LFG

As William Goldman once said, in the movie business, nobody knows anything when it comes to the movie business. Every movie is a roll of the dice. But as sure as anything CAN be in this industry, especially in these turbulent times which were tough before COVID and now are just totally a mess, Deadpool & Wolverine is going to be huge.

The official trailer is here, and it is GREAT. They play exactly the right card to get me on board—Madonna’s “Like A Prayer”, my all-time favorite Madonna song and one of my “perfect pop songs” to boot—but they also build in a callback designed to get audiences stoked for the movie.

“Let’s f-cking go,” Deadpool says cheerily. “Let’s f-cking go,” Wolverine repeats grimly. The trailer ends with “LFG”. Reynolds, an ad man who became a movie star, is great at creating viral sensations, and “LFG” might be his best work yet. It’s catchy, it’s short, it works online, it’s also flexible enough that people can adapt it to their own use. It’s not unlike how the “This Barbie Is…” tagline invited people to engage with Barbie last summer. If they set up some kind of selfie/poster generator or similar online way for people to turn LFG into a badge, it’s game over. Deadpool will be Barbie huge.

As for the trailer itself, it’s pretty great. We get to see Hugh Jackman in action this time, playing a spin on “Old Man Logan” as a worn-out Wolverine who appears to be the lone survivor of his universe. I’m interested to see where Jackman takes that, because Logan is one of the best superhero movies ever and he is justifiably proud of it, and I wonder what he’ll do with a similar version of the character here.

We also get to see Emma Corrin as the bald villain of the film, which is still technically unconfirmed but based on character design, appears to be Cassandra Nova, as has been speculated for a while now. Cassandra Nova is Charles Xavier’s evil twin, literally, a formidable opponent whose presence in the film all but guarantees Patrick Stewart and/or James McAvoy will show up in cameos. Probably both. Let’s just assume every Marvel star has a cameo in this movie.

Great song use, great character teases, a joke about Kevin Feige and cocaine, multiple uses of “f-ck” that suggest Deadpool will keep his beloved R rating—still technically unrated, though—plenty of Easter eggs for dorks (the obvious ones being Giant Man’s helmet and a Doctor Strange portal), Deadpool & Wolverine is punching all the right buttons. Marvel needs a win, and Deadpool is poised to deliver it. LFG, indeed.