Will Deadpool and Wolverine actually save the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Director Shawn Levy addresses the seeming weight on his shoulders with his Marvel film.
The MCU has had a rough few years. While the franchise hasn’t been without hits, it’s suffered a number of critical and box office failures like Secret Invasion and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. This has left many to view Deadpool and Wolverine as Marvel’s last chance to win back general audiences.
With Deadpool and Wolverine already doing fantastic box office tracking even a month out, it seems as though the project will be the win Marvel so desperately needed. However, when speaking about the film’s role in “saving” the MCU, director Shawn Levy admitted he only set out to make something different, and didn’t expect to be put in this cultural context.
“We had no idea it would be this unique moment where people are asking what the MCU means any more,” Levy explained in a recent interview with Total Film. “Can it surprise us? Can it break molds in ways that we don’t expect? We certainly hope that this movie is an answer to those questions.”
“What Kevin Feige has built with the MCU is historic as far as a string of successes, but culture has its tide chart, culture has ebbs and flows, and one thing we do know is you can’t keep doing the same thing ad nauseum and expect people to greet it with the same excitement. And so it just worked out really fortuitously because our movie is not like any MCU movie. Yeah, and I say that as a fan of a lot of MCU movies.”
Deadpool And Wolverine Are Marvel’s Future
While the initial trailer joked that the titular hero of Deadpool and Wolverine is Marvel Jesus, it may not be very far from the truth. All signs point to mutants reigning supreme in the MCU following Avengers: Secret Wars, with the main heroes of the first two sagas taking a bit of a backseat.
This is perfectly captured by reports that Hugh Jackman will pick up the claws one final time after Deadpool and Wolverine to take a starring role in Avengers: Secret Wars. To have the face of the biggest film in the MCU, and perhaps Marvel history, come from a mutant is massive, and paints amazing things for the franchise’s future.
Deadpool and Wolverine is currently expected to be released on July 26, 2024. Stay tuned for the latest news regarding the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more content!
