Awards Columnist/Chief Film Critic

When Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2018, Fox’s massive R-rated, foul-mouthed, quick-witted hit Deadpool was already blossoming with his first sequel, which arrived quickly after the Ryan Reynolds-starring film came out in 2016. Though the character came from the Marvel label, it was hard to imagine him fitting comfortably into Disney’s less edgy, PG-13 Marvel Cinematic Universe, at least aside from censoring what made the character, as conceived by Reynolds, so much fun.

Now, six years later, another infamous Marvel character has been added: Wolverine from Fox’s X-Men franchise. It’s a fan’s dream team-up, with the first R-rated MCU film and the only MCU theatrical release of 2024. The results for Deadpool & Wolverine are, in many ways, otherworldly.

Pairing Reynolds with his personal good friend Hugh Jackman, and throwing Deadpool and Wolverine into a forced oddball pairing, it all comes off like an inspired cross between Godzilla vs. Kong and Midnight Run, a scenario where two polar opposites come together against every natural instinct either of them may have. And guess what? It works beyond your wildest filmmaking team-up dreams. We can thank the stars, but also director Shawn Levy, who clearly knew how to get the best out of them, having worked with Jackman on 2011’s Real Steel and Reynolds on 2021’s heartwarming and terrific Free Guy and 2022’s The Adam Project.