Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Review: Deadpool

by Patrick Bromley
Sometimes the right people get a win.

I was pulling for Deadpool, the latest attempt from smirking Canadian hunk Ryan Reynolds to jumpstart a superhero franchise. He's an actor who's passionate about this stuff and who tries really, really hard but who keeps getting stuck in movies like Blade Trinity, in which he was good but good in the weakest of the Blade movies, the disastrous X-Men Origins: Wolverine (playing a version of the character he plays here) and most famously Green Lantern, which one might think would have ended his career as a movie superhero once and for all. Instead, Reynolds tirelessly pushed for a proper movie starring Deadpool, Marvel's wisecracking, murdering, fourth-wall-breaking mercenary created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza in the early '90s (and a character who, in the interest of full disclosure, I never got into). He would talk about it in interviews and on social media. After spending a decade being developed with no success, a visual effects demo that Reynolds had shot in 2012 leaked online in 2014 showcasing not just how the actor looked and moved in the costume but what the tone of a real Deadpool movie might be. Fans went crazy for it, and -- wouldn't you know it? -- a few months later Fox finally put the movie into production.

Now it's out and breaking box office records for February releases and has become the biggest R-rated opening of all time, pulling in over $250 million worldwide in its opening weekend. That's huge. Huuuuuuge. And for as hard as Reynolds has worked at getting this movie made the way it should be made, he deserves the success. The fans spoke, the studio responded and everyone should be more or less happy.

Because while Deadpool is extremely uneven, it works in many of the ways that it needs to work. The stuff I liked I liked a lot. The rest often felt like warmed-over early-2000s superhero moviemaking: dodgy CGI, characters that are much too big (non-Deadpool characters, I mean), a generic villain, too much origin. But then something will happen and the movie will roar to life and be lots of bratty, violent fun -- the filmic equivalent of one of those bumper stickers in which Calvin pees on things, only instead of being on the rear of a pickup truck of a douche you can't stand it's on the car of a guy you really like. He might even drive a Prius.
Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, ex special forces-turned-mercenary with a soft spot for people in trouble. He meets and falls in love with Vanessa (Firefly's Morena Baccarin), a hooker with a heart of gold and an extensive knowledge of Star Wars; before you can say "I'm not sure that's a thing," they have fallen madly in love just in time for Wade to get a terminal cancer diagnosis. Desperate, he agrees to partake in a top secret experiment which will both cure his disease and give him superpowers by unlocking his latent mutant genes. Left hideously disfigured and practically immortal, Deadpool is born and he wants revenge.

Deadpool's greatest advantage -- besides Ryan Reynolds' Tom Cruisian insistence on dragging the movie towards success -- is its timing. So many big budget, high profile superhero movies have been released over the last 15 years that to finally see one willing to call bullshit on a lot of the overly familiar tropes feels slightly revolutionary. The opening credits of the movie do the self-awareness best, pointing out just how generic this type of film has become; unfortunately, just pointing it out does not absolve Deadpool of embracing almost all of the same tropes that it mocks in the opening minutes. The movie tries to have it both ways, suggesting that we should roll our eyes at the things we've been conditioned to expect but then includes all of those things without irony.
For Deadpool to really work the way I so badly want it to work, it would have to maintain the level of snotty audaciousness established in its first scene. It would have to be avant garde, almost experimental in its execution. First-time feature director Tim Miller (whose background is in visual FX, which might explain why he was able to bring the movie in for a comparatively-low $58 million) includes flashes of inspiration -- there's a great moment in which Deadpool pushes the camera away so as not to show the audience the horrible act of violence he's about to commit -- but more often than not it settles into generic superhero stuff. It's edgier and more violent than the usual fare which gives the film its own distinct personality, but by the time giant CGI shipyards are collapsing into Aftereffects explosions I find myself missing those sparks of invention.

So I'm torn on the movie. A lot of it works exactly as its supposed to. It introduces a superhero who's unlike any other hero to have gotten his or her own movie thus far; even better, it surrounds that superhero in a film that reflects the character's worldview at least half of the time. There's a real charm to that. It's combatting long sections of generic origin stuff and a "torture" scene that's at least twice as long as it needs to be. It introduces (or re-introduces) two X-Men, Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and embarrasses both of them. Their stuff is much more reminiscent of the dreadful X-Men Origins: Wolverine than it is in the spirit of Deadpool, and though their presence allows for a few funny lines and meta jokes courtesy of the Merc with a Mouth, it all sucks in the way that we've gotten used to from Fox. Their need to tie Deadpool into their larger X-universe in his first big-screen solo outing unnecessarily hobbles the movie.
I don't want to come down to hard on Deadpool. There's a lot of stuff I don't think works, but the good stuff outshines it enough that the movie manages to be very entertaining and feel refreshing in the superhero-saturated marketplace. I'm happy for its success because it's clearly the passion project of a lot of people (not the least of which is Ryan Reynolds) and they appear to have been given the leeway to realize their vision in the way they want. This is a foul-mouthed, gratuitously violent R-rated superhero movie based on a comic book without a ton of mainstream brand recognition (outside of geek circles) and starring an actor who has been written off as unable to open a movie. In no way should it be the success that it is, so I'm delighted that it has defied expectations and succeeded not just a movie that's been pre-sold to us but because it's a movie that people actually like. When there's a Deadpool 2 -- and it's a foregone conclusion that it's coming sooner than later (it's even referenced in the post-credits scene) -- let's hope they can dispense with the bad '90s stuff and do more of the out-there rule breaking. Deadpool is confident but still hedging its bets. After this kind of success, Deadpool 2 better not take any shit from anyone.

21 comments:

  1. When Deadpool is at it's best it reminds me of a Zucker and Abrahams movie in the rapid-fire nature of the comedy. It bogs down a bit at times, particularly during the origin bits and towards the end, but when it hits (and it does quite a bit) it's funnier than just about anything else I've seen lately.

    It also helps that it's out during a time of year when there aren't a lot of other major releases that I'm particularly interested in. Hopefully I'll get to watch The Witch tonight, and I'm curious about 10 Cloverfield Lane, but it says something that the movie I'm looking forward to seeing on the big screen the most next month is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

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    1. Totally agree with you Ross, I had the same thought - in a Naked Gun kind of way they thought 'well if we keep throwing joke after joke against the wall some them have gotta stick"...thankfully a good portion of them do.

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  2. While I'm not the world's biggest fan of Deadpool or his creator, I'm really hoping that the success of this film heralds the coming of superhero movies from the studios besides Marvel (WB, Fox) that aren't so grim and gritty. For too long, other studios have equated comic book movies with dark, serious, and violent content. They can be that, but they can also be a whole lot of fun. The Justice League is not Watchmen, Warner. The lesson is not that people went to see this because it's rated R; the lesson is that people want to have fun with these characters and see something that's not like everything else. Judging by the fact that they're already discussing an R-rated Wolverine movie, I feel this lesson has fallen on deaf ears.

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    1. I totally agree, Heath, and I hear alot of people saying the same things. It just seems like WB won't listen for some reason. Justice League is supposed to be big bombastic fun, so I think that's the main reason that the trailer for Batman v. Superman upset me. If you wanna do Dark Knight Returns, do that as its own thing. It might even be great, but don't try to set that tone for an ongoing JL franchise. Then again, none of us have seen that movie yet so who knows where it's going. If all else fails, we can always look forward to Guardians 2!

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    2. I trust you have read James Gunn's Facebook plea to take the correct lessons from this movie, yes, Heath? If not, look that up. He basically says exactly what you have. Not every super hero movie needs to be rated R now. I wouldn't mind seeing an R-rated X-Force movie, and I think any other Deadpool sequel should be rated R, but that's about it. Watchmen and Kick-Ass also used the rating well and to their respective material's advantage.

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    3. I hadn't until just now. Man, he's just the best.

