Does ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ change the ranking of the best ‘Deadpool’ movie?

The Deadpool movies have always been a blast, irrespective of how much you remember from the previous film or its interconnected cinematic universe. And it helps that Ryan Reynolds IS Deadpool. But now that Deadpool & Wolverine is here, which is the best of the lot?

Before we get to the rankings of the three main Deadpool films, let’s get the preliminaries done and dusted. We’re not going to include Deadpool’s gig in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and his Christmas outing in Once Upon a Deadpool in this list. For one, they don’t quite matter, and you know after Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson kinda ‘cleaned up’ the timeline so even he doesn’t care much for these. But even if we did include them in the ranking, they’d pretty much be bottom rung. 

And so, with that all cleared out, let’s have it. Which is the best Deadpool movie of the three? And does the arrival of the Hugh Jackman and Emma Corrin hit Deadpool & Wolverine on the scene shuffle up the rankings?

All Deadpool movies ranked from worst to best

3. Deadpool & Wolverine / Deadpool 3

To answer the above question, Deadpool 3 did come in with a bang but it wasn’t strong enough to shake up the rankings. That being said, Deadpool & Wolverine is actually a fantastic time, and to call it the ‘worst’ Deadpool film kind of hurts me in my warm and fuzzies.  So for this list’s sake, this one turns up on the bottom, only because one of them has to. And if this were a contest between the Deadpool opening credits and soundtrack, this one would win!

Deadpool & Wolverine gives us two things fans have wanted for a while—a face-off between these two mutants and then a team-up between them that plays off of the IRL friendship between Reynolds and Jackman. The entire Reynolds-Lively family is in there, there are cheeky real-world jokes aplenty, there’s Dogpool, and we get a deliciously terrifying new villain Cassandra Nova. And let’s not forget all the cameos from superheroes past, the emotional send-off to the Fox Universe movies, and Matthew Macfadyen dusting off his ‘Tom Wambsgans, CEO of Waystar’ act to play Paradox. 

And all of it is a hoot! But, if you were to remove the self-referential, self-deprecating humor and the cameos, then Deadpool 3 is a rather weak, unnecessarily convoluted premise that doesn’t offer much. There are some poignant emotional moments for Logan, and one for Wade in the end too, but no life-altering character development. Overall, Deadpan 3 feels more like a side quest or a Christmas movie.

2. Deadpool 2

I mean… Josh Brolin as Cable? That whole X-Force sequence? The fight with Juggernaut? The first appearance of Peter? That sneaky X-Men cameo in the X-Mansion? Deadpool 2 has so much going for it, along with a storyline that has some great emotional depth and heart, which puts it above Deadpool 3 for me.

You see a side to Wade Wilson that hasn’t been explored before, because who a hero is at his worst is what defines him. IMHO, Deadpool is the most impactful in the scenes with his found family—Vanessa, Blind Al, Colossus (the flirty banter is just *chef’s kiss*), Dopinder, and young Russell AKA Firefist. And we get plenty of those moments in Deadpool’s second outing. It’s like a perfect mix of superhero action, emotion,  and the usual R-rated chaos we love the Pool for! 

And those James Bond opening credits and the mid-credits scene where Wade ‘cleans up’ the timelines? Gold!

1. Deadpool 

Look here, the first Deadpool is where it’s at. This is the film that was the culmination of years of effort on Ryan Reynolds’ part to give us the R-rated superhero film. And when we got it … oh, it was perfect! This film was proof that superhero movies could break the formula (back when the formula wasn’t as pronounced as it is now) and give us something that probably wasn’t possible with any other superhero than the Merc with a Mouth!

Everything from how the film was structured to the humor and the action sequences, the fourth-wall breaking to it being an origin story and a romance too, Deadpool will always be THAT Deadpool movie for fans. It didn’t need any cameos or on-the-nose jokes, it was just Wade making Maximum Effort against a British mutant villain who was named after a bleach! And, please, they got WHAM!