Deadpool & Wolverine is a dirty romp about two potty-mouthed superheroes full of fourth-wall breaking jokes, sexual innuendo, and unexpected cameos. It also, somehow, has the potential to become the biggest movie of 2024. Deadpool and Wolverine are both beloved characters, after all, and it’s the only movie Marvel Studios is releasing in theaters this year.
That’s quite the strategy pivot for a studio that was putting three movies in cinemas every year. But Marvel Studios has recently hit a slump critically and commercially. Fans complained about the overwhelming stream of content on streaming service Disney+. Last year, superheroes lost out at the box office to a doll, a plumber, and even a physicist. That state of affairs would have seemed impossible just a few years ago when Marvel movies topped the box office year after year.
So Marvel Studios is rethinking its path forward. And all eyes are on Deadpool & Wolverine, its first R-rated movie, to see whether the MCU can venture into new territory while doubling down on two of the most popular characters in comic books. Here’s what you need to know about why the stakes are so high going into Deadpool & Wolverine’s opening weekend.
Read More: How Marvel Lost Its Way
Can Marvel get its groove back?
Ever since Avengers: Endgame wrapped up the decade-long Infinity Saga, Marvel Studios has struggled to plot its future. Though Spider-Man: No Way Home proved a big ol’ hit, the movie also seemingly concluded the story of one of Marvel’s most beloved characters, Peter Parker. Eternals flopped, Black Widow was released simultaneously in theaters and on streaming because of the pandemic, and Thor: Love and Thunder came and went without much thunder at all.
Disappointing critical reception and box office returns for both Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels in 2023—along with the endless assault of mediocre-to-outright bad television shows on Disney+—stoked debate over whether Marvel had lost its way. Meanwhile it’s been five (five!) years since a Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali was announced, and two directors have already left the project. Captain America: Brave New World has been plagued by delays related to the writers’ strike, though it’s now slated for 2025.
And that’s all before Jonathan Majors, who was set to play the Thanos-level big bad in the future Marvel films, was found guilty of two counts of assault. Disney dropped from its lineup. A movie named after his character, Kang Dynasty, has presumably been scuttled. The studio is now forced to completely rethink several years of storytelling.
In short, Marvel, which at one point in time couldn’t generate a flop, keeps misfiring. The CGI has taken a precipitous downturn in quality. So have the stories. Fan favorites like Captain America and Iron Man are gone with few compelling alternatives. There are too many characters to keep track of—and too few to care about.
Deadpool & Wolverine probably won’t serve as a North Star for the future of the MCU, even if it winds up the highest grossing movie of the year. It is, after all, Marvel Studios’ first R-rated movie. Marvel is poised to make some big announcements about its future at San Diego Comic Con and Disney’s fan conference, D23, this summer. But a major showing at the box office from the third Deadpool movie would at least prove that Marvel is still capable.
Can the MCU’s X-Men reboot succeed?
When Disney and 21st Century Fox merged in 2019, Marvel Studios (which is owned by Disney) suddenly found several new toys in its sandbox. Fox had owned the rights to both The Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Though it took several years to get treatments of those characters off the ground, Marvel Studios is finally bringing these beloved comic book characters into the fold.
Both franchises have had a checkered past with Fox. The first two Fantastic Four movies starring Chris Evans have been largely forgotten. And the reboot starring the impressive cast of Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell was a historic disaster.
The initial X-Men movies starring Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McKellen and the prequels featuring Jackman (again), James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence hit and missed at different moments. But the box office bomb X-Men: Dark Phoenix left a sour note in audiences’ mouths.
Marvel Studios has already cast its new 1960s-set Fantastic Four movie with Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby. As for the X-Men,Variety reported that screenwriter Michael Lesslie, who penned The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, is in talks to write a new X-Men movie for Marvel Studios.
It’s unclear whether Deadpool or Wolverine will appear in that X-Men movie—or whether the two films have more than a casual relationship to one another. But Deadpool & Wolverine will certainly serve as a proof of concept that the X-Men can still draw audiences to theaters.
Is superhero fatigue real?
For the first time in recent memory, the top three movies at the 2023 box office contained no superheroes. The success of Barbie, Super Mario Bros., and Oppenheimer last year, paired with the underperformaning Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels, The Flash, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom lent itself to the narrative that audiences were done with superheroes. Or, at least, they were done running to the theater en masse ready to watch whatever DC or Marvel had on offer.
Deadpool & Wolverine director Sean Levy has been quick to shut down chatter about superhero fatigue. While agreeing “Marvel had some misses,” he told Entertainment Weekly that “people are way too quick to declare the last rites of the superhero genre. I don’t buy into that fatigue narrative.”
If Deadpool & Wolverine rises to the top of the box office heap—with an R-rating no less—the movie will all but banish the notion that superheroes are dead. And if anyone can coax fans back to theaters it’s these two particularly popular characters.