Therapy With Deadpool & Wolverine
A Buddy Cop Movie With Lots of Dick Jokes Goes Deeper Than the Surface
I started seeing a therapist a couple months ago. My friends on the internet were talking about how therapy benefitted them and I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety throughout my adult life. I’ve had struggles with processing the occurrences of life and the conditions of the world and so I mustered up the courage to ask my internet friends how to start the process of finding a therapist and they delivered. I walked into that office scared and intimidated by the therapy process, but my therapist is so freaking cool. She’s a badass. She’s helped me with putting less pressure on myself to be perfect, with how to better view my relationships, and I’m starting to find a little more inner peace. Seeing a therapist is up there with the best decisions I’ve ever made: marrying my wife, getting her pregnant when we were engaged, and becoming a teacher.
Yesterday, I begged my wife to watch Deadpool & Wolverine. I had a blast seeing it in the theater. It’s a fun movie, great story, plenty of Deadpool vulgarity, and a shit ton of fun action. I had to guilt trip my wife to get her to agree to watch it. She picked the last couple of movies and shows that we watched. This really depressing Nicolas Cage movie was one of them. She wanted to watch it because it’s a “light-hearted comedy” where Nicolas Cage shows up in people’s dreams. It was definitely not a light-hearted comedy. Anyways, she agreed to watch Deadpool & Wolverine and within five minutes she was laughing her ass off. My wife has the best laugh in the world and I got as much entertainment watching her laugh throughout the movie than I did the actual movie. She literally said halfway through, “I didn’t think I’d like this movie, but it’s hilarious!” I also came to a revelation when watching it. Deadpool & Wolverine is much more than Marvel’s Buddy cop movie with a lot of dick jokes. It’s about two dudes that have been through the ringer and their adventure takes them through therapy…together.
Here’s a synopsis if you haven’t seen the film: Wade Wilson is now “retired” as Deadpool. He’s a used car salesman without a purpose, he’s no longer with the woman he loves, and he’s incredibly depressed. His friends throw him a surprise birthday party, and even though he’s with the people he loves, he feels empty. Agents from the TVA (Time Variance Authority) show up at his apartment and he learns that his timeline…his universe is close to being deleted and forgotten forever. There’s a lot of self-aware references to Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, but I’ll spare the details about entertainment company mergers. Wade Wilson puts the suit back on and Deadpool seeks to find Wolverine to save his own world. His journey leads him to meeting different variants of the X-Man, but he eventually teams up with one that is more broken than he is. This Wolverine failed his world and returned home after a long night of drinking only to find that his family, the other X-Men, have been killed. They fight together…and against each other…in an attempt to save their worlds and find some redemption.
The Desecration of Logan
The last time we saw Wolverine on the big screen was Logan, a movie deserving to be in the pantheon of comic book movies. It was an emotional ending for the greatest of the X-Men. Don’t worry, I’m definitely going to write about Logan someday. Well, when Deadpool & Wolverine was announced, everyone asked the question: “How are they going to bring back Wolverine without dishonoring Logan?” They don’t. I mean, they bring back Wolverine, but Logan is desecrated….in perfect Deadpool fashion. This is not a criticism of the way the movie handles Logan. In fact, it is now my all-time favorite opening scene in comic book movie history. Watching Deadpool dance to NSync and go hard fighting TVA agents with Wolverine’s exhumed corpse is a masterpiece.
Cassandra Nova
Cassandra Nova is one of the villains of Deadpool & Wolverine. She is the sister of Charles Xavier and a vile and miserable mutant. I’m sure we’ve all known someone so evil and power hungry that they stick their hand through your face and start manipulating your mind with their fingers. *Shudders in fear*
She plays a deeper role as a villain though. With her mind-fingering technique, she can tap into the emotions and the pain of her victims. She uses this technique to try to manipulate and bring them down. She’s a real energy vampire. There’s a very powerful scene where Wolverine resists the opportunity to return her violence with revenge. He remembers his mentor and friend, Charles Xavier. He remembers how Professor X took him and showed him care and helped him heal his inner wounds. It is a care that Cassandra never knew nor wanted to experience.
The Castaway Heroes
Deadpool & Wolverine encounter a group of castaway heroes while in the void: Elektra, Blade, Gambit, and X-23 (also named Laura). This is a fun cast of characters. Blade, the one of the first Marvel heroes to get a movie. Elektra, the Daredevil hero whose movie was the opposite of celebrated. Gambit, the X-Man that always had a rumored movie that was never filmed. X-23, Logan’s daughter that is the heart of Wolverine’s best film. Our castaway heroes finally get their moment….
Gambit: Do you know how long I've been waiting for this? Woo, I'm about to make a name for myself here.
Logan: I don't think you guys walk away from this.
Gambit: You just make sure people know what happened here today.
Madonna
Our heroic duo find their way back to Deadpool’s world and now they have to fight…the Deadpool Corp. Blood, carnage, dirty jokes, the fight scene has everything but that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about Madonna. Yes, the pop star, Madonna. “Like a Prayer” plays in the background of the fight scene. Like many songs, “Like a Prayer” is definitely not about praying. There may or may not be a certain Substack writer that has had that song on repeat since he first saw the movie last summer…guilty pleasures…
Marvel Jesus
I realized that I’ve typed this entire thing with barely going into detail about the character development and the therapy that they go to. There are moments that really connect with you: Logan talking to Laura by the bonfire, Deadpool re-discovering his purpose, and their overall journey to find redemption and save the ones that mean the world to Deadpool. Really, it is a pretty deep and emotional film amidst the vulgar hilarity.
Deadpool rises again…maybe as Marvel Jesus, maybe not…but the Goo Goo Dolls certainly make the moment cinematic.