Meaning at the Movies | Deadpool, Wolverine and the superhero slog

I’ve spent my whole life loving superheroes. As a kid, I dragged my parents week after week to the video store to rent all the superhero content I could get my tiny little hands on. I eagerly awaited Marvel movie premiere days so I could rush to the theater with my dad. I read every single comic of interest to me in our small local library, and in the midst of it all, I always had a favorite group I returned to — the X-Men. 

The X-Men movies are notably, as a whole, pretty bad — with some exceptions, especially “Logan.” This batch of not-so-great movies had me waiting with baited breath for the X-Men’s entrance into the MCU as the rights transferred from Fox back to Disney. When the MCU was at the height of its power and glory, I had so much faith and excitement for what could be done with the X-Men within this franchise. Yet, after all these years, the MCU seems to be in decline, and the closest thing we have to show for the X-Men’s entrance into the MCU is the newly released “Deadpool & Wolverine”. 

The Deadpool films have never been my favorite, I have an everlasting grudge against Ryan Reynolds for no other reason than that I don’t find him as charming as he wants himself to be, and I just don’t particularly find the films that funny. However, that being said, I was still excited to see “Deadpool & Wolverine” as I thought it symbolized a closer return to X-Men territory with the return of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. While I did like the film, I just didn’t love it the way I hoped.

There were moments within the movie that were truly great. The — SPOILER — return of Chris Evans as Johnny Storm was definitely the highlight for me, along with the “Like a Prayer” sequence, and Dafne Keen reprising her role as X-23/Laura Kinney, but at the end of it all, it just felt hollow. I left the theater with a longing for something else instead of feeling joy from what I had just seen. 

“Deadpool & Wolverine” felt like the same tired trope of male superheroes having the space and agency to goof around for two-plus hours without really doing all that much to move the plot or the characters forward. It left a bad taste in my mouth as I thought of all the incredible X-Men characters who have been given so little screen time or such poor writing that they fell so short of their potential. Jean Grey, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Magik, Emma Frost and so many more are just a few of the characters that have been done so dirty by the franchise and have been given little chance to be explored.

Meanwhile, across all 12 X-Men movies — including the Deadpool films — Wolverine has appeared in 10 of 12, four of which focus specifically on him. It’s not to say that Wolverine is not a complex and beloved character, and that he turns a profit, but it is incredibly frustrating as a girl who has grown up loving so many comics characters that he is the only X-Men character that is repeated to this extent across the screen. 

It’s exhausting to continually see male superheroes paraded in media and across the screen when there are female characters with so much unexplored potential. I’m at a point where I’m just angry with the superhero film genre — I’m angry that so many of my favorite characters are relegated to background roles or simply forgotten about. I’m angry that there’s such a miniscule amount of female led superhero films after all this time. I’m angry that all those big dreams I had as a kid of seeing characters that empowered me and made me feel understood on screen still have not been fully realized. 

The X-Men especially have so much inter-genre potential. A Scott Summers and Jean Grey rom-com, a Kitty Pryde coming of age movie, a Rogue and Gambit spy thriller. There are so many beautiful things that could be created, and they’ve just been left in the gutter to die in favor of the 800th Wolverine movie. So yeah, at the end of the day, “Deadpool & Wolverine” left me with much less joy and instead more anger and frustration for what could have been — for what I’ve been waiting for for so long and for what might never be. 

My feelings with this movie are indicative of larger problems within the film industry regarding race, gender, sexuality and whose voices get to take precedence over others. This is an issue that while particularly present in the superhero genre is plaguing the industry as a whole, more diverse people need to be given the faith, chance and funding to make films and draw in bigger audiences in order to create films in which more can be empowered.