Can 'Deadpool & Wolverine' regenerate interest in Marvel films?
And what will it mean if they can't?
It’s no secret the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has slowed considerably following the culmination of its Avengers arc. Ever since Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man snapped Thanos into dust — and Tony Stark into the afterlife — the MCU storylines continued on, seemingly in cruise control.
The drives have been fine, but not fantastic. There just hasn’t been as much excitement to rev the engines of the comic lovers turned superhero cinephiles that devoured MCU films last decade. As such, the fanfare has diminished, and so have the box office takes.
That could be about to change though with the highly anticipated return of Ryan Reynolds’s sharp-tongued super anti-hero, Deadpool, alongside Hugh Jackman’s beloved Wolverine. The duo will take to the big screen July 26 in the creatively titled “Deadpool & Wolverine” in what will be appointment viewing for any of the comic nerds in your life. (That’s me with my hand raised.) It will also be a potentially pivotal moment for the future of the MCU.
With both critics and fans souring on both recent low-stakes Marvel flicks and the serialized companion series on Disney+, Marvel could use a jolt. Both in terms of both stories and box office gains. In both aspects, there are reasons to believe “Deadpool & Wolverine” could provide them.
Reynolds already once successfully retconned the Deadpool character from an inexplicably mute foil in the first Wolverine standalone film (2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”), and in the process he launched a multi-film franchise of his own thanks to a combination of quirky humor and over-the-top action. Now, he and Jackman appear poised to not only save the Marvel Cinematic Universe both on-screen, wresting back control of an increasingly unwieldy story line, but also bringing the MCU back into the kind of box office success that requires three commas to define.
From the first “Avengers” film in 2012 to 2019 — the year the Infinity Gauntlet saga wrapped up in “Avengers: Endgame,” and its de facto epilogue, “Spider-Man: Far From Home” — Marvel Studios topped the billion dollar global box office mark nine times. In the five years since, Marvel’s only eclipsed the mark once, again with its friendly neighborhood web-slinging box office machine via “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
What’s more, the story arcs and heroes taking the stage after the deaths or departures of Iron Man, Captain America and Black Panther have sometimes been meh at best (“Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” were the stronger exceptions) and eye-rolling at worst (“Eternals” … why?).
Further complicating an already overly complicated unifying arc around the multiverse (tl;dr heroes and villains can exist as different variations of the same character across different universes, which are all connected by the fibers of a glowy-tree thing) was the real-life legal drama that saw Jonathan Majors convicted of domestic assault instead of donning the mantle of Marvel’s next big bad guy.
The rumors are that “Deadpool & Wolverine” will serve as the corrective measure to the fraying multiverse storyline. It may also be the on-ramp for Disney’s introduction of the X-Men, but even if not, the film figures to provide the next answer to the question of how long Disney can keep printing money with Marvel movies.
I asked former Washington Post colleagues David Betancourt and Michael Cavna if “Deadpool & Wolverine” would crack the $1 billion mark. Betancourt didn’t waste much time before replying in the affirmative. Cavna was pretty certain it would at least come close. Their instincts are usually about as accurate as Wolverine’s, which is to say, bet on it.
The confidence comes largely because this film has so much working in its favor, not only with Reynolds but with Jackman returning to the role that helped usher in the superhero film era with “X-men” in 2000. People have wanted to see Jackman back in this role since his (at the time) final casting in 2017’s “Logan.” There have also been whispers that Reynolds compadre Taylor Swift might be making a cameo, so there’s that …
But Marvel badly needs a bounce back, especially with commitments to some nine other upcoming films, including “Captain America: Brave New World” this coming February. It needs these films to continue to serve as one of the three foundational legs of Disney+, alongside the Disney programming and Star Wars. But to do that successfully, it must recapture the lightning in a bottle it had with the Infinity Gauntlet arc … which is easier said than done.
The Infinity Gauntlet saga was effectively the zenith of Marvel Comics in the early 1990s. It made for an easy target for the first big act on the big screen, but it also set a high bar … perhaps unrealistically high. The post-Gauntlet productions have paled in comparison, with four films falling under the 70% mark for critics on Rotten Tomatoes. (“The Marvels,” “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania,” “Thor: Love and Thunders” and “Eternals,” which I maintain was one of the worst films of any genre I’ve had the misfortune of enduring.)
I expect that to change with “Deadpool & Wolverine,” but if it doesn’t — when this film is positively primed for a big box office, Paris Olympics be damned — then the conversation around Marvel could turn pretty dark at Disney. And if so, who or what will save the MCU then?
Hi, I’m Mike. I’m a former editor for The Washington Post and ESPN. In 2024 I founded and now operate Launcher, LLC, a digital media consultancy operating out of Arlington, Va. Want to work together? Reach out on LinkedIn.