Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

A 4th Wall Break Too Far

Wade (Ryan Reynolds) attends his birthday party with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), Blind Al, the lesbian X-Men, and others.  He appears to be truly happy, despite the obvious cheap hairpiece.  But there is a knock on the door.  A band of armored goons have arrived to take him away.  His universe - an unremarkable timeline in the scheme of things - is marked for deletion unless a great hero can be found.  No, not Deadpool.  Deadpool knows just the guy: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).  He uses a plane-hopping gizmo that he stole from the TVA (Time Variance Authority) to find a suitable Wolverine.  Mostly, he finds tragic, comic, or dead versions of Wolverine.  Finally, he locates a sad excuse for a Wolverine, but it's the best he's going to get.  Rejected!  Off to the void with you.  In the void, a variety of characters - heroes and villains - from abandoned Marvel series appear.

The movie leaps into the multiverse with glee and proposes an agency that determines the viability of each subverse in the MCU.  This allows the movie to grab characters from a variety of Marvel hero movies who were not part of the modern Marvel-verse.  For instance, Blade (Wesley Snipes), Elektra (Jennifer Garner), and the Human Torch (Chris Evans) all appear as characters that pre-date the MCU.  Laura - AKA X-23 (Dafne Keen) - also returns, providing a second callback to the tragic conclusion (apparently not) to Logan's story.  Though it is entertaining and funny, it proves to be too much.  Deadpool is no longer Deadpool, he is Ryan Reynolds playing Deadpool.  Yes, that is part of the schtick of Deadpool, but a little bit goes a long way.  This movie is one extended fourth wall break, piling the ludicrous upon the more ludicrous.  Again, it is fun as it goes, but it was something of a letdown.  With a multiverse of endless possibilities, it becomes difficult to care about this particular universe.  A lot of this feels like ad lib bloopers tied together as a movie.

The fights between Wolverine and Deadpool are overdone.  We have two characters with amazing healing factors mean they can't die.  One fight is fine.  The second is just pointless and makes the characters appear stupid.  Sure, it's played for laughs.  In the big fight where all the former characters get their opportunity to shine, they do.  In fact, they all kick butt and it is completely one-sided.  Apparently the villains weren't that tough.  Meh.

Again, I enjoyed the film while I was watching it, but it was like eating a box of cookies in one sitting.  Too much sweet and not so satisfying afterwards.  Nonetheless, recommended.

Life

A soil sample from Mars has been recovered and brought back to the International Space Station (ISS) where a noted biologist, Dr. Hugh Derry, will investigate.  A dormant cell is found which Derry awakens with some warmth and a glucose bath.  This new life form, named Calvin, grows quickly and has impressive qualities.  The cell walls are unusually thick and each cell possesses attributes of nerve cells and muscle cells.

The astronauts, all highly educated and trained, prove to be incredibly dense.  Worse, most of them have no idea of the protocols should the experiment go badly.  When Calvin escaped the incubator, the lab was sealed but some fool opened the door to try to save Dr. Derry, which leads to Calvin escaping the lab.  Wonderful.  Somehow in the fire suppressant system, Calvin worms its way into the communications array and disables it.  "Houston, we cannot tell you what is happening because we have no backup communications system."  Really?  When a Russian ship arrives to shove the infected space station into deep space, only one crewman actually knows that was the protocol.  Because he doesn't know, another crew disrupts and effectively sabotages the effort.  Maybe Commander Golovkina could have told everyone about the protocols after Calvin escaped.  Apparently, the only people who knew were Golovkina and Dr. North, who likewise failed to inform anyone until the Russians showed up.  Stupid beyond belief.  It turns out there are two escape pods on the space station, each capable of transporting 1 astronaut.  Really?  Crew of 6 and lifeboats for 2?  Is this the Titanic in space?  And why don't the lifeboats have communications?  All capsules have communications and should have served as one possible backup for the failed communications array.

 

The makers really needed to decide on the abilities of Calvin.  At one point, Calvin wanders around the exterior of ISS, generally unconcerned by the vacuum of space.  However, the crew later depressurize much of the space station with the expectation that it will force Calvin into dormancy.  Calvin feeds on the organic life forms on the ship and yet is somehow composed of something far tougher.  How does Calvin survive unscathed from a flame thrower or being in the nozzle of a rocket when it fires.  Even if it survives the 5,000+ degrees of heat from the rocket, how does it not get fired like a cannonball into space from a thrust that is changing the orbit of 500 ton space station?  How is it that the rocket nozzle somehow leads into the interior of the station?  That makes no sense.  Calvin seems to be all-knowing and all-seeing with an intuitive sense for modern technology.  Of note, in the weeks that Dr. Derry spent studying the growing Calvin, he apparently learned nothing.  No biopsies to test what chemicals might harm or help, no deeper analysis of cell structure or maybe genetic code.  Nope, he just played patty cake with it until it attacked him.  Genius!  You know, when the alien germ starts crawling out of the Petri dish, it's time to stop feeding it.

 

Dr. Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) proves to be the biggest fool on the space station, a man who played with fire until it burned him then sabotaged efforts to put the fire out.  "It doesn't hate us, it just wants to live."  Who picked this guy to study the alien?

 

Commander Ekaterina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya) is fully aware of the protocols should Calvin get out of the lab.  Calvin is out of the lab.  Her first order of business should be to inform the rest of the crew that they are all already dead.  No, I think I'll go on a spacewalk to see why the communications array is down.

 

Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds) is the mechanic, the guy who maintains and fixes all the parts of the ISS.  He has the right attitude in most things except keeping the quarantine.  The moment Calvin gets hostile, Rory wants to kill it.  All his efforts to do so inexplicably fail because Calvin is fireproof.

 

Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki Sanada) is a technician like Rory but forgot to pack his Samurai sword.  His job is to let everyone know what system Calvin has broken and the state of the ISS orbit, usually decaying.

 

Dr. David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the medical officer.  He is something of a misanthrope, having spent more than a year in space because he hates what people do to each other on earth.  Okay, yet another crewman with psychological issues.  Like most of the crew, he is more concerned with saving his crewmates than containing the doom of humanity virus.

 

Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson) is from the CDC and was involved in determining the protocols for containing the Mars specimens.  She knew what would happen if they lost containment but never bothered to tell anyone.  "Hey, Rory, if you open that door we will all be shoved into deep space.  You really want to open that door?"  Nah, she didn't need to say anything.  I'm sure it will be fine.

 

Not considered by the last of the astronauts was that Calvin started as a single cell and, since escaping, has traversed the ISS multiple times.  How many single cells may have been scattered in Calvin's wake and stuck to astronauts, waiting for a glucose bath?  No one can leave, which is something Dr. North should have known.

 

The movie is light on science and heavy on the fiction.  The look of the movie is great but the story is atrocious.  Skip this one.

Deadpool

Deadpool opens with a freeze-frame exploration of an SUV mid-tumble on the highway while a half dozen men within are battling the red-clad Merc with a Mouth.  Credits appear, offering only descriptions, not names.  Thus, the movie stars British Villain, CGI Character, and Hot Chick among others.  Of course, we also see a People Magazine with Ryan Reynolds on the cover as Sexiest Man Alive.  The film is rife with such silliness, which quite befits the character.  From exploring this frozen instant of a frantic fight, the movie finally rolls with Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) in a cab driven by Dopinder (Karan Soni from Other Space).  Deadpool gets out of the cab in the middle of a highway overpass where he jumps off and plummets into the very SUV from the opening credits.  Crazy comic combat commence!  Several times during this messy melee, there are flashbacks to explain the purpose of this fight.  Thus, this fight lasts for half the movie.  :)

 

Deadpool has a constant monologue, offering endless commentary as the narrator but also offers asides by breaking the fourth wall (even within a 4th wall breakage, he breaks the 4th wall.  "That's like 16 walls!") to address the audience directly.  He offers commentary about the movie's budget, actors who have played roles in Marvel movies, and so on.  He is rude, crude, amoral, and frequently annoying, especially to his enemies but also his friends.  He is a kick-ass fighter but also a few fries short of a happy meal.  He repeatedly forgets things; it was quite funny when he forgot his bag of guns and ammo in Dopinder's cab.  I viewed Guardians of the Galaxy as the funniest Marvel film but this one far exceeds it.  I laughed so hard during Deadpool's fight with Colossus that I cried.  There is often a slapstick quality to the movie that hits just the right note.

 

I have not been a fan of Reynolds but he is perfect for this role.  In much the same way that Tom Hanks finally found the right character in Big and Will Farrell found it in Elf, Ryan Reynolds has finally found his character: he is Deadpool.  After watching this, one can see why comic fans were disappointed by the version of Deadpool seen in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Deadpool comments on that too.

 

Very entertaining and worth seeing.  Thumbs up!

Safe House

I recently saw the 2013 movie and was less than impressed.  The story opens with Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) being pursued by unknown assailants in South Africa.  He manages to escape into the US Embassy.  It is here that we learn he is an infamous traitor who has sold US Intelligence secrets for a decade.  A team is sent to interrogate him but they first transfer him to a safe house that is maintained by Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds).  Weston questions the legality of the interrogation when Frost is water boarded.  The interrogation has hardly begun when the very assailants who chased Frost into the embassy attack the safe house.  The interrogation team is all killed and it is left to Weston to escape with Frost and find another safe house.  Of course, Frost is less than keen on resuming the interrogation at another site and escapes.  Disgraced and his career likely over, Weston ignores orders to stand down and starts tracking Frost.

 

The movie is entertaining as it goes along.  There are exciting action scenes, filled with instances where Weston and Frost become allies in the face of the unknown assailants and then enemies again.   It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there is a mole in the CIA who leaked the location of the safe house.  The movie offers several potential leakers though it is pretty obvious all along.  And that leads to the moral of this movie: American Intelligence is evil and Tobin Frost was a hero for his treason.  Yes, the traitor is the hero.  And Matt Weston follows in his footsteps to become the new Tobin Frost.

 

Why must we have movies where the United States is the bad guy?  Sure, I understood that Hollywood would have the US be bad guys during the Bush Administration; Hollywood is populated by Democrats.  However, we've had Obama for years and still America is portrayed as bad and corrupt.  The best thing that a patriot could do for the country is to commit treason.  It sometimes appears that Hollywood is the propaganda arm of a hostile foreign power.