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  3. I agree with most all of this. When the giant ship came crashing down I was hoping for a joke about how that's the end of literally every marvel movie. That joke did not come, so they were actually being serious with that. But I enjoyed the film, and your review.

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  4. Of course I loved it, everyone does...but it's basically the Naked Gun of superhero films. It's an OK movie that gets by on being self-aware and mocking the Marvel blueprint we've all come to accept. Hopefully it gets them to raise their game a bit or they'll really seem outdated and cliche.

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  5. I couldn't be happier they invested in one of the more obscurer properties... I was there last Wednesday, at midnight, in Glasgow.

    The screening went down well and far better than I expected considering the majority of screenplay felt like Fan Service: The Movie. I really commend Reynolds for championing this character and his Fletch-like proclivity towards being a hero.

    Origins stories are starting to be a little nauseating, So I'm happy they tried to put a different spin on it.

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  6. This review is spot on for me. I also think Ross' comparison to a Zucker style script is apt. Only 25% of the jokes landed for me, but there were a shit-ton of jokes.
    Also kinda felt bad for TJ Miller having to provide comic relief to a hero that is overtly comic.

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  7. I agree with your take on the unevenness, for sure. I overall liked this movie a lot, so it pains me because I'm not sure why studios consider the "warmed-over, early 2000s" shit to be such a safe option. Does it really leave anyone satisfied? Anyway I had a blast just listening to Deadpool riff on pop culture for two hours. While I wonder if this means the movie won't age well, calling out bedazzled douche jeans will never not be funny. Also, Ryan Reynolds is great at physical comedy and some of the moments I laughed hardest were simply due to his unexpected poses.

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  8. I was pleasantly surprised by it. I didn't like it much at first but by the end I really enjoyed it. It felt like a joke that was sort of funny the first time, not funny the 3rd time and hilarious the 27th time.

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    1. The Everest sketch of superhero movies.

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    2. I went in with zero expectations after the less then enticing trailer...but in a weird way some of the things that fell flat in the trailer kind of worked in the context of the movie. I might be in the minority but I am kind of glad something finally worked out well for Mr Reynolds.

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  9. Finally a Marvel SH that I enjoyed watching and listening to. No room for “save the world” BS just some pure acts of selfishness and violence + rescuing the damsel in distress motive - a bit like Popeye...

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  10. I liked Mr Deadpool quite a bit but will agree with you Patrick its overall a bit uneven. I think the big reason this movie is hitting is the fact it's fun, hey other comic book movies out there in Hollywood- you don't have to have the whole world at stake in every comic book movie.

    Just a random thought how cool would a Deadpool/Gremlins crossover be, the gremlins do the mayhem and Deadpool does the chatting?

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  11. For an R-rated superhero movie, that's so proud of its violence and vulgarity, the movie was just too safe for me. I longed for something more like Kick-Ass, which made me gleefully uncomfortable and was meta in a more sophisticated way.

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  12. It may have it´s flaws but I had a great time watching this funny and fast paced flick. Especially liked the Ferris Bueller end credits.

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  13. I very much agree with you Patrick, the movie doesnt get a free pass because it acknowledges what is wrong with Marvel movies, it needs to rise above them or be something completely different and it does not. However, Ryan Reynolds does inject some serious fun into the character. I agree with everyone here about why the movie was successful: people want to have fun at the movies, the movie is fun = success.

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  14. Having to deal with Fox - who we know from Fantastic Four that they are very capable of knee-capping a movie if they get a bug up their ass - I can forgive this film for perhaps meeting them halfway with a few things. Thus maybe a few of the studio appeasing tropes...the choice of X Men characters....
    But now they have the success. And they have the feedback on what the audiences loved and what they didn't that they can go to the studio, "Now let us push the envelope..."
    PS - Props to Hugh Jackman who helped Reynolds campaign for the film.

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  15. I hope you guys will do a podcast on it. It deserves talking about in spoilerrific detail.

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