Let’s just address this momentarily as it’s worth noting that the Deadpool films didn’t fit comfortably with the other X-Men movies, but this tried to crowbar it into place more than it was.
Deadpool has always broke the forth wall and was something of a gaiden story to the other X-Men films, and this is demonstratable by Jugganaught not being consistent with how he appeared in X-Men The Last Stand and a brief appearance of the younger prequel X-Men as a cameo in Deadpool 2.
Oh and that this version of Deadpool isn’t the same or have the same origin story as the Wade Wilson/Deadpool that Wolverine defeated as the final boss in X-Men Origins Wolverine.
Although that is directly addressed to some degree and made canon in the ending sequence of Deadpool 2 which itself uses time travel and retroactively could be said to be exploring the multiverse in some fashion.
But Deadpool and Wolverine does go some way to say that the end of the X-Men story from Fox is that Wolverine died as seen at the end of Logan.
But then the film directly goes into the world of the MCU,
or at least into what was established in Loki with the TVA and they use the Time Variant Authority as the method to collide the MCU world with the Fox X-Men world…boring.
I mean come on,
the film didn’t even bring in Loki or Owen Wilson and the only character from Loki it brought in was Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15…that classic character…
Of course, Deadpool also gives us a dead giant Ant-Man but no Paul Rudd and Happy Hogan…meh…
So, my point is that for this being a fully fledged MCU film, it didn’t do almost anything to cross over with the MCU.
Oh and I know there was a scene where Deadpool and Thor have a moment but its on a screen and out of context as a vision of the future which we may yet see.
But that itself is only a tease and not giving us the Deadpool meets Thor action we’d want.
So, if I’m saying that it failed on the multiverse promise here, how can I say that it was the best thing since Spider-Man No Way Home. Well that’s because even if it didn’t deliver on true MCU cross overs, it more than delivered on X-Men and other Fox cross overs.And maybe this was ok.
And to be honest it was ok as people love the film and it made a billion at the box office.
So let’s look at what it did right and was it was right at this time.
Deadpool and Wolverine finally teamed up Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine which people have wanted to see for years,
and when I say people I think it’s mostly a campaign that Reynolds has been pushing for and every saw and said yes please I’ll take some of that.
This was the main selling point and even though it was always possible when the movies were being made at Fox, it didn’t happen for one reason or another, but mostly because Jackman was having Wolverine fatigue and bowed out of the character after the first Deadpool movie hit the cinemas and so not having the chance to make it happen.
The film of course did bring back a few other X-Men actors from past movies,
most notably Aaron Stanford as Pyro, and Tyler Mane as Sabretooth, and then a bunch of different actors playing roles seen in past movies to continue those variations such as Toad and Juggernaut not being the original actors, but still essentially being the same version.
Where things become more interesting is that the film, like Spider-Man No Way Home,
went the route of leaning into the Fox movie history just as the Spider-Man film had leant into the past spider-Man movie history.
From this we got Dafne Keen as X-23 from Logan, Jennifer Garner as Elektra from the Daredevil and Elektra movies, and most impressively Wesley Snipes as Blade.
The characters were featured much better and more than the multiverse characters in Doctor Strange 2, and even though you could say their story was similar in that they went to war with a much tougher foe in what was a battle they seemed doomed to lose, they didn’t lose and were shown to still be capable and not just a punchline.
I say that here, but you will note that I was selective with what characters I mentioned here.
Of course, just like John Krasinski in Doctor Strange 2, Deadpool and Wolverine did something of a fan service casting by bringing in Channing Tatum as Gambit to let fans see him in the role as he had never played it before.
Although in the case of Tatum, he was meant to play the role in a movie that was cancelled.
And whilst his version here is somewhat played for laughs with the thick accent, it was still presented well and not just made to look pathetic as Reed Richards was in Doctor Strange.
