Deadpool & Wolverine Review

Plus! This week’s writing 12/8/24

Short review below; scroll down for links to what I published this week!

Deadpool & Wolverine Makes You Wish Superheroes Would Die

Deadpool & Wolverine is supposed to be a superhero parody—and in that it sort of succeeds, though not quite in the way it intended. Director Shawn Levy tries to be zany and to throw in various meta-jokes. But ultimately he (and presumably his corporate masters) are too reverent to truly piss on the genre tropes and beats like the Airplane or Naked Gun films. Rather than a smart send-up, the movie functions as a dreary distillation of the worst excesses of the MCU and its apparently endless offshoots.

You are probably familiar with those excesses: endless exposition, endless fandom easter eggs, tragic backstories for everyone, pointless and often humiliating cameos (I felt particularly bad for Wesley Snipes), gratuitous fight scenes which are so pointless they feel like a chore even when the choreography is moderately amusing.

And of course there’s the usual motivation/moral; some guys feel insufficiently appreciated/awesome, and so the entire universe and all the laws of time and space have to be bent and twisted to allow them to self-actualize through mass murder, self-sacrifice, and getting the girl/female-shaped prop.

Deadpool and Wolverine both have super healing powers, which means that the movie can include a lot of bloody dissection without offing its main characters. There are quips too, including a steady drumbeat of borderline homophobic goofs which are supposed to be okay because per canon Deadpool is bisexual sometimes. Some of these quips are R-rated, and there are a few more of them than normal since this is in theory a comedy, but ultimately there’s not much difference between this and any other bottom drawer MCU effort.

The montage during the credits of scenes from the mostly mediocre and unmourned Fox Marvel films is a fitting capstone for this re-reanimation of a tired, rote, sad genre husk. The massive success of Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t as disheartening or as terrifying as Trump’s win, but both testify that the American public’s taste is often bleakly inscrutable.

This Week’s Writing 12/8/24

Politics

Kash Patel promises to revive the bad old days of J. Edgar. (Public Notice)

Spoke to activists about their successful campaign to get Chicago to drop ShotSpotter. (Prism)

LGBT people are not going back. (EIH)

FDR is not a good model for the current Democratic party. (EIH)

Trump and the GOP agree they should rule. (EIH)

Cultural Criticism

A wonderful Chicago group show explores and reimagines the landscape tradition. (Observer.com)

For print, reviewed Jeff Vandermeer’s great sequel/prequel Southern Reach novel Absolution. (New Humanist)

The People’s Joker turns the mainstream into a weird smile. (EIH)

Heretic tries to convince you the bad guys are supergeniuses. (EIH)

The Wild Robot is not wild. (EIH)

Poetry

Two short poems in print, “Spider” and “No.4”. (A Door Is a Jar)

—also! will be reading these poems at a 12/12, 6PM EST (ADIAJ Youtube)

Tribute/parody/summayr of Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor. (dadakuku)

some have called it
forbidden jump future

love without new york
love without will be

like it or
let it

like it or
madonna

Three one line poems. (Five Fleas)

I am impressed at your vast and calculated indifference.

From now on I will eat only pie.

Are you just going to leave that there?