast list before, I managed to watch this movie while avoiding all spoilers, even casting ones - and those were the best ones! Look, if you don't want to know who's in this film, just DON'T read the cast list below. That's all.
Now, the problem I have is that there were a dozen ways to get here, but a HUNDRED paths lead out of this nexus movie. The map leads almost EVERYWHERE from here, but you know what, it's not a map's job to tell me where to go, it's my job to figure out the next destination and then the map's going to help me get there, because that's how maps work. But I think I'm going to go with these links, and that should get me ALMOST to the end of August: Emma Corrin, Kaitlyn Dever, Elisabeth Moss, Claes Bang, Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Rachel McAdams, Anton Lesser, Jai Courtney. Then I kind of hit another nexus point, with a lot of roads leading out of it, and hopefully from there I can work out a way to get to a good film for October 1.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Deadpool 2" (Movie #2,969), "Logan" (Movie #2,613)
THE PLOT: Deadpool is offered a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by the Time Variance Authority, but instead recruits a variant of Wolverine to save his universe from extinction.
AFTER: Theme of death or losing a loved one - you might think this one doesn't fit in, because each character can heal and is therefore invulnerable and nearly immortal, they can't die! But this actually does fit this week's theme because Deadpool is threated with the loss of his friends and adopted family, because their whole timeline is in jeopardy, so all of his loved ones are about to be wiped from reality. Also, Deadpool apparently comes from the same timeline as the X-Men movies and "Logan" (which doesn't really make sense, because "Logan" was set in the future, only it does maybe because Deadpool's timeline is screwed up anyway and also he doesn't care about continuity at all). So Logan's dead, and can't be brought back to life, as Deadpool discovers, so he's got to come up with another plan if he wants a good team-up for his third movie.
When I recently re-watched "Deadpool 2" I paid particular attention to the ending sequences, where Deadpool used Cable's time machine to right a few wrongs, like stopping Vanessa from getting killed and killing the weird Deadpool-ish thing seen in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". Neither of these make sense, sure Deadpool killing the weird Deadpool with no mouth is funny, but remember the part where he HEALS? And by saving Vanessa, Deadpool set up a time paradox, because later in the film he was so despondent over her death that he blew himself and his (her?) apartment up, that led to Colossus putting him back together, which led to hanging out with Colossus and meeting Firefist, which led to working with Cable, which led to him having the power to time-travel. So if he saves Vanessa, none of those things happen and he doesn't gain the power to time-travel, so he DOESN'T save her. Maybe it's a double time-loop, he saves her then he doesn't then he saves her then he doesn't, etc. etc. Or if you believe in branching timelines then he creates a new timeline where he saves Vanessa, doesn't blow himself up and things proceed from there in that timeline, and maybe he meets Cable a different way, we don't really know.
So when I saw that Deadpool was in trouble with the Time Variance Authority, I thought, "Well, sure, he created a paradox in the last film, PLUS he killed a variant of himself, which could be another no-no, so OF COURSE the TVA wants to round him up. But it turns out that isn't why they're mad at him at all, in fact we find out that a guy from the TVA, Mr. Paradox, wants to help him out, by letting him relocate to the main (?) timeline, aka the MCU, because his whole timeline is about to be "pruned", just because the anchor being of that reality (Logan) has died. Sure, it seems like a waste to ruin a perfectly good reality just because one superhero kicked it, but that's where we find ourselves, assuming that you believe Mr. Paradox, and maybe you shouldn't.
But this leads Deadpool on a multiversal search to find a new Wolverine, this one's too short and that one's too stabby, and THAT one isn't even played by Hugh Jackman, which is all a bit weird. Finally he finds one that he can work with AND he wears the cool yellow and blue costume from the comics (Deadpool seems to know all the comics, even the ones he doesn't appear in) but he accidentally chooses the one that the TVA thinks is the WORST Wolverine of all, and anyway the TVA guy tells him that you can't just replace an anchor being with a variant, OK, that would have been good to know earlier. So Paradox deals with this naughty Deadpool and this unworthy Wolverine by sending them both to the Void, which was last seen in the Marvel TV series "Loki" and it's where comic-book characters go when they're no longer needed or are basically forgotten by the writers.
(Regarding the multiple Wolverines, I'm reminded of a recent comic-book mini-series called "Weapon X-Men", which had a team of five different Logans from five different realities teaming up to defeat Onslaught, a villain who traditionally was a mix of Professor X and Magneto, but in this reality was a mix of Magneto and Jean Grey. Yeah, I don't know how that works either, combining two heroes to form a villain, but let's roll with it. The assembled Team Wolverine includes a one-handed berserker from the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline, an old Logan from the Old Man Logan future, a zombie Wolvie from the "Marvel Zombies" comic, a retired fat Wolverine from a comic called "Earth X" and a female Wolverine named Jane Howlett from the 1800's. Well, Wolverine calls himself "the best there is at what I do", so five Wolverines should really be outstanding, right? Eh, not so much, these guys have a lot of problems, but I think they still managed to defeat the evil power in five issues.)
