Despite reportedly costing a quarter-billion dollars before marketing, the subject of the latest Marvel super-story’s satire is decidedly inside baseball. Viewers will need to be forgiven if they come away overwhelmed by not just fantastical imagery but also, oddly, corporate commentary. As such, here is some context:

Not only is “Deadpool & Wolverine” the third film in the popular R-rated, action-comedy franchise, it is the 14th entry into Twentieth Century Fox’s loose continuity of X-Men films, and the whopping 34th theatrical installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU (not including two television specials, eight short films, and 42 seasons of television).

But 30 years ago it was comics, not movies, where superheroes reigned supreme. Or rather, had reigned. Like today, the enormity of titles and event-storylines that audiences needed to keep up with had led to exhausted interest and dwindling sales. Marvel Entertainment, desperate for cash (they would file for bankruptcy in 1996), sold the film and TV rights to the popular cast of X-Men characters to Fox for 2.6 million dollars.

“X-Men,” Hugh Jackman’s big break, was released in 2000, beginning the franchise that Ryan Reynolds’ “Deadpool” and “Deadpool 2” would lampoon.

The year 2008 saw Paramount Pictures’ “Iron Man” light the first spark of the MCU, and Disney would purchase Marvel Entertainment for four billion in 2009. Disney’s unprecedented success with Marvel [and PIXAR and Lucasfilm, not to mention their own animation studio and theme parks] allowed CEO Bob Iger to acquire the whole of 21st Century Fox, consolidating Marvel’s characters’ property rights — the merger was completed in 2019, one month before “Avengers: Endgame” made a billion dollars in a single weekend.

And then: COVID, the move from theatrical distribution to vertically integrated streaming services, the simultaneous writer’s/actor’s union strikes, superhero fatigue. The result is a trailer for “Deadpool & Wolverine” wherein one glimpses a set piece taking place in a literal wasteland of studio logos.

But what, if any, cogent things does the film have to say about the merger, its characters’ status as beings that cannot die in a franchise that refuses to end, and the superhero genre’s repeated struggle to dominate despite market oversaturation? For that, you’ll have to head to a local movie theater to judge for yourself.