50 minutes of (almost) nothing but Deadpool & Wolverine, both in terms of its box office bonanza and what the four of us thought of the picture. Spoiler: I was not the crankiest critic this weekend. Plenty of thoughts about what went right (adding Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine negated a possible decline in interest), what didn’t go wrong (the kids showed up, R-rating be damned) and why a success specifically like this (using two established marquee characters from the Fox library) doesn’t really solve the various problems plaguing the post-Avengers Endgame MCU anymore than Inside Out 2 has “saved” Pixar. But in both cases, they may have turned death into a fighting chance to live.

Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe