“Deadpool & Wolverine” Doesn’t Require Prior Marvel Cinematic Universe Knowledge
There is a tremendous amount of heat surrounding Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel Studios’ sole 2024 release. The long-awaited teaming-up of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine finally came together after years of teasing between the two stars and between Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth and various absent members of the X-Men in the first two Deadpool movies. The first trailer was viewed a record 365 million times over its first 24 hours. The second trailer, which dropped earlier this week, slung a record number of F-bombs (six), more than the entirety of the runtime of every film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—and did it in under three minutes.
Now comes the harder part—delivering a satisfying movie to absorb all this heat and keep the Deadpool franchise, finally officially under the Marvel banner, trucking along on its merrily irreverent way. The trailers have given us a sketch of what to expect, but little more. We know that Deadpool will try to lure Wolverine (which version of Wolverine, we’re not sure) into action to help save the world. The main villain—again, we think—is Cassandra Nova (The Crown‘s Emma Corrin), a formidable foe who is the twin sister of Professor X, Wolverine’s old mentor—the mentor who died…along with Wolverine, in James Mangold’s 2017 scorcher Logan. (Wolverine’s resurrection will no doubt be explained or joked about in the new film.) Cassandra Nova’s backstory in the comics is gothic in the extreme; she was so evil that her twin brother Charles tried to kill her while they were both in the womb. This upset her. She’s managed to survive and has broken very, very bad ever since. Deadpool and Wolverine will team-up against Cassandra Nova, but how, and why, and what else will happen and who else will pop up is mostly speculation.
For director Shawn Levy, one promise has already been kept. The most recent trailer proved that he and his writers were serious when he said Deadpool & Wolverine would be just as raunchy as the previous Deadpool films despite now being an official MCU movie, which does not usually traffic in F-bombs or gratuitous gore. Another promise Levy recently made to the Associated Press will take a full viewing to confirm—that one need not have a ton of MCU institutional knowledge to enjoy his new film.
“I was a good student in school. I’ll do my homework as an adult. But I am definitely not looking to do homework when I go to the movies,” Levy told the AP in regards to the huge breadth of MCU films and all their interconnected storylines and characters, a cinematic multiverse the likes of which we’ve never seen and is so massive it’s been unfolding in large, sprawling capital P Phases (Deadpool & Wolverine is officially a Phase 5 movie). For the un-Marveled, this massive prologue to every new MCU installment can feel like a barrier to entry. Deadpool & Wolverine, Levy says, has no barriers whatsoever.
“I very much made this film with certainly a healthy respect and gratitude towards the rabid fan base that has peak fluency in the mythology and lore of these characters and this world,” Levy continued. “But I didn’t want to presume that. This movie is built for entertainment, with no obligation to come prepared with prior research.”
That’s a good draw for all those people who are big Reynolds and Jackman fans who might otherwise be hesitant because they’re not well-schooled in the MCU. This is not to say that Deadpool & Wolverine will be in the least bit disconnected from the broader MCU; it’s just that most of the jokes and the joy will be there for the taking for anyone, even those who have never heard of the Time Variance Authority (they were introduced in the Disney+ series Loki and are a part of the film) and isn’t sort of spooked by the severed head of Giant Man that was glimpsed in the latest trailer.
While Marvel fans will still flock to see Deadpool & Wolverine, it’s the rare MCU film that seems poised to bring in a whole slew of superhero agnostics and even, perhaps, given the chemistry between Reynolds and Jackman and the Deadpool franchise’s cheeky humor and eye-rolling at the very genre it’s in, people who usually avoid movies like this. Levy told the AP that the duo is so perfectly cinematically opposite they might even bring back fond memories from viewers of a certain age of previous two-hander classics like Midnight Run, 48 Hours, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Levy is certainly the only director of a superhero movie to compare his film to that Steven Martin and John Candy Christmas classic about two commuters stuck together on an interminable trip home, but it’s precisely the kind of reference Deadpool himself would love.
Deadpool & Wolverine slashes its way into theaters on July 26.
For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:
“Deadpool & Wolverine” Official Trailer Unleashes Mutant Mayhem on Marvel
“Deadpool & Wolverine” Director Shawn Levy Teases Raunchy, Riotous Super Team-Up
Kevin Feige Unleashes 9 Minutes of “Deadpool & Wolverine” at CinemaCon
Featured image: (L-R): Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan and Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
