The following article contains some major spoilers for

Deadpool and Wolverine

but frankly, everything you ever dreamt of comes true in this movie.
Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction might be one of the most sublime postmodern philosophical concepts that has touched every sphere from architecture to the culinary arts, but it has been completely ruined by

Marvel fans

(including yours truly as this article will exhibit).

For the uninitiated, like those whose lives have been consumed by the IIT-IIM race without any time for philosophical pursuits, Derrida’s deconstruction refers to the concept of analysing texts to show that their meanings aren’t fixed and can change depending on how we interpret them. It focussed on uncovering hidden contradictions or questioning traditional ideas.

For the last 16 years, whether Marvel fans have realised it or not, this is what they have been doing, deconstructing what they see. Perhaps,

Deadpool

and

Wolverine

is a culmination of the years of deconstruction where the

Marvel Multiverse

(and its predecessors) has become so big that everything is an inside joke, a reason to crack another inside joke that a global community can appreciate. Marvel fans’ lives have revolved around tiny little things they saw onscreen and interpreting what it means for the next phase of Marvel that doesn’t just include movies anymore but shows as well, which is perhaps why they couldn’t see the tiny red flags that led to them living single in their mother’s basement. Simply put, you can either be a well-adjusted adult with friends and a modicum of work-life balance, or you can be a Marvel fan.

For those who identify as Marvel fans, D and W is a work of art, the modern equivalent of Guernica meeting the Sistine Chapel on a comic strip.
Imagine every joke, every meme, every dream, everything you ever wanted in a Deadpool movie and it’s there. It’s so meta that Mark Zuckerberg could file for intellectual copyright infringement. It’s the superhero equivalent of a college and high school reunion where you might have been the loser once, but now with graduation goggles on, you look back fondly because nostalgia tends to make us forget the horrifying memories and only keeps the good ones in check.
The movie begins with Deadpool desecrating Wolverine’s corpse before killing to the tune of N Sync’s Bye Bye Bye. Even the choice of the song is a throwback to the one that Pyro accidentally played in X2: X-Men United. The movie shows a bunch of Wolverine variants including a comically accurate short one, Patch in Madripoor, Old Man Logan in a cowboy hat, a crucified Wolverine from Uncanny X-Men #251 from 1989, the brown-and-yellow suited Wolverine who finds the Hulk (who doesn’t care for puny Marvel Jesus) and Superman

Henry Cavill

as the Calverinne (rumour goes that he will be the original MCU variant and Deadpool promised better treatment than DC).

There are hundreds of Deadpool variants including Nicepool (a riff of Gordon Reynolds), Blake Lively as Lady Deadpool, Headpool (voiced by Nathan Fillion), and Cowboy Deadpool (voiced by alright, alright, alright- Matthew McConaughey).
There are a bunch of returning characters including Laura AKA (X-23), Elektra (who’s not particularly bothered about Daredevil passing away which is fine since Jennifer Garner and

Ben Affleck

are divorced), Blade (making Wesley Snipes the actor with the longest innings as a live-action superhero), Gambit (with

Channing Tatum

finally getting to play the role) and a bunch of uncredited cameos.
One particularly fascinating reprisal is

Chris Evans

who is back as Johhny Storm instead of Steve Rodgers and unlike the latter, he has no problem mixing up a little French with his English. There are numerous other throwbacks including the Fantasticar, a helicarrier, Thanos’ ships, Giant Man’s statue, and numerous other references that this author can’t remember now (or be bothered to check online for). As a meta joke, all discarded characters from the 20th Century Fox Universe are in the Void. Even AC/DC makes a return (Wolverine and Deadpool’s first fight takes place in the leitmotif of Hell’s Bells), a clear throwback to the fact that the Marvel Cinematic Universe began with Back in Black as Tony Stark is driven in a military convoy. But what made the movie remarkable wasn’t all this.
What made it remarkable was that it helped remind us why we fell in love with comics. Deadpool’s very existence is because of

Ryan Reynolds

’ epochal quest to make sure that his vision of the Merc with a Mouth saw the light of the day, even he gave an “assist” to leak the footage that saw the first movie released and become a global hit.

Many of us started reading comics when we were kids because we were loners or losers, who didn’t have too many friends. We were loners, often bullied kids, who turned to comics to escape the drudgery of our lives. It made us imagine that we could be strong enough to take on our bullies, or maybe that a superhero would come down and save the day. It made us imagine what it would be like to Peter Parker, a kid who was beaten up every day and overnight, metamorphosed into someone strong enough to beat up his tormentor.
This was long before geek culture was mainstreamed when comic-book movies weren’t the biggest grossers, where seasoned thespians didn’t fall over themselves to play aged mentors in superhero movies. The Big Bang Theory would never have been a sitcom. Geeks didn’t run the world; they didn’t create social-media platforms that become billionaires, challenge each other to MMA fights, or get to pick the vice-president nominee. D and W was a love letter to comics, to the make-believe world that made us feel safe when we were kids, that made us part of a bigger whole when the world was darker than what we wanted it to be.

The warm afterglow that we felt after watching the movie – bolstered by the nostalgic hit Good Riddance (Time of My Life) by Green Day – was our childhood avatars rejoicing as the ache of being alone was washed away. In his own way, Reynolds did everything feasible to bring Deadpool to life, including assisting in leaking the footage that reminds us why we love comics. And in that process, as Deadpool and Wolverine rampaged to new box-office records, it gave us former losers a reason to remember why we loved comics and that we weren’t alone in doing it.