Deadpool and Wolverine: Marvel is having a midlife crisis; massaging Ryan Reynolds’ ego isn’t the solution

But there’s a third entity that has found itself fighting for relevance during this difficult period. Ryan Reynolds, for whom this franchise provides lifeblood, has devoted the better part of the last decade to not only playing Deadpool on screen, but has also used this time to tailor his entire personality around the character. His now-deleted social media bio once read, “Introducing people to the version of myself that tested best in focus groups.” And as it turns out, the version of Reynolds that tested best was Deadpool.

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It helps that the two melded into the same person as the years went by. In Deadpool & Wolverine, Wade makes a brief (and characteristically) juvenile joke about becoming aroused — not his words — while watching Gossip Girl, the TV show starring Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively. She voices a character named Lady Deadpool in the film’s climax, while a separate version of Deadpool, also played by Reynolds, makes a reference to the movie The Proposal.

Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool & Wolverine.

It’s both sad and endearing that Reynolds probably had to think long and hard about which of his past movies to name-drop in Deadpool & Wolverine, without having to revisit the low-hanging fruit of Green Lantern. It’s slim pickings out there, and settling on something as mundane as The Proposal indicates how creatively barren his career has been. Despite being a proper movie star for at least eight years now (and pretending to be one for a decade before that), Reynolds’ filmography is about as impressive as a passing bus. His post-Deadpool years have been positively forgettable, marked by stuff like Red Notice, The Adam Project, and Spirited. 

When we meet Wade in Deadpool & Wolverine, he’s down in the dumps. His wife Vanessa has dumped him, he has been rejected as a potential Avenger, and having resigned to a life of loneliness, has taken up a job as a car salesman with his friend, Peter. “You know what?” an angry Wolverine seethes at him in the film’s most dramatic scene, “You’re a f**kin’ joke. No wonder the Avengers didn’t take you – or the X-Men, and they’ll take f**king anyone. You are a ridiculous, immature, half-wit moron. I have never met a sadder, more attention-starved jabbering little p***k in my entire life, and that says a lot because I’ve been alive for more than 200 f**kin’ years!”

Any insult directed at Deadpool is automatically directed at Reynolds; in a way, these movies have always been mildly autobiographical, but none more so than this one. Wade understands that he is an accidental superhero, just as Reynolds understands that he is an accidental movie star. He had been at it for a while before the unexpected success of the first Deadpool movie sent him through the stratosphere. When things became touch-and-go for a hot minute — Disney’s takeover of Fox essentially brought the X-Men film franchise to an abrupt end — Reynolds found himself staring obsolescence right in the face. And nobody was laughing.

Much of the movie is dedicated to giving Wade a bigger purpose in life, beyond, as he says, taking money for random mercenary jobs. He doesn’t think of himself as a hero at all, which is why, based on an ‘educated wish’, he recruits Wolverine to help him in a quest to save his universe, and everyone he knows and loves along with it. Dragged out of retirement, Hugh Jackman is the foil that Reynolds has needed so desperately in these last few years. Curiously, their tense interplay works much better than the wall-to-wall meta humour that both Deadpool and Reynolds — he’s the top-billed writer on this thing as well — insist on cramming into the movie.

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in a still from Deadpool & Wolverine.

In a way, Reynolds wants what Jackman has: an open invitation to return and collect a blank cheque whenever he wants. But he views his stardom with a certain insecurity. Sure, he can make untold millions, if not billions, through his other business ventures – he owns a stake in a football team, a liquor brand, and a telecom company — but his popularity is directly linked to his acting career. And his acting career relies almost exclusively on one character. If these movies fail, he fails. No wonder most of this Deadpool & Wolverine is set in a literal limbo world. It’s a precarious position to be in.

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He is also acutely aware that he is locking himself in a prison of his own making, and tossing the key into the mouth of Alioth. Jackman famously bid farewell to Wolverine in 2017, in one of the rare examples of a comic book character’s death that actually meant something. These narratives are often as airless as something you’d see in an Ekta Kapoor serial. But he found himself returning only some years later. Why? It can’t simply be because of that ‘big bag of Marvel cash’, as Wade jokes in the movie’s opening scene. Jackman probably has enough money for himself and all his ‘variants’ across the multiverse. But could it be because the Australian star, now firmly in his middle age, wants to relive the high of that early success? Could it be that Reynolds doesn’t want to let go of his, even for a few years? And could it be that we, as the audience that has grown up with these guys, wants nothing more than to return to a world without the pressure of ITRs? 

What Marvel is doing to combat its recent setbacks — “You’re joining at a bit of a low point,” Deadpool jokes to Wolverine, as he welcomes him to the MCU — is the cinematic equivalent of an uncle splurging on a hot rod after a divorce. In addition to bringing Jackman out of retirement, Marvel has broken the bank to lure Robert Downey Jr and the Russo brothers back to work on new Avengers movies. If this diamond ring doesn’t woo the fanbase back, nothing will. Reynolds probably recognises what’s in store for him; if he plays his cards right, he’ll have a high-paying gig for the rest of his life. But this job security will come at a cost. He won’t be allowed, or accepted, in roles that deviate too drastically from Deadpool. This is the curse of movie stardom. Deadpool makes jokes to mask his insecurities, and Reynolds plays Deadpool to mask his.