Deadpool and Wolverine

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

My wife suggested we go to this. I would like to write about it. While I was aware of everything that has happened in comic books from the creation of Fantastic Four #1 until like the mid 2000s, and I have watched many of the Fox-created X-Men movies. There are a few superhero movies I have not seen, or at least had on in a second monitor while doing other things, but not too many.

My wife has seen the first Deadpool movie.

We saw Deadpool and Wolverine last night and I think the best way to describe this is that we were sitting next to each watching the same thing but viewing two completely different movies.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Ok, I was a little kid and somehow acquired this comic book. I would have been nine. The letter "X" was new and exciting and interesting and odd and it didn't look like anything else on the comic book stand (if that is where I got it). Also, the age 9 is about the upper limit of where the letter "X" should be "cool" to you.

I was aware of a comic called "Uncanny X-Men" because Stan Lee did a good job promoting all the other comic books in the ones you got. I don't think there was a single issue that I received as a child that didn't have the subscription page that allowed you to cut it out and send it in the mail with money, to start having comics sent to your house. It did mean your comic book was chopped up. I bet they would have taken a handwritten note, now that I think about it.

Anyway, back to #172. It was a brilliant issue. The X-Men visit Wolverine in Japan to meet his fiance. They get TEA POISONED by an Avengers villain named Viper. The stakes are street-level. It's narrated by Wolverine. He was certainly written in a way different than anyone else I saw in comics at the time. He does not put on his uniform until the last couple of pages, but the reader gets inside Logan's mind in a way that probably means more than the typical Wolverine issue where he's choppin' dudes up with his claws.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I apologize for this chunked up, sliced up thread.

Deadpool and Wolverine, the movie, was entertaining to me, but at the same time I got all of the references that I could see. My wife mentioned that there were some visual gags on the screen that she saw that I didn't (a business called Stan Lee Steamers - something she saw and I missed - was next to one called Liefeld's Only Feet. The Stan Lee / Stanley one is ... well, that is all it is, I presume. Deadpool was created by Rob Liefeld and Liefeld is infamous for doing everything possible to not draw people's feet. Not, like, bare feet, but any of that: he obscures footwear. The whole thing.

And it was great seeing Wolverine with "the mask" on at the very end. I guess that is what it takes to finally allow it in the medium: Hugh Jackson is comfortably famous, so we could get a Wolverine mask scene. And he looks just like a comic book character come to life.

Maybe this is due to Hugh Jackman totally committing to the role. He is playing it straight and angry with no fourth wall breaks. He isn't just a growling, dark and gritty fiend: this version of Wolverine does laugh at the ridiculousness of things, even while he is resisting the Call to Adventure at many points and not getting along with anyone. Jackman's Wolverine says some truly horrible things that cross a line. Stuff I wouldn't say to people online, that is how bad some of it was. If Uncanny X-Men has Wolverine inviting his friends to Japan for his wedding, well, it took 20+ years before the character had friends. It's okay that the Wolverine in this movie isn't quite there yet when we start.

There were a couple of points where I laughed out loud, thanks to the movie. My wife did at well, but at different parts. If I had to give it a criticism, it would be that the plot is very very very very "made up to serve the individual scenes." And secondly, the big disappointment that I have with Marvel movies is that they have to have the fate of the Earth / Solar System / Galaxy / Timeline / All Reality at stake at the end. It is so unbelievably tedious. Every single one of them ends with a boss fight and then some gesture were R E A L I T Y is saved. (Ok, not every single one of them, but too many of them.) Same shit here with D&W, and it's to the movies discredit that it starts out telling you that we're in a "low point" of Marvel movies, and then it does the thing I can't stand with Marvel movies. Clearly, this is what the creators want, so I doubt it will ever change.

This is a bad thread, I can't keep my brain still to write criticism about a movie. My wife and I liked it, but we saw a different film even though HA HA HA the same thing was playing.

The first Deadpool is a genuinely good movie. I have always maintained that. Deadpool and Wolverine lacks the focus of the first one, but I still hope they make another one.