*Originally written February 10th, 2016*
"I'm touching myself tonight"
Here it is, in all its foul-mouthed, violent glory, my most anticipated film of the year. I really did wonder if they could live up to the insanely high standards set by the genius marketing campaign. I am so fucking happy to say that I had a motherfucking blast with Deadpool.
Part origin story, part revenge story and part love story, Deadpool brings the merc with a mouth to the big screen in all his meta glory. The film opens with the action scene shown in all the trailers and goes back and forth between present day and how Wade Wilson becomes the deformed psychopath Deadpool. I was extremely surprised at how all this was handled, despite being really bored of origin stories, like really fucking bored, Deadpool tries and gets all that out the way as fast as it can to make way for Deadpool's revenge mission. During all this we see his relationship with this hooker with a heart of gold, which was actually quite sweet and gave a heart to the core of the film.
Aside from the game I played on PS4, I really have no other point of reference to Deadpool, aside from X-men Origins: Wolverine, which was mocked and referenced a few times. I felt that character was put on the big screen to great success, Ryan Reynold's gave an incredibly charismatic performance that brought charm and humour to this completely violent man child. He could even be quite sweet at times, giving his view on love which was "Finding someone who brings out the best in you and never letting them go", it was a cheesy line, but I agree.
I also thought Deadpool's constant fourth-wall breaking would get irritating, but it was nowhere near as relentless as I thought it would be and every moment he does was gold, in fact every line that comes out of his mouth was pretty much laugh out loud hilarious. I relate to Deadpool in some ways, much to the annoyance of my friends, I break the fourth wall in real life, which makes me sound insane at times, but it's who I am and I embraced it, so fuck you.
I was a bit disappointed by the lack of major X-Men cameos, if you were expecting an appearance from Wolverine, then don't. I did like the two X-Men they did use though, Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, both of which are annoyed by Deadpool's antics, but do eventually join him on his quest for revenge.
It was also a shame that Deadpool also fell into the same trap that all comic-book films that aren't DC fall into.... bland villains. Ed Skrein did a better job than he did in the awful Transporter Refueled, but his character was just a big piece of meh that was only there to serve as a plot device for Deadpool to battle. Gina Carano was serviceable as the main villain's henchman, but still very forgettable.
The biggest thing that Deadpool does different from most other comic-book films is that R rating, and it did deserve it. We get constant F-bombs, graphic violence, including dismemberment's and even some T and A, which is where we get Stan Lee's cameo. It doesn't make the film more mature than other superhero films (far from it), but it does give it an edge over Marvel's other films and makes it far more fun. I think I'll happily put Deadpool alongside the first Kick-Ass, Kingsman and Dredd in a hopefully growing list of excellent R-rated comic-book films.
Being a first time director, I was interested to see how Tim Miller would handle this, and he did a great job. The 100 minutes run at a crazy pace, I was never bored for a second. The few action scenes were all excellent, loved the mix of gun-play and sword-play which was extremely well choreographed. It also must have been a tricky job to make such an insane character such as Deadpool accessible to mainstream audiences, from what I know, they obviously had to restrain Deadpool's more abstract plotting and actions to introduce him for the first time, but I hope with the sequels, they explore Deadpool's chaotic and rampant journeys. What makes Deadpool so interesting is his mind, even he doesn't know who he is, everything is a joke to him, he does insane shit, he even got bored once and decided to kill everyone in the Marvel universe. I got why they played it safe and fair enough.
Deadpool is Fox's gamble and it paid of better than I could have hoped, it's fast, funny, meta, violent and featured what might be the best performance of Ryan Reynold's career. Deadpool 2 has already been announced, I cannot wait.
Oh, and wait till after the end credits if you wanna see Deadpool's homage to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
9/10 Dans
Deadpool is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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