Can Marvel Jesus save a dying cinematic universe? That's the key question for the latest film from Marvel Studios and, it would seem at least from the box office, that the answer is: yes!  

Deadpool & Wolverine, the snarky buddy comedy odd-ball team-up between Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, made over $590 million in its first week. That’s the sixth biggest opening of all time. 

What follows is not a traditional review, you can find plenty of those online already. Instead, I want us to consider Deadpool & Wolverine as a cultural artefact that displays some of the key themes of our society. The stories that we tell, including the films that Hollywood produces, can act as a mirror to our culture, giving us an opportunity to see trends that we might have otherwise missed.  

As a mirror to this cultural moment, I want to suggest that Deadpool & Wolverine presents us with a cynical and nihilistic take on the end of an era in which all the protagonists can do is barrage the audience with an endless stream of jokes and quips. 

The third instalment of the Deadpool trilogy is the first to be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since Disney acquired the rights to 20th Century Fox for $71.3 billion. Until now all the X-men movies, the Wolverine movies, the prequels and the Deadpool movies have been produced by 20th Century Fox. But it’s the start of a new chapter for the X-men franchise.  

The Disney executives hope for a new lease of life for the MCU, which has been struggling to find its way ever since the epic conclusion to Avengers: End Game. Of course, ordinarily, this sort of corporate back and forth would be irrelevant when thinking about the themes of a movie, but, in this case, the business backdrop is effectively a major plot-point of the film. 

A significant portion of the dialogue is spent discussing the acquisition of the X-men franchise by Disney. Deadpool talks about what Kevin Feige (president of Marvel Studios) will and won’t allow in his films. A major action set-piece takes place next to a ruin of the 20th Century Fox logo. Deadpool jokes with Wolverine that he is joined the MCU when they are in a bit of a slump, and, when Deadpool is asked to save the universe, he takes this to mean that he should save the entire MCU franchise describing himself as ‘Marvel Jesus’. The movie knows that this film is the product of a business deal, and it wants its audience to know that too. 

So, this film takes place at the end of an era and to highlight this throughout the film, a series of high-profile cameos are made by actors and characters from the last 24 years (no spoilers here). They are brought into the movie so that they might be given a final send off. A heroic on camera action hero death, one last valiant fight before the curtain falls. In a sense, Deadpool & Wolverine is a eulogy to the comic film industry, an era has passed away, we live only in the ruins of a once great edifice and all we can do is joke around and reminisce about the good old days

All of this was bubbling around in the back of my head when the film came to its final climax. It is my experience of the finale that made me want to write this review of the film. After almost two hours of post-modern nihilism, in the denouement, our two protagonists are faced with the classic superhero choice to sacrifice themselves so that they can save their universe from imminent destruction. And, of course, like good superheroes, they go willingly into danger and give up their lives for the sake of their friends. 

I had such a strange set of emotions as I watched this part of the story unfold. 

Firstly, I thought “Oh, right, this is the moment when the hero sacrifices himself- that is obviously what comes next.” I have been conditioned by decades of superhero films to expect this sequence of events at the end of the movie. But secondly, I found myself thinking. “This is so out of place with the rest of the film, this is pure sentimental heroics, we’ve just had two hours of cynicism and fourth wall breaking and the climax of the whole thing is a traditional superhero ending?!” And then, lastly, I found myself wonderful, ‘Perhaps the film is doing this because this is, in fact, the only story worth telling- that everything up to this point has only been playing at cynicism because, at a fundamental level, the filmmakers realise that cynicism and scepticism aren’t enough to make a compelling story.” 

Deadpool & Wolverine is a strikingly resonant film, it has struck a chord with contemporary culture. The film offers us a mirror to the contemporary society in which we live and I think we must look deeply into the mirror if we are going to accurately diagnose the ills of our current cultural moment.  

Many people today feel like they are living in a desert at the end of time, devoid of meaningful symbolism and sustenance for the soul. The hollowing out of meaning in post-modern Western culture has resulted in a tinderbox which is ready to combust at a moment's notice. “Over the last month we have seen riots breakout across England caused by an incident in Southport that sent sparks flying.”. Relatedly, contemporary Western society feels as if it has lost its narrative. It is as if, just like the MCU, our best story is behind us, and we are flailing to find a new story. Look at the average Netflix viewing figures to discover that many of us only enjoy watching re-runs of our favourite TV shows from 10 years ago. 

The cynicism and scepticism of Deadpool & Wolverine resonates with many people in the contemporary West, and the film offers two ways of reacting to the pain of our cultural moment.  

For most of the film Deadpool saunters through this nihilistic hellscape spouting a barrage of gags, sex-jokes and sarcastic quips- that is the first option, to laugh in the face of meaninglessness. But for the climax of the movie, it’s as if the writers knew that they couldn’t maintain the ruse. When the characters of Deadpool and Wolverine make the choice to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others they choose to live for something bigger than themselves. They admit in their actions that they aren’t the nihilists they were pretending to be, and the film acknowledges that in the final analysis there is nothing ultimately satisfying, nothing ultimately sustaining, in that way of being in the world. 

Or, to put it another way, the only way that Deadpool could become ‘Marvel Jesus’ is by following in the footsteps of actual Jesus: by sacrificing his life for those whom he loved and by discovering that true life, resurrection life, is always and only ever found on the far side of death. 

Paul Ricoeur writes that ‘beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again’, called to a second, or post-critical naïveté. Naivete is a deliberately provocative term to use, no one wants to be considered naïve (even postcritically naïve!), so perhaps you might prefer to think of it as synonymous with restored or as experiencing a recollection of meaning. I think many people in the West today are waking up to the challenge of living in a desert of criticism and a wasteland of cynicism. The capacity to criticise is an important skill, but it has run rampant and left out society with a void of meaning in which nothing is sacred, nothing is enchanted. 

Deadpool & Wolverine speaks of a culture desperately in need of a new story, a narrative within which meaning can be found. The film paints in vivid imagery the result of a society that has lost its narrative. And, in the end, Deadpool and Wolverine seems to admit that there is only one story worth telling: self-sacrificial death and resurrection.