Back to the Void, which looks a bit like that trash planet in "Thor: Ragnarok", only with a lot more space. Actually it looks more like the Wasteland seen in the "Mad Max" movies, and this kind of gets confirmed when a bunch of punk leather-clad villains roll up in vehicles from other Marvel movies (including a Fantasticar) and they're all cast-offs or variants from the other realities - like the old Sabertooth from the first two "X-Men" movies, or Pyro from the same series, and they all work for Cassandra Nova, the little-known twin sister to Professor Xavier, who was really only in a few Marvel Comics (New X-Men, I want to say) before most writers and fans completely forgot about her, so yeah, she definitely belongs in the Void. She's also got a Juggernaut, a Blob, a Toad, a Bullseye, and a Lady Deathstrike working for her, among others.
They also encounter someone that at first looks like Captain American, but nope, he's the Human Torch from one of the THREE failed attempts at getting the Fantastic Four to catch on in a movie. Honestly, I can't decide whether the first or third try was the worst, but the second one wasn't THAT bad, it got a sequel, right? Anyway, it seems like Human Torch has been in the Void for quite a while, and he manages to pass along some information to Deadsy and Wolfy about a band of Outlanders that lives on the outskirts of the Void, which might have the ability to figure out how to get them home. But first they've got to escape from the clutches of Cassandra Nova before they find the resistance group.
With help from a Deadpool variant they find wandering through the Void (just wait, more are on the way...) and his car, they reach the resistance, and they're made up of more former Fox Marvel Heroes, but you've got enough spoilers from me already. Big names, heavy hitters mostly, only if you look at them another way they're two has-beens and a never-were, really. Which maybe explains why we never saw more "Daredevil" or "Blade" movies, for example, because for some reason those franchises' realities were pruned and their non-anchor beings just ended up in the Void, aka Movie Limbo. Plus we all know that rights to all those Fox movie characters reverted back to Marvel/Disney when they bought up the assets of 20th Century Fox. Yes, we're seeing corporate deals being played out in the plots of these movies now, but only Deadpool references them directly.
(Regarding the resistance group, or Outlanders, or whatever, I'm reminded of another Marvel comic called Exiles, and there were two volumes, I think - in both cases five or six heroes (some were variants of the ones in the main Earth-616 reality) would come together because their realities were in trouble or in danger of not existing any more, and they had to dimension-hop across the multiverse fighting evil, but also looking for a way to fix their own realities and maybe return to them, if possible. That's what this group of forgotten heroes reminded me of, I just wish they'd called themselves the Exiles.)
Meanwhile, Mr. Paradox is planning to use a device called a Time Ripper to destroy Deadpool's reality, however Deadpool's friends and love interest are still inside it, so after defeating Cassandra Nova with the help of the Resistance, they have to portal back to Earth-10005 and try to find the device, however first they have to fight about 100 Deadpools from the different realities, who are standing in their way. There's Nicepool and Ladypool and CowboyPool and even Headpool, who's just a floating zombie Deadpool head that can still somehow talk.
(Regarding the multiple 'Pools, there was another comic called Deadpool Corps, which featured, you guessed it, Deadpool variants from across the multi-verse coming together to defeat the evil power. I don't remember as much about it as "Weapon X-Men" or "Exiles", but I remember that it exist, as the comics have been pulling this Multiverse shit for a long time to sell more comics - jeez, if one character is popular then we need 10 more just like him, stat! The movies, meanwhile, are allegedly now half-way through the "Multiverse Saga" that began with "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and then continued with the "Loki" show and "Ant-Man: Quantumania" and a bit at the end of "The Marvels". Guys, let's wrap this up early, what do you say, because the guy who was playing Kang got cancelled, so, come on, enough Multiverse stuff. That's all that announcement from Comic-Con about Robert Downey Jr. playing Dr. Doom was, it's just more multiverse crap.)
No shocker ending, as WolvPool and DeadErino team up to defeat Cassandra Nova while she's using the Time Ripper, because good will always defeat evil because it's nicer and has better abs. Also teamwork makes the dream work. And the worst Wolverine gets to live on in the reality where old Logan died, so that's something, everyone deserves a fresh start now and again. And Deadpool saved his friends and his reality, and that's enough for now, until we see him in "Secret Wars" where Dr. Doom takes bits and pieces of all different realities and stitches them together to form BattleWorld, where all the heroes and villains will have to fight each other. Or so I predict.
One final note about the cast list below - there's a clip reel of footage and outtakes from most of the Marvel movies made by Fox, as a partially tongue-in-cheek tribute to those movies, and the era that they represent, when some Marvel movies were made by one company, and other Marvel movies were made by another, and that's the genesis for the split-universe or multi-verse, and the reason why some characters can't interact with others in movies, unless they use a time-machine or go dimension-hopping through the void. So there's archive footage in "Deadpool & Wolverine" from the "X-Men" movies and the "Fantastic Four" movies and even "Daredevil", but the IMDB does NOT officially count these as "appearances", because they're not part of the main narrative, or they're from behind-the-scenes or some stupid reason. Now, to me, an appearance is an appearance, any time some actor is on the screen, it counts (unless their vocals appear in a song, that's out of my purview). So usually the IMDB is the definitive source for who "appears" in a movie, but now for this I have to do my own record-keeping, which is a lot more work, and it means I can't trust the IMDB search function for the rest of the year. I have a similar problem with documentaries, but eventually the IMDB comes around and gives in and listens to me about who's in archive footage, but they're digging their heels in on this one, which is very frustrating.
There are still a few things that don't quite make sense, like we see Deadpool applying to be an Avenger in the main Marvel timeline. Umm, why? And how? We don't seem him traveling to this timeline to do this, and how does he know about Earth-616 and how does he even know about the Avengers? Also, why is Happy Hogan acting like Iron Man is still alive, when he isn't alive any more in that timeline? It's a puzzling aside, but just like Deadpool's present is somehow Logan's future, it doesn't really have to all line up, everything just takes place in "story time", which means that everything is possible and continuity doesn't matter at all, things just happen when they do because that's what the writers want to have happen.
Now I've got a difficult choice to make, because this movie's cast is SO big and there are so many connections, I could go almost anywhere from here. But I've found that I can't really GO anywhere without a destination in mind - but as George Harrison once sang, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." So I guess I just have to pick one road out of town and take it.
Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen (last seen in "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms"), Dafne Keen (last seen in "Logan"), Jon Favreau (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Chris Evans (ditto), Morena Baccarin (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Rob Delaney (last seen in "The School for Good and Evil"), Leslie Uggams (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Jennifer Garner (last seen in "The Adam Project"), Wesley Snipes (last seen in "Waiting to Exhale"), Channing Tatum (last seen in "She's the Man"), Henry Cavill (last seen in "Black Adam"), Wunmi Mosaku (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Aaron Stanford (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Tyler Mane (last seen in "Troy"), Karan Soni (last heard in "Strange World"), Brianna Hildebrand (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Randal Reeder (ditto), Shioli Kutsuna (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Lewis Tan (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Nicholas Pauley (last seen in "The Prom"), Sonita Henry (last seen in "Star Trek"), Ryan McKen (last seen in "Hope Gap"), Nanak Phlora, Aydin Ahmed, Leemore Marrett Jr. (last seen in "The Batman"), James Dryden (last seen in "The Dig"), Ollie Palmer, Greg Hemphill, Aaron W Reed (last seen in "Free Guy"), Mike Waters, Rob McElhenney (last seen in "13 Conversations About One Thing"), James Reynolds, Ed Kear, Paul G. Raymond (last seen in "Wonka"), Inez Reynolds, Olin Reynolds, Paul Mullin, Alex Kyshkovych, Billy Clements (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), Daniel Medina Ramos, Eduardo Gago Munoz, Jade Lye, Ayesha Hussain, Curtis Small, Harry Holland, Kevin Fortin (last seen in "Good Boys"), and the voices of Nathan Fillion (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Stefan Kapicic (last seen in "The Brothers Bloom"), Blake Lively (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Matthew McConaughey (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only")
with archive footage of Ben Affleck (last seen in "The Flash"), Jamie Bell (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Halle Berry (last seen in "The Program"), Michael Chiklis (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Brian Cox (last seen in "The Reckoning"), Alan Cumming (last seen in "Loser"), Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Macbeth" (2015)), Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "Stan Lee") Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "The Menu"), Kelly Hu (last heard in "Batman: Under the Red Hood"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Famke Janssen (last seen in "All I Wish"), Michael B. Jordan (last seen in "Creed III"), Jennifer Lawrence (also last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Stan Lee (also last seen in "Stan Lee"), James Marsden (last seen in "Unfrosted"), James McAvoy (last seen in "The Bubble"), Ian McKellen (last seen in "Cats"), Evan Peters (last heard in "Wish"), Rebecca Romijn (last seen in "De Palma"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "The Daytrippers"), Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in "Elvis"), Patrick Stewart (last seen in "Good Night Oppy"), Miles Teller (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Sophie Turner (last seen in "Barely Lethal")
RATING: 8 out of 10 references to other Hugh Jackman movies
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