The MCU is back Bay-bee!!

Well, kind of. It didn’t exactly go anywhere but it has been struggling to maintain its massive box office success and loyal fan fervor since the end of the Infinity Saga. This isn’t exactly surprising as Kevin Feige and the MCU put themselves in a strange predicament. The Infinity Saga ended with Endgame which also brought an end to two of the series’ main leading men. Robert Downy Jr as Iron Man and Chris Evans as Captain America. I know there was technically another Spiderman movie in Phase 3, but come on. It ended with Endgame. Simultaneously, the MCU pivoted to cash in on its massive success with more content by way of Disney Park attractions and serialized shows on Disney Plus.

The result has been a mix of middling successes and some downright failures. Wandavision, the first MCU TV show, was an interesting genre-bending narrative that held real consequences for beloved Avengers while also spotlighting the weird places the MCU could go in a serialized format. Similarly, Loki had a great season of Television and impacted the overall narrative for the MCU in a way that was thought to be solely reserved for the big-budget films. On the flip side, shows like Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye were middling successes that felt devoid of any MCU charm, while other projects like She-Hulk and Secret Invasion failed to capture an audience with fans and critics alike.

The movies post Endgame haven’t faired much better. There have certainly been some decent flicks in the mix. Wakanda Forever was a powerful tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman and a meaningful introduction to the female leads that would replace him, and Spiderman: No Way Home was the first film since Endgame that felt like event viewing. But for every single hit, there have been three misses. Quantamania was lackluster and devoid of the original film’s charm, Eternals was overblown and nonsensical, and The Marvels couldn’t even recoup its production budget at the domestic box office. It seems like the MCU needs a savior. Someone fun and cheeky with a cool costume and even cooler weapons.

Enter Deadpool, the merc with a mouth, and this time he’s bringing Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine back from the dead. Yes, it is exciting to see these two finally team up but is the movie any good? Can it live up to the time-traveling, multiversal hype the MCU has created? In simple terms, yes. The movie is very good and feels like the shot in the arm the MCU needs.

The Deadpool franchise has gone from the underdog R-rated superhero movie to being the savior the MCU needs, but not the one they deserve. After Disney’s acquisition spree of Marvel and Fox, Deadpool and the X-men can finally share the screen with Avengers new and old. With all of this power, all of this IP under one roof, and the MCU leaning hard into the multiverse storyline, it truly feels like anything is possible.

Deadpool and Wolverine does a good job of delivering the buzzworthy, cameo-filled, fourth-wall-breaking type of antics you’d expect from a Deadpool film in the MCU. It’s still just as violent and raunchy as his previous outings but this time the film is filled with a lot more familiar faces. No more empty X-men schools and B-list X-men sidekicks, this flick is filled with cameos and crossovers that will surely be the buzz of Twitter for the next week or so.

All of that stuff is good. It’s cool to lay on some nostalgia and have some fun with characters we haven’t seen in a while or have never seen in the MCU. The Deadpool series is what makes the most sense for this cavalcade of guest spots and the film is better for it, not worse. Sure, some of it can feel gimmicky, but Deadpool and Wolverine is so sincere in its love for Marvel properties old and new that you can’t help but smile.

The movie isn’t perfect though. Some action sequences are paced surprisingly fast like the film wants to get away from the action and get back to witty dialogue. Not every joke lands, but that’s to be expected from any comedy, and the villains are either rushed or given no exposition. There are some bad guys and gals that we’ve seen before in other films but the film oddly chooses to say nothing about them. They are just weird background characters. I’m all for showing not telling, but in a film so self-referential, it’s bizarre that there isn’t even a throwaway joke at the expense of these characters.

I’m purposefully being vague as to avoid spoilers but if you’re a fan of Marvel movies, from the X-Men to the MCU, you’re going to have a good time. But at its heart, the true theme of Deadpool and Wolverine, the main plot of the film, is being better than your past. Not letting your past failures define you, and rising to the occasion when you’re needed the most.

It’s a theme that’s not just the plot of the movie, but a mirror for the MCU and the character of Deadpool himself. Deadpool and his two previous outings were lower-budget superhero flicks that took place in an X-Men adjacent cinematic universe. A universe that was doing pretty poorly I might add. It was an R-rated comic book movie, a hard R, with nudity and dismemberment, far from the family-friendly violence that filled Iron Man and Thor movies. But despite all that, everything working against it, Ryan Reynold’s silly, violent, little superhero comic book went on to become a massive success and now is poised to save the MCU.

Okay, maybe that’s a little hyperbolic. I don’t know if Deadpool and Wolverine will save the MCU. I don’t know if the MCU needs saving. The shows are still being made at a generous cadence and the new movie slate looks pretty good. It could be that Deadpool is just a good addition to an already strong team. But the MCU could learn something from Deadpool and Wolverine. Not just the inevitable box office success or the film’s penchant for cameos. The MCU can learn from the plot of the movie.

Comic book movies have been around for a while with Christopher Reeves Superman and Tim Burton’s take on Batman but it wasn’t until Bryan Singers 2000 film X-Men that Hollywood really took hold of the trend. After X-Men became a hit, studios started buying up licenses and greenlighting every character with a cape and a sad backstory. Some of these were great. Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films were terrific popcorn summer romps, Hellboy was a fun adaptation, and even Wesley Snipes got to make two more Blade flicks. But there was also a lot of garbage. Catwoman, Daredevil, Elektra, everything with the Fantastic Four, it was all bad. The early MCU days also had its fair share of stinkers.

We tend to look at the Infinity Saga through rose-colored glasses but for every Thor Ragnarok, there was a Thor Dark World. Through these failures though, the studios didn’t give up on it. They learned from their failures, learned from their mistakes, and created something better. Now, the MCU is desperately trying to hang on to the highs of The Infinity Saga instead of learning from their mistakes and pushing forward. We need an MCU that laughs at its mistakes, stops taking itself so seriously, and leans into the fun comic book superhero flicks we want to see. That’s what Deadpool and Wolverine is. A fun summer popcorn flick. Deadpool and Wolverine is an 8 on my scale and I hope we get to see a lot of more this character in MCU films to come.