I have a long-running policy of avoiding spoilers in my reviews. There will not be any below.

I have a confession to make that might surprise, and even annoy, some of my fellow comic book fans. I have never cared for Deadpool in the comics. From his first appearance back in the New Mutants (although he was very different then), I’ve found him to be annoying, over-rated, and way over-used. I went to the first Deadpool movie because I write these reviews, and honestly wasn’t expecting much. To my surprise, I loved it. Full points to Ryan Reynolds there, he did what I probably would have thought was impossible if I had bothered to think about it at all: he got me to enjoy Deadpool. Although I still tend to not like him in the comics.

Deadpool & Wolverine got a lot of hype before it came out, with hints and rumors and wild speculations. Since I’ve enjoyed Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine every time he’s appeared, I was more than ready to enjoy this movie. And I did. And the amount of Easter Eggs and crossovers and cameos were really amazing. I won’t spoil details on what’s in the movie versus what isn’t, but I will say there were some really great moments to see on the screen. We see bits of comic book history and assorted nods to various movies and tv shows over a few decades worth of production.

The central plot has much higher stakes than Deadpool has ever really dealt with before, and he’s way out of his comfort zone. He eventually (obviously from the title) teams with Wolverine to try and stop a huge source of evil, although even there they manage several surprises and plot twists. There are quite a few scenes that, when this comes out on streaming eventually, I’m going to go back and do an ultra slow watch through to see what I missed before.

There have been a lot of wild rumors about who shows up in this movie. Some were true. Some weren’t. And at least some of the characters in this I never heard mentioned. I will say that the characters who cameo are treated with a surprising amount of respect given the overall tone of the movie. There are a few I would have loved to see, and at least two entire sections of Marvel that were never touched on that I regret didn’t show up, but hey, you can’t have everything and they did work in a LOT.

The story is fun, and there are a lot of laughs. There is also a staggering amount of profanity, violence, and gore of assorted types. So if any of those things bother you, you might want to skip this. Otherwise, get ready to have a lot of fun.

What I Liked: Almost everything. Reynolds and Jackman play off each other wonderfully well. The nods to Marvel history all over the place were great. Getting to see some characters I thought would never come back was great. There’s even a sort of Stan Lee cameo, although it’s definitely on the “blink and you’ll miss it” track. This movie is almost tailor made for a comic geek like me, but you don’t have to be one to enjoy it.

What I Didn’t: Some of the rumored cameos would have been really cool. As I mentioned above, some areas of Marvel weren’t touched on, but again, I get it and there’s only so much time in the movie. Given where things end, I’m not quite sure I see how some of the claims about the movie’s impact on the MCU overall hold up, but I’m willing to wait and see. The opening scene was a little over the top, even for this franchise.

This was fantastic. I had a lot of fun with it, and clearly so did everyone who worked on it. Deadpool and Wolverine gets the rare 5 out of 5 from me.