10 more thoughts on 'Deadpool & Wolverine': A box office colossus, but still pretty bad

The MCU blockbuster made $200 million, started another fanboy culture war, and sent a couple storming out of the theater due to "blasphemy"

I already reviewed Deadpool & Wolverine, here in the newsletter last week. Now that the movie is out in theaters, some additional thoughts: 

1. As I wrote last week, I wasn’t a huge fan of the film, despite mostly liking the first two Deadpool movies. The Deadpool character himself has gotten a bit grating, I’m sick to death of multiverse storytelling — where there are no stakes and nothing matters — and the winking, in-jokey, insider-ish tone got tiresome after about ten minutes. 

2. That said, it appears I’m in the minority. Deadpool & Wolverine was a massive box office hit, pulling in over $200 million domestically in its first weekend. That’s the highest-ever debut for an R-rated movie, the biggest opening of the year, and Marvel’s biggest first weekend in many years. 

3. Remember the hand-wringing earlier this summer about theatrical moviegoing being dead, especially after Furiosa and The Fall Guy underperformed? There seems to be less of that talk lately, especially after the huge performances by Inside Out 2, Twisters and now Deadpool & Wolverine. So it’s good news for the exhibition industry, I suppose, although I’ve also heard some grumbling about Deadpool & Wolverine taking up too many screens. 

   

4. This isn’t one of those audience/critic splits. Per Rotten Tomatoes, the film’s current audience score is 97 percent positive, while the critics score is… 79 percent. 

5. That said, the critics who didn’t like it, really didn’t like it. There were a lot of words like “soulless,” and “slop,” and “soul-destroying” and, as my friend Sean Burns described it, “a barrage of arch pop culture references and inside jokes aimed at Redditors and fanboys who fancy themselves showbiz insiders.”

6. The minority of critics who panned the film have gotten their own backlash, for their failure, I guess, to get with the program: