Deadpool & Wolverine: Is this Marvel’s billion-dollar homage to a bygone era?

Deadpool & Wolverine became the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever, crossing the $1 billion mark at the global box office. 

Is it Marvel’s comeback or a final homage to 20th Century Fox‘s bygone era?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, has been struggling in recent years after the release of Avengers: Endgame in 2019, when the MCU lost Robert Downey Jr.’s character Iron Man and Chris Evans’s character Captain America. Actor Chadwick Boseman, who starred as T’Challa in Black Panther, died in 2020.

Also, the MCU faced backlash from fans due to a decline in quality, characterized by directionless storytelling, lackluster creativity, and overall tediousness.

Some films, including The Marvels, Eternals, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, underperformed financially. For example, The Marvels made $200 million in the winter of 2023, which was $70 million less than it cost to produce. 

The exception was Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), in which audiences saw Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker along with Tom Holland, and fans of all three actors rushed to the movie theaters, enjoying their nostalgia. The film earned $1.92 billion worldwide as of August 2024, according to Box Office Mojo. 

One of the challenges, though, has been the push of “woke” culture. One example is the “Girlboss” character. The “Girlboss” is a “powerful woman character,” but she can be arrogant and flawless and sometimes appears to hold men in contempt. Captain Marvel, who is played by Brie Larson, and She-Hulk, who is played by Tatiana Maslany, are examples of the “Girlboss.” 

Another problem, some critics have said, is that the MCU has released too much content, including four films and five television series in 2021, and that this has led to “Marvel fatigue.” Others said the glut of TV spinoffs on Disney+ has diluted the brand and created too much lore for casual fans to keep up with. 

In response to these challenges, Marvel Studios has begun decreasing its content output from 2024. 

Deadpool & Wolverine did not have “woke” themes and instead included several lighthearted jokes over them, neither supporting nor undermining them, which gelled well with Deadpool’s character-spitting jokes on anything and everything. 

“The MCU has grown so cluttered that Disney is expected to wipe the slate clean with the help of the popular, R-rated character Deadpool, using the Deadpool 3 as a cameo-filled nostalgia-fest and a timeline cleanse that rests the story back to simplicity,” according to Forbes. 

The movie was a nostalgia-fest with some cameos of many fan-favorite characters. This movie was built on one premise: the charisma and chemistry of Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman coming through the screen as they play these characters. 

And to answer whether it was an homage to 20th Century Fox’s bygone era, no new characters were added in this movie, and the MCU storyline didn’t seem to go anywhere further. On top of that, there are a couple of hints given in the movie, such as the trashed “20th Century Fox” logo in the Void, “Good Riddance” by Green Day playing in the background during the end credits, and more. 

Is the MCU back with this movie? Well, the answer is still in the future, with a lineup of Marvel projects.