Deadpool & Wolverine Has Already Ruined Logan

Logan came out on March 3rd, 2017 making it one of the last films connected to the Fox era of X-Men movies. And it felt very much like a goodbye to that version of Wolverine.

The film follows his journey through a dystopian America to save Laura Kinney, a girl cloned using his DNA. Throughout the film, his healing factor fails him and he eventually sacrifices himself to save the next generation of mutants giving him a proper hero’s death. 

Logan is among my favorite movies as a more mature, emotionally evocative version of the superhero movies I love.

Along with brutal action and great effects, I loved seeing the aged, declining heroes I’d come to love after years of X-Men movies. It also gave us Hugh Jackman’s best performance as the character, a performance his role in Deadpool and Wolverine will struggle to live up to. 

Legitimate, conclusive endings for characters rarely happen in today’s franchise-focused landscape. Part of what made Logan so good was that it felt like one of those moments, one final hurrah for a character beloved by audiences before moving on to something new.

By bringing the character back Deadpool and Wolverine has already undercut that emotional weight. 

The multiverse nature of the upcoming movie means the version of Wolverine in Deadpool and Wolverine may not be from the Logan universe at all.

While that works from a plot perspective, seeing Jackman return will inevitably make the earlier film less impactful. Even if the new movie goes to great lengths to justify his return, the damage can’t be undone because so much of Logan’s appeal was as a finale to both the character and Jackman’s time in the role. 

The only real argument for bringing Jackman back for Deadpool and Wolverine is that it gives Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool the chance to interact with the established version of Wolverine.

I understand the appeal of this dynamic, but I would have preferred to see Deadpool paired with whoever will be playing Wolverine in the MCU. This would have been the perfect way to introduce the world to a new version of the character and avoid diminishing the impact of Logan. 

Another way to avoid trampling the legacy of Logan would have been to pair Deadpool with another character for his entrance into the MCU.

Deadpool and Wolverine could just as easily have been Cable and Deadpool, an existing comic title that would have further developed the relationship between the characters formed in Deadpool 2. It also would have brought Josh Brolin’s talent back to the MCU in the post-Thanos era. 

I wish Deadpool and Wolverine had gone in a direction that wasn’t at the expense of Logan’s ending. I’m still excited to watch the movie and see Deadpool in the MCU, but Jackman’s return is bittersweet. Despite my misgivings, I will be at theaters like everyone else when Deadpool and Wolverine comes out on July 26th.