WARNING: SPOILERS

Are these Deadpool movies getting funnier or are my standards dropping? Or both?

I tend to suffer through fight scenes and explosions, and this movie has more than its share, but I enjoyed it. I laughed. A lot. With the original “Deadpool,” I had a little problem with the meta stuff. As I put it back in the innocent days of Feb. 2016:

He says about the movie what you and I would say about the movie if we were watching it in your mom’s basement. … But is this a losing strategy? They’re not fixing the problems of the genre, they’re just making snarky comments from within the genre. It’s like Deadpool is winning the battle (this moment) but losing the war. He’s badmouthing the entire enterprise on its way down. 

At the same time, in other posts, I was complaining that there were no great modern-day superhero satires—the way that the Adam West’s “Batman” was a great superhero satire. Watching “Deadpool & Wolverine” last week at SIFF Downtown, I realized, “Oh… This is the great modern-day superhero satire.”

Again, it helps that it’s funnier than the original. We get our share of outré stuff:

B-15: I’m gonna show you something. Something huge
Deadpool: That’s what Scoutmaster Kevin used to say.

But I prefer lines that skewer the culture:

Kid: That’s Wolverine!
Deadpool: Damn straight it is. Fox killed him, Disney brought him back. They’re gonna make him do this till he’s 90.

I say all this even though the movie’s focus is not only on the Multiverse, but the TVA, the Time Variance Authority, which is a bureaucratic, authoritarian organization, introduced in the “Loki” TV series, that ensures timelines don’t overlap or run into each other or whatever. And I’m tired of all that.

But so is Deadpool: 

Deadpool: Can we just be done with the whole multiverse thing? It’s not great. It’s just been miss after miss after miss. … Let’s just take the ‘L’ and move on.

Now that’s a hero!

Snuhkuhtuh
The movie begins at a gravesite, Wolverine’s, which Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is digging up. In voiceover, he mentions the film’s title, and, right, how can Wolverine be fighting Deadpool if he died in “Logan” in 2017? Well, there’s his regenerative powers. That’s what Deadpool assumes. Mid-dig, though, he comes across something and curses: Logan’s adamantine skull and skeleton. So much for that.

Chronologically, the movie begins with Deadpool applying for a job with the Avengers. Let’s just say he doesn’t interview well. Trying to be polite to corporate boss Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), he still runs off at the mouth, asking Happy if he didn’t used to be the chauffeur. “What's your super power? Is it parallel parking?” Then he says he needs this. To which Happy tells him that Avengers aren’t the ones who need; they help those in need. 

And just like that, he gives up the superhero biz. As Wade Wilson, he gets a job at some superstore; but like most folks working at such stores, he’s dying inside. He’s not himself. He loses himself and then he loses Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, call me). They break up. And then at a birthday party, the TVA arrives. 

What’s the rationale again? Right, his timeline is dying. Apparently, timelines have “anchor beings” who are so important that when they go everything begins to deteriorate. Ours was Wolverine. A new petty functionary, Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen of “Succession”), is trying to make a name for himself by speeding up this process via a “Time Ripper.” That’s a good understated bit: that all corporations reward managers who promote efficiencies, and this is true even if the corporation sees itself as moral and the efficiency causes the deaths of trillions. Wade understandably doesn’t want his friends to die, so he steals Paradox’s little iPad thingee and makes for Wolverine’s grave. No luck.

Then he decides to re-anchor his timeline with a Wolverine from another timeline. Smart. Cue montage of Wolverines—including a short one, like in the comic book, and one played by DC’s castoff Superman Henry Cavill. Per Paradox, Deadpool winds up picking the worst one (Hugh Jackman), the Wolvy that let down everyone else. Even his claws come out slowly: less snikt! than snuh … kuh … tuh…

The two fight, of course. Then Deadpool discovers Paradox’s secret—he’s rogue—so they’re banished to “the Void,” the end of the timelines, which is even more “Mad Max” here than in “Loki.” Alioth is a consuming cloud that kills all but the true villain is Cassandra Nova (Emma Corin, who’s great), the twin sister of Prof. X, who runs her fiefdom beneath the long dead corpse of Goliath. (At one point, the helmet opens, revealing a skull. Deadpool: “Huh. Paul Rudd finally aged.”)

The two keep running into the castoffs of long-dead Marvel movies. First there’s Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), whom Deadpool initially thinks is Captain America. After they escape Cassandra Nova and fight each other again, they run into Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and Laura (Dafne Keen), the little girl from “Logan” who is now a young woman. These last three, along with newbie Gambit (Channing Tatum), team up with our stars to storm the castle, as it were, with a plan to place the helmet of Juggernaut (Aaron W. Reed) onto Cassandra, rendering her useless. And it works! But then they stupidly spare her—a move that won’t look good when she later decides to destroy all the timelines. I.e., everything everyone has ever known. 

Might’ve wanted to kill her when you had the chance, boys.

The Han Solo bit
How do they get out of the Void again? They just do. (Movies are half maguffin these days.) At one point, on a NY city street, they wind up squaring off against a whole host of Deadpools—the funniest of which is Nicepool (also Ryan Reynolds), who’s got white-guy samurai hair, a perpetual smile, and the blandest of personalities. At one point he tries a meta riposte of his own, bringing up a past Ryan Reynolds movie, and it’s brilliant in its nothingness: 

Nicepool: “The Proposal.”
[Pause]
Deadpool: What the fuck is that? Bitch, is that what you think I do?

Throughout, Nicepool’s smile never leaves him. He’s not ashamed at all. His witlessness is his superpower.

How do they win? Oh right, DP and Wolvy battle over who will take on Cassandra in the NYC subway, and even as they do I’m thinking, “Shouldn’t it be both? She’s kind of powerful.” Which is what happens. DP does it alone, then Wolvy does the Han Solo bit of showing up just when he’s needed. Or vice-versa. Anyway they win, Cassandra dies, the Black TVA chick from “Loki” arrives to take away Paradox. This timeline gets this Wolverine, whom DP introduces to his friends. Hugh Jackman can now do it until he’s 90.

Or not. For once, in the MCU,, there’s no midcredits foreshadowing. Instead we get nostalgia—clips of the first days of “X-Men” filming. My friend Jeff commented on how young Hugh Jackman looked in these, but it was a quarter-century ago, and those years haven’t been exactly kind. I was more surprised by something else: that the little girl in “Logan” is now a woman. WTF? But it’s been seven years, and though mine were full of slow deterioration, as I went from 54 to 61, she went from 12 and 19. Bigger deal.

It was also fun being reminded that Brian Cox, the star of “Succession,” created Wolverine. He was the villain in “X2,” just as his successor in “Succession” is the villain here. Nice bookending.

This is the first “Deadpool,” not to mention “Wolverine” appearance, that wasn’t created by the idiots at Fox Studios. As Deadpool tells him, “Welcome to the MCU. You're joining at a bit of a low point.” Indeed. Since Tony Stark died, they’ve given us one great superhero movie (“Spider-Man: No Way Home”), two good superhero movies ( “Black Widow,” “Guardians 3”), and a whole lot of crap. But this helps. It’s the funniest movie I’ve seen this year.