My first attempt at watching
Deadpool
did not go so well. It had nothing to do with the movie; that, without going into too much detail too early, was really quite good. No, it was the case of grinding stomach cramps that started about halfway
through the film, followed by my car not starting after the movie,
capped off with nearly a week of gastroenteritis that put a damper on
the evening. So I did all of you, my faithful readers, a favour and
went to see it again. In IMAX. I swear, the things I do for you lot...
I've been aware of Deadpool for a very
long time. I've seen his start as just another terrible Rob Liefeld
creation, be-pouched and violent with a name made of two gritty
words, generic as all hell in his fight against gritty, be-pouched
and hyperviolent sort-of anti-hero Cable, another terrible Rob
Liefeld creation. But I've seen him grow in the hands of more
creative writers and artists into something different, something
almost beautiful, one of those tragedies that just can't
stop laughing because if he does, it'll hurt too much to go on. His
finest redemption came with that of Cable, his brother-in-90s-badness, in the simply-titled Cable &
Deadpool, and it's one of the best series I've ever read. Since then, he's been on a meteoric rise to pop culture
fame, and now he's every-goddamn-where. Like it or not, Wade Wilson
has struck gold.
But how was the movie? The FOX X-Films
have been varying in quality, with the two decent-to-good and one
poor
X-Men, one terrible and one much better
Wolverine, and the
First Class trilogy, 2/3 complete with the excellent
First Class
and quite good
Days of Future Past, and the concluding
X-Men: Apocalypse on the way.
Deadpool is, quite frankly, the best of all of them, possibly even
the one with Apocalypse. It's on par with the better Marvel Studios
films, with a faithfulness and wit that no one saw coming.
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Let's get a few things out of the way
(as well as a spoiler warning): this is a film that more than
earns its R rating. The language is crass. There's nudity, female as
well as... well, Deadpool wang. Floppy, scarred Deadpool wang. The
violence is visceral, detailed, and astoundingly gratuitous. And all
of it grabs you and does not let go and shouts in your face “THIS
IS NECESSARY.”
To release a family-friendly cut of this film would
more than likely render it perhaps half an hour long. But every
decapitated body part, every glimpse of flesh, every foul word serves
a purpose to paint a picture of the world Deadpool inhabits and the
circles he moves in, places which were heretofore unexplored in the X-Men
films.And speaking of the X-Men, there's another character with a true redemption here: Colossus, last seen as the hunky member of a boy-band covered in chrome paint, has been fixed.
He's now ENORMOUS, not just above average tall and muscular; the chrome has been toned down; and his attitude matches what it should have always been: a farmboy raised under Communism who is now living in America with a supportive family unit. He's simultaneously the ultimate cuddly big brother (no pun intended), human wrecking ball, and source of some of the movie's best laughs -- not at his own expense, but at his optimistic reactions to the situations he finds himself in as well as the faith he shows in Deadpool.
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| I dare you not to love this guy. |
Deadpool himself is a
gem. He's portrayed with just the right amount of weird (not the
lol-so-random that some writers saddle him with) and he moves
perfectly. Agile, fast, accurate, he's a real menace on the field,
elevated from minor threat to nigh-on unstoppable force by his
regenerative powers, taking only a moment to stick his finger through
a bullet hole in his arm and swear at the guy that shot him. Ryan
Reynolds really gets the character, and I feel happy for him about
it. He deserves this. He's been working a hell of a long time to make
this happen, and he's redeemed both himself and the character from
its dreadful portrayal in
X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which is alluded
to several times in the film (including showing the action figure, for which I've supplied a visual aid). This is nearly everything we
wanted from Deadpool on-screen, and certainly far more than we ever
expected to get considering a) the last time he was on-screen and b)
it's not a Marvel Studios film.
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| Yep. That's the one in the movie, and I have one. |
And speaking of that, it's
really a shame that it's not, but it wouldn't surprise me if there
was some form of crossover being set up. The final battle does appear
to take place on a decommissioned helicarrier that looks like it's
straight out of SHIELD's fleet. Reynolds's Deadpool is now added to the Downey
Jr. Stark/Jackman Wolverine teamup I dearly want to see.
The film wasn't
perfect, though; some pretty hefty details from Deadpool's origin
were missing. The organization that performed the experiments on him
didn't seem to be Weapon X, but they didn't explicitly name it
anything else, so it still could be; Vanessa wasn't a mutant or a
mercenary, and she was a much more morally sound character than she
was in the comics; Colossus's trainee X-student, Negasonic Teenage
Warhead, looks nothing like she does in the comics and seems to have
Cannonball's power; and most damning of all, Deadpool's inner monologue
does not speak in little yellow boxes.
But all in all, this
is a mark in the win category, not only for how good it was, but how
much money it's made. As I write this, I think it's past the 500
million mark, and it's cleared the record for highest-grossing R
rated film ever. The viral marketing campaign for it was genius,
allowing Reynolds to ham it up in-character in all manner of
situations not in any way related to the film, just for us to get a
taste of his performance and assure us that the movie did, indeed, know
what it were doing.
The trailer cuts were smart, too. The “pity
the guy that pressures her into prom sex”line is there, but it
makes perfect sense in context, but Vanessa's line about not being a
damsel in distress is gone from the final cut.
If you haven't seen
it, and you've survived the cascade of spoilers, please go see it.
It's great fun, as long as you're not easily offended. And Ryan Reynolds, of all people, deserves this. This was the man's last chance; he'd already screwed up twice in comic films before the great Marvel Studios flood that started with
Iron Man. If he messed up again, he was done. But he didn't.
He deserves this film, and so do you.
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