Deadpool was the
runaway hit of 2016, and one
of my favorite movies of that year. But it was such a weird anomaly in the
canon of superhero movies, and that’s because Deadpool himself is a bit of an
anomaly, like a glitch in the matrix that made itself into a feature. The
character was first introduced in the mid-90’s as the straightforward brooding edgelord
archetype that was popular in comics at the time, but as his series lost popularity,
the writers had more unsupervised fun with him until he essentially became the
superhero equivalent of Bugs Bunny; a mischievous, smart-mouthed, fourth-wall
breaking, indestructible imp whose capacity for over-the-top violence is only
matched by his ability to annoy everyone he comes in contact with. That version
is what made him so popular, so much so that the demand for a Deadpool movie
was loud and clear. Fox didn’t believe it would ever work and tried to sabotage
it at every turn, and what they got in return was the second highest grossing
R-rated film of all time. Inevitably, a sequel was in the works not long after,
but can the merc with the mouth mystify us with his mojo twice?
Our story follows Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), AKA Deadpool,
right when his life takes an unexpected turn for the worse. He tries to
turn his life around, which leads to him being recruited by the X-Men. Him not
being exactly a team player, it doesn’t go so well. His first mission goes disastrously
awry when he has to detain an unstable mutant named Russell (Julian Dennison) who’s
threatening to burn down the orphanage he was raised in but takes pity on the
kid when he figures that he was being abused by the headmaster and stands up
for him. This leads to both getting arrested, a matter further complicated when
a time traveling soldier named Cable (Josh Brolin) arrives to assassinate Russell
to prevent hundreds of deaths by his hand, so Deadpool puts together a crack
team of fellow renegade mutants to save him.
My philosophy to sequels in any medium is that they should
keep what worked with the first, fix or improve the things that didn’t, raise
the stakes and just bring more. In that regard, Deadpool 2 gets two out of three. With a higher budget and supposedly
more creative freedom, we have more of what people loved about Deadpool: more jokes, more fourth wall
breaks, more characters, more over-the-top violence, and more taking the piss
out of the superhero genre. Hell, the movie even opens with Wade telling Logan
off for stealing its thunder, immediately followed by a montage of him singlehandedly
disemboweling an army of international gangsters. Spilling some of the gorier
details of its funniest action bits would be spoiling the surprise, but let’s
just say if you thought the first Deadpool’s morbid, maniacal approach to humor was overkill, this won't do anything to assuage you.
While he’s contractually forbidden from interacting with the
rest of the X-Men (which they hang a lampshade over when the team immediately
shuts the doors upon realizing he’s in the mansion), he’s left with his old
foils to bounce off of. Colossus (Stefan Kapicic), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna
Hildebrand), Dopinder (Karan Soni) and Blind Al (Leslie Uggams) all make a
return (TJ Miller’s here too, but if you’re worried about seeing this since it turns
out he’s a bit of a creep, he’s not there for very long), and the newcomers
have their moments to shine. Julian Dennison is basically what would happen if
his character in Hunt for the
Wilderpeople never got the help he needed, Zazzie Beetz is great as Domino,
who’s seemingly lame power of “good luck” plays out better onscreen than you’d
expect, and then there’s Josh Brolin as Cable. (Brolin’s been having a banger year
etween this and Infinity
War, and yes, they do call him Thanos at one point.) Cable in the
comics has always been a one-note, grizzled macho badass made of guns, muscles
and seriousness, but unlike Deadpool, no one really knew how to work him into
something less dated, which is why he usually only worked as a foil to
Deadpool, being the Elmer Fudd to his Bugs Bunny. And the film realizes this
since just about everyone takes the piss out of him for being such a pile of
walking clichés who takes himself so seriously that it becomes impossible to
the audience to do the same. But this is ultimately Ryan Reynolds’ show, and he
never passes up the chance to remind you why he’s so perfect for this role. The
script does recycle a few jokes from the original, but it speaks to his comical
talents that he can tell them again and make it work twice.
If there is one thing that doesn’t quite bring it to the
level of the first Deadpool, it’s that it’s tonally uneven, and the core story
sometimes feels at odds with itself. While everyone is racing to save this kid,
the big moral quandary between Deadpool and Cable is that gruesome violence isn’t the ultimate solution to all your
problems. Deadpool pities Russell because he was brutally tortured and abused
by the anti-mutant staff of a rehabilitation that constantly told him and the
other patients that their powers are a sin against nature. Coupled with
unstable fire powers and a he’s a literal walking time bomb waiting to go off.
Cable believes killing him before he gets a taste for blood and become the
homicidal maniac who kills his family will fix everything, but Deadpool
believes talking him out of it will be enough. Basically, in between the bloody
money shots and cartoonish viscera, the movie wants to present the old “Would
it be morally wrong to go back in time and kill baby Hitler?” hypothetical and firmly
answer “Yes!” Add that it always chooses to pile on the jokes over narrative
cohesion whenever given the chance, and there might be a bit of cognitive
dissonance in that department.
Bottom line, despite not being as narratively consistent as
the first, Deadpool 2 is still a good
time. Even though the point of the story beneath the schtick may be in direct
opposition to its brand of humor, it does work out, and although not every joke
lands, the ones that do hit hard. If they do ever make a Deadpool 3, I’d wait
to see if that Disney/Fox buyout ever goes through, that way he can have the
entire MCU to legally lampoon. Give this one a shot.
7/10
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