Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine arrives this weekend and it is fair to say that expectations are pretty high for this one when it comes to box office performance.
A report in Deadline is pointing to a projection of a $160-170 million domestic opening, with a further $180-190 million overseas. $340-360 million would make it the highest R-rated opening of all time.
Deadpool & Wolverine releases today in France, Germany, Italy, Korea, and Japan. Then it lands in Spain, Brazil, the UK, Mexico, and Australia on Thursday. As it arrives in China on Friday, it will probably be online by Saturday.
Yesterday, we got to sample reactions from early screenings and online movie commentators. Today it is the turn of the professionals in the real, actual media that sometimes even comes printed on paper.
What do they think? Their reaction is a little more muted than the fans, with their Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores placing it squarely in the middle tier of Marvel. So what does the summary round-up of their reviews have to say:
“By far the most fan-service sequel released under the Marvel banner… It serves as a welcome corrective to the superhero overload of the past 15 years… This singular mutant satire works best as an irreverent homage to what’s come before, as opposed to the prototype for future superhero movies.”
Peter Debruge, Variety
“Deadpool & Wolverine rescues something kind of beautiful from the ugliness that superhero movies have perpetuated for so long. Not visually, of course, but in several other key respects.”
David Ehrlich, Indiewire
“An apology candygram delivered by the two most mouth-puckeringly sour superheroes Marvel now owns… Deadpool represents what mainstream Marvel flicks couldn’t do: make a hard R-rated movie with more curses per minute than a convention of witches. He’s what they have to do to win back an audience who’s outgrown them.”
Amy Nicholson, The Washington Post
“There are a lot of laughs here as this film crashes along with plenty of juke-box slams to keep blood-sugar content high, although the humorous aspect is oddly cancelled at the very end with a deadly serious memory-reel over the final credits. 3/5”
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“I found this movie messy and overstuffed, but I laughed almost as often as I cringed from its obnoxiousness and can’t dispute that a vast audience will delight in every moment. For the core audience, the gags will be reward enough, even if the rest of us might squirm as the sloppily staged action grows repetitive.”
David Rooney, THR
“It is a carnival of in-jokes, self-references, and reality breaks with no higher purpose than to congratulate its audience for keeping up. It has no stakes, no drama, and only the most cynical applications of creativity.”
Jordan Hoffman, EW
“This comic-book pairing ultimately underwhelms, resulting in some touching moments and some anarchic humour in a picture otherwise dragged down by convoluted multiverse logistics and drab fan service.”
Tim Grierson, Screen
“A shameless piece of self-congratulation, fueled by self-cannibalism, as the studio which built its identity on superhero crossovers finally abandons the pretense of trying to justify them dramatically.”
William Bibbiani, The Wrap
Deadpool & Wolverine could be here right now, depending on where you are in the world. Full US release is on Friday.