Deadpool was good

 

I love to be fashionably late to events, it's like my biggest desire as a resident psychopath to be the guy strolling in after the party is over and tasting all the left-over snacks that nobody has even touched because this is a party and people don't eat at parties. (Seriously- no one ever touches the snacks! What's up with that?) Hence was one of the reasons why I waited several weeks before finally going to see Deadpool and Wolverine- second was my belief that Deadpool was an 18 because I heard it got an R Rating- but apparently in England 'R' translates to a 15 which... I'm only just learning now. Guess that says a little something about the way we and America view violence and the effect it has on growing minds, huh? But enough about me, what about the movie? It was good.

I'm sure by now you've experienced some vast exposé on all members of the cast given that in the information age the very second a movie comes out that spoiler embargo expires. Supercuts of the 'best moments' and 'best cameos' have flooded the Internet, memes have spawned, compilations are complied- all before the film has even officially released on home digital. (I wonder if those little scanner things they use in Theatres even work or if it's just a scare tactic at this point- seriously!) Which is why I'm not going to play it coy like I would if this were a brand new game. Plus who cares about spoiling a movie, seriously? They're meant to be spoiled- that's like the entire point! (Why? I don't know but I'm said that now so I guess I have to stick with it.)

I think the Deadpool franchise was on a bit of shaky grounds ever since the second movie didn't quite hit as acutely as the first. That original movie was scrappy to it's very core and that made it absolutely charming beyond belief. Ryan's Pool was a violent, irreverent, mass murderer with the ability to turn literally anything into a joke- making him like this minus-hero, not even an anti-hero, that drove a war of gloriously irreverent immorality that stood out so vastly admits the sea of increasingly homogenous and vapid superhero projects that all espoused the same virtues, portray the same journey and, crucially, had the same sense of humour. Deadpool was a movie that had to struggle to live and be made- which was represented perfectly on screen.

Deadpool 2, on the otherhand, is a strange case. It was visually much more ambitious, they clearly had an insanely bigger budget to work with and spent that building up a powerhouse of a cast. But maybe somewhere within that safety an edge was lost, at the heart of the film. I think it shows best in Deadpool's attitude which for the first time ever comes across at predominately altruistic, rather than begrudgingly or accidentally. He wants to save a kid from becoming a serial killing monster in the future because for some reason he connects with the aussie, whereas in any other instance Deadpool would definitely have just killed the kid. Whilst cracking a joke. There was a horrendously prototypical message about the importance of family that clung to every half second of the film and that just wasn't what Deadpool was about. Deadpool is more about what Deadpool 3 is about. 

Yeah, there's some slight hook about 'family' in order to light a fire under Deadpool's ass within the magic box- but the movie is very upfront from the get-go: this is about the excitement of Deadpool finally getting to join the real continuity of Marvel Movies wherein the things he does can actually 'matter'. In typical Deadpool fashion they are very up front about that- just like the ol' 'Pinky, Elmyria and the Brain' opening lyric "It's what the network wants- so why bother complain!" In that way Deadpool's choice to hang around in order to try and save his dysfunctional family is more allegorical of Ryan Reynold's attempts to try and get the FOX era of Marvel movies to be considered valuable and real and maybe even be tack-ons to that old MCU Machine we're all growing sick and tired of.

A common complaint of modern