It’s rare that walking out of a movie that you would look into your wallet to see if you had enough money to see it again right away, but with Deadpool, that’s exactly what I was doing. The other thing that has been said about this movie, especially by some of the other cinema patrons at the session I saw, was “Well I didn’t expect that from a Marvel movie”. Well genius, Deadpool is NOT your average family friendly Marvel movie that you are so used to. This is Deadpool at his head chopping, blood spraying, fucking swear word saying, sexual referencing, mother fucking BEST!
So what that said, I’m going to give you 2 warnings:
1. Parents: DO NOT take you children to see this movie thinking it’s going to be the same as all those other Marvel movies you’ve seen. I don’t want to see complaint tweets or Facebook posts about how triggering or “horrible” it was to you and your spawn. The producers, lead actor, secondary actors, character and 99% of the fucking internet told you that this movie IS NOT FOR KIDS!
2. This review might contain a few spoilers… So you might want to come back AFTER seeing the movie for yourself.
So… The plot… Deadpool is a weird mixture of genres. It’s an action movie, a comedy and yes, it is also a romance movie. So all that advertising about it being another Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy are technically correct.
Deadpool starts out with one of the funniest opening credit sequences I’ve ever seen. I really don’t want to spoil the joke for this one, but instead of focusing on your popcorn or the end of your pre-movie conversation, make sure to read all the credits in the opening; and also keep an eye out for the first of many easter eggs in the movie with a particular comic book writer/artist’s name on a coffee cup.
From here, we get our first of many 4th wall breaks in the movie. Now I must day, this is where Deadpool shines. The self referential 4th wall breaks are some of the best moments of the movie, and nothing is off limits. There are references to The Avengers, other X-Men (or a lack there of), the previous version of Deadpool from that horrible X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie, to Ryan’s time as Green Lantern. Hell, there is even a 4th wall break inside a 4th wall break.
There’s also a recreation of the “leaked” test footage scene too, which leads into the action movie part of the film. Basically, Deadpool is a movie where Wade Wilson is getting revenge on Francis Freeman (aka Ajax) for turning him into the unfuckable pizza face of a man he became due to the effects of a drug that was used to awaken Wade’s latent mutant genes. This is probably the biggest deviation from the comic book origin that the movie takes, and for the context of the film, it works. There is no Weapon X program mentioned at all and the one doing all the damage is not Dr Killbrew. This is a private lab doing illegal experiments on dying people to turn them into weapons to sell on the Black Market. So that’s Deadpool’s origin in a nutshell.
The other part of Deadpool, the part designed to tug at your heart strings, is his relationship with Vanessa Carlysle. In this version, Vanessa is nothing more than a prostitute at the Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Children (aka The Hell House. Though this is not mentioned in the film). She and Wade start things out interestingly enough; he hires her for 48 miuntes to… Well I won’t spoil that joke either. Let’s just say that he doesn’t pay for sex, but he gets a lot of ass anyway in another exceptionally funny scene. It’s here that the morals of Wade’s character show through the most and you really start to be sad for the guy when they hit the cancer scenes that will eventually lead into Wade becoming Deadpool. We’re also introduced to Weasel in this part too. Weasel is the head of Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Children and has all his money placed on Wade to die in the Assassin’s community “deadpool”.
The hardest thing about recapping this story is that it bounces back and forth a lot, however it doesn’t do it in a manner that is jarring for the audience to sit through. A lot of the recap and origin scenes are done all while Deadpool is fighting Francis and his minions. This also attracts the attention of the X-Man Colossus and his apprentice of sorts: Negasonic Teenage Warhead. Colossus wants Deadpool to use his gifts for good and join the X-Men, something that Deadpool doesn’t want to do because he knows deep down that what he has to do is not X-Men friendly; that being kill Francis.
The finale of the movie has explosions, blood, guts, people hitting each other in the crotch, monologues and just about everything else that you expect in a superhero movie. But since this is Deadpool, not everything goes according to plan. For example: Colossus is giving Deadpool the “how to be a hero” speech and it drones on for so long that Deadpool kills someone because he was getting bored.
Deadpool is just about everything you expect from a Marvel movie, but at the same time it takes those things you expect and turns them upside down. It’s a refreshing change from the very stock standard formula that we have come to expect; and that includes the after-credits scene at the end of the movie.
To get into the people who brought the characters to life, I must say that this is a really well cast group.
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool is obviously brilliant. He brings all the life and craziness to Deadpool that was needed to bring the character to the big screen. I don’t think there would be anyone else who could bring both Wade Wilson and Deadpool to the big screen in a proper manner without having to sacrifice something in the character to do so.
Morena Baccarin as Vanessa is a good choice too. She has the appeal of a hot psycho girl with a troubled past that is needed for this type of film. It’s a shame that Vanessa isn’t written to be a shape changing mutant like her comic counterpart is, but then the budget might have suffered if they did. That being said, I think the sex scene between her and Wade would have made for some funny references and cameos. Fox if you’re reading, do that for Deadpool 2!
T. J. Miller as Weasel works fine. However I think that his character being reduced to the guy who runs The Hell House as the main barman was a waste of a well known character for this franchise. Leslie Uggams as Blind Al was another wasted character here. While she is a wise cracking blind lady, she doesn’t really do much except be there for Deadpool to crack a few joke about and that’s it.
Stefan Kapičić as Colossus was a good casting choice. Even though the character was nothing more than a walking CGI model due to the fact that he stays in his metallic form during the whole film, having Stefan voice the character sounded really good. He sounded proper Russian, which is all you need for the character.
Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead was a great choice. The character doesn’t really do much except either be silent, tell Deadpool that he sucks, or blowing up shit with her powers. She was good for a couple of jokes here and there but otherwise was very undeveloped.
Talking about undeveloped… Gina Carano as Angel Dust… She’s big, she’s strong, and that’s it. I was very disappointed that this character didn’t get more development in this movie. In an age where female characters are watched like hawks by the overly offended feminist masses, to have someone in a butt kicking role and doing just that is going to get a lot of outrage. I’m just warning you now.
Finally, we have Ed Skrein as Francis Freeman / Ajax. Now he is the main villain of the piece and he does a good job of being Deadpool’s torturer in the scenes at the lab, but other than that he doesn’t really have much personality. He’s a mutant that can’t feel pain and at no point does the movie try to take advantage of that in his final fight with Deadpool.
And yes… Bob shows up. But he’s not an Agent of HYDRA.
If I have one gripe about Deadpool it’s that a lot of the other characters outside of Deadpool himself feel with underutilized or under developed. I’m a huge Deadpool fan having read every single comic book he has appeared in. I know a lot of these characters from their appearances in those books and I know that they are a huge part of what makes Deadpool appealing. Having the focus being 100% on Deadpool does work for the most part, but I feel that key characters like Weasel and Blind Al needed to be more involved in this story instead of being relegated to bit parts and joke characters. The villains suffer from being too cliche and way too under developed too. Angel Dust is more than just a strong female and could have been a classic second in command if they gave her more to do than just punch Colossus. Francis started out as a great psychopath of a laboratory head, but quickly fell away into being a cliche egotistical British villain trope. It’s a shame because he could have been so much more as he is a mutant who doesn’t feel pain.
However, at the end of the day we got exactly what we wanted out of a Deadpool movie; and that was Deadpool. This movie was everything I wanted to see out of one of my all time favorite Marvel characters and then some. He’s funny, sick in the head, crazy and all around loveable. This is the first time in a long time that I have ever wanted to go and see the movie again as soon as I walked out of the cinema; and I’m going to go see it again as soon as I can… Because it’s going to be a long agonizing wait for the Blu-Ray release.
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Overall
