Friday, August 16, 2024

Deadpool & Wolverine

This is a great movie, but unlike most great action movies, there are zero slow and boring parts. The plot was quick-paced all along, and every bit of time was filled with some sort of action, plot advancement, or witty banter, or all three at once. 

The witty dialogues and monologues were packed with more meta-humor on Deadpool's part than a Mel Brooks film, similarly to the first two Deadpool movies only ramped up a notch. Besides merely referencing aspects of the movie production itself or making teasing meta-level observations of transpiring events, some of the meta-humor in the film was meta in the sense of being meta-level teasing of certain characters' actions, words, intentions, choices, character, etc., which satisfyingly serves to provide instant karmic enlightenment by the given character regarding their own follies, rather than the tropes of those follies remaining on a comparatively boring, unevaluated level like with most movies. Or at least we can imagine it did that; they didn't outwardly express the emotional and mental impact of the teasings much. 

The general dialogue of the movie was thick with frequent rapid-fire creative banter, primarily by Deadpool but not exclusively, which made the movie very entertaining. If there was any flaw with the creative banter, it was that it was rather hard to imagine Deadpool likely having the wit to come up with it all so quickly on such a regular basis, thus making it seem a little unreal and perhaps serving to take the viewer out of the movie. 

You'd think something like that taking the viewer out of the movie would be the least concern with all the fourth-wall breaking going on, but the fourth-wall breaking really blends in with the movie well. It doesn't seem to detract from the immersion at all. 

One great thing about this movie is that it borrowed fun elements from various other movies, or at least two: there was a Furiosa: Mad Max Saga-esque world in the movie, and a bad lady had stolen Dr. Strange's Sling Ring and then made use of it in the movie. The plot line also includes the story element of the multiverse with the Time Variance Authority from previous Marvel movies. I particularly enjoyed seeing the alternate Deadpool from some parallel universe who was also played by Ryan Reynolds, who had a positive, puppy-like persona.

Some aspects of this movie's plot were satisfyingly and unexpectedly deep, and while Ryan Reynolds' acting could be considered flawless, what really impressed me about this movie was Hugh Jackman's acting. I thought while watching the movie that he should get a freakin' Oscar for it. This movie really brings out his acting skills more than any previous Marvel movie.

Regarding the quick plot development mentioned above, the one drawback to this was that, while the reason for the resurrection of Wolverine was introduced early on and expeditiously, it seemed to be rather shallow and contrived: it seemed to involve the luck and convenience of a deus ex machina.

Overall, this movie was very fun and satisfying. One thing that made it fun was its levity—which, by the way, included playing upbeat songs like Madonna's 'Like a Prayer,' and a particularly rich remix of it, during massive fight scenes. And speaking of the music, its end-credits song 'LFG (Theme from "Deadpool & Wolverine") by Rob Simonsen was so good that I fired up Shazam to find out what song it was and saved the name of it in my phone for downloading later. And I'm very picky when it comes to music. 

I suggest you don't stop watching the credits there, though; sit it out till the end. There's an end-credits scene, and it's actually the funniest part of the movie, at least as far as I and a few of the other audience members were concerned.