Deadpool & Wolverine is a very popular movie and sometimes I just don’t like those, it’s been a long time since I have seen a modern superhero movie and I wasn’t ready to break that streak for multiple reasons. Superhero movies can be a bit bland, be a little too thin on character and just over-indulgence on visual effects and “comedy” which is what Marvel Studios does.

But this one, oh man. I really enjoyed it and laughed out loud on certain moments and I like that the movie is a homage to all the Fox superhero movies that came before it. Essentially though, of course it’s a movie that doesn’t make much sense and that is something you have to accept. The physics are inconsistent, sometimes characters look cartoony and ragdoll around and sometimes you get these hyper-intense closed-up action sequences which didn’t mesh with me very well. Also the plot is really really dumb and doesn’t explain a lot of the story-beats that it sets up in the first 20 minutes and it’s predictable as all hell. Plot points are circumstantial and rarely earned, like for example the villain learning about what the heroes plan is or well, I can’t spoil.

The thing that works though, like yeah they did write a serviceable plot but they wrote the characters very well. The way Deadpool is written and his whole arc of “wanting to matter” plus Wolverine and his shame, all of that is done beautifully. The action sequences are really great too, lots of gore and the film leaning into that and still finding inventive new ways to kill bad guys is just awesome and I think a cut above the other Deadpool films.

The sound and songs used are hilarious and weird but fit the moment exactly. This movie feels like a road-trip rom-com at times and it works because it can be so charming in those little moments.

I was initially going to give this movie a 7/10 because of the little inconsistencies but watching that mid-credit tribute scene made me really happy as someone who always appreciated the X-Men movies more than the earlier Marvel movies even some of the Phase 3 ones and then watching the commentary or listening to it by Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds made me appreciate the scale of it and all the practical effects they did and the set design, which like- I thought all of it was CG. So yeah, because of making me more appreciative of this film and wanting to rewatch it sometime in the future, I give it a 8/10

The best Marvel Phase 5 movie, and it’s the only one I have seen too.