Are ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ the heroes Marvel needs?

Marvel has had a rough go of it lately.

By MCU standards, last years’ “Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania” flopped. Follow-up “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” was a modest hit, despite grumblings about a dip in quality, and raised hopes that Marvel was finally heeding the cautionary maxim “go woke, go broke.”

Those hopes were dashed by the November release of “The Marvels,” a goofy paean to girl power that all but confirmed the triumph of DEI over good storytelling. Audiences stayed away, resulting in the lowest-grossing movie in the studio’s history. Since then, the mood of the average Marvel fan has been bleak.

Then came Monday’s release of the brand-new “Deadpool & Wolverine” trailer.

The universal praise and excitement greeting this glimpse of the much-anticipated collab is easy to understand. I feel it, too. However, I can’t help but worry that we’re in for a rehashing of 2023.

Will the movie be good? Yes, I believe so. Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool has been consistently entertaining over two films. Director Shawn Levy (“Night at the Museum” and the Reynolds-starring “Free Guy”) gets a chance to bring his knack for big, crowd-pleasing family films to the superhero genre and seems determined to deliver the kind of joyous, fan-focused popcorn fare we got in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (which had great fun blending three different eras of “Spider-Man” movies).

To top it all off is the triumphant return of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

Jackman famously retired the character with the beautifully made “Logan,” the James Mangold-directed sci-fi Western that finally gave us the “Old Man Logan” version of the character we’ve been wanting to see for years. Jackman has said in the past that he’d be willing to return if Wolverine were to join the Avengers. Whether that is on the table remains to be seen, but for now he’s putting on the claws again to fulfill another fanboy dream:

Wolverine and Deadpool. Together. On the big screen.

As you’ve probably gathered, there’s A LOT to be excited about when it comes to this movie, not to mention the Fox X-Men cameos and multiverse rumors galore. Oh, and Secret Wars? If you know, you know.

But if this film is a hit (and by all accounts it will be), will it signal that Marvel is going back to prioritizing entertaining its audience and staying true to the source material or will it be a fleeting rush of adrenaline in the perpetually declining legacy of Marvel and Disney? In other words, will “Deadpool & Wolverine” be the “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” of 2024? Only time will tell.

For now, we can only savor the anticipation. In a world where Marvel die-hards have had little to look forward to, that will have to do.