The Deadpool & Wolverine movie is currently heading towards a billion dollars box office collection, and it fully deserves the success. It’s been a long time since a superhero movie has been this enjoyable, but despite its success, there’s something missing. This article aims to explore those missing elements in the Deadpool & Wolverine movie, focusing on the plot holes, the MCU touch, and the failed concepts within the film.
Plot Holes and Unexplained Concepts
Firstly, let’s address the plot holes that many fans have noticed in the movie. Most of these plot holes revolve around the concept of time traveling. Wolverine’s backstory should have been the main motive of the movie. Instead of merely telling us what’s happening or what has happened, the movie should have focused more on showing these events. Unfortunately, throughout the movie, we are only told about Wolverine’s backstory, and even in that telling, much remains unclear.
For instance, the movie informs us that this is the worst version of Wolverine in the entire multiverse because one day, he left the X-Mansion to get drunk, and humans killed all the X-Men. In the end, Logan was the last X-Man standing. However, no specific names like Sentinels, government, or Stryker are mentioned; the film only talks about humans. In another scene, Wolverine tells Cassandra Nova that he killed so many people that it became the reason humans hate the X-Men. That’s why, at the beginning of the movie, the bartender tells Wolverine to leave. Initially, Wolverine is upset that humans killed the X-Men, but then he reveals that what bothers him more is that people hate mutants because of him. But the audience never gets to see a single flashback scene; instead, we are shown a montage of various Wolverine variants, but not even 10 to 15 seconds are devoted to fully exploring Wolverine’s backstory.
The Anchor Being Concept
The concept of the Anchor Being is another area where the movie seems to falter. The idea that the entire universe is saved only if one being remains alive appears odd. The origin of this concept was taken from the Marvel Comics’ Secret Wars storyline. Even the explanation of this concept happens in Secret Wars issue five, which we see next to Deadpool in the void. In the comics, a Molecule Man is placed in every universe, and his death signifies the death of that universe, with killing all the Molecule Men equating to the end of the multiverse. So technically, in the comics, the Molecule Man is the Anchor Being of MCU.
However, the current version of the Molecule Man is nearly omnipotent and can’t be easily killed. But in the Deadpool & Wolverine movie, Logan is identified as the Anchor Being of Deadpool’s timeline, Earth-10005, who died in 2029, leading to the collapse of his timeline. Despite this, Logan lived for a very long time, so what happened to the timeline where a normal human was the Anchor Being? If humans’ best average lifespan is 100 years, then what happened before the birth of that human? And after that human’s 100-year life, the timeline starts to decay. This concept doesn’t make much sense.
Time Travel and Dimension Traveling
The movie also struggles with the concept of time travel and dimension traveling. At the end of Deadpool 2, Deadpool possesses Cable’s time-traveling device and uses it to go back in time and save Vanessa. However, at the beginning of Deadpool & Wolverine, he uses this same device to go to the year 2018 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here, Deadpool isn’t just time traveling; he’s traveled to an entirely different timeline. This scenario is hard to comprehend. Additionally, why did he decide to go to the Avengers’ timeline, Earth-616? How was he informed about the Avengers?
The Role of Peter and Senseless Writing
Lastly, the character of Peter in the movie represents a form of senseless writing without proper establishment. The film shows that the Deadpool Corps stopped attacking Deadpool and Wolverine simply because Peter arrived. But why did this happen? The explanation given is that every Deadpool in every universe has a Peter that they all respect. This plot armor seems bizarre and doesn’t make much sense.
A Different Perspective
Despite these shortcomings, it’s important to view the Deadpool & Wolverine movie from a different perspective. This film is not just another Fox Marvel movie or a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie; it’s a massive meta-commentary brought to us by a character who regularly breaks the fourth wall. In this movie, traditional rules are not followed, so we shouldn’t expect to see rules regarding the multiverse, time travel, or continuity. This is a huge meta-commentary, even down to the concept of the Anchor Being, which we are discussing so seriously. The timeline of Deadpool & Wolverine has been literally decaying since Logan died in 2017.
Since Logan’s death, the downfall of the X-Men universe began, with Dark Phoenix failing and New Mutants also not succeeding. The only movie that worked was Deadpool’s, and now Marvel Cinematic Universe wants to transfer that paradox because nothing else is profitable. Even the other superheroes we saw in the void expressed the same sentiment, stating that they were pruned without being given a proper ending. Being pruned literally means being canceled, just like Wesley Snipes’ Blade series, Ben Affleck’s Daredevil, Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, and even the Fantastic Four movies, whose stories never continued because the studios canceled them due to poor box office performance.
The paradox in this scenario is Disney, which wants to bring the X-Men universe, decaying since Logan’s death, into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They want to bring the only profitable character, Deadpool, into the MCU. But Deadpool isn’t as easily sellable as people think. He won’t just jump into another timeline without his friends, and he also wants to save his own timeline, which he did by making Deadpool & Wolverine a hit and bringing Wolverine into his timeline. Thus, the Anchor Being is that profitable character whose death causes the cinematic universe to start falling apart.
Ultimately, the Deadpool & Wolverine movie serves as a big closure, not just for Deadpool’s original parent studio, 20th Century Fox, but also for all those characters whose stories were left unfinished. And that is what makes Deadpool & Wolverine an awesome movie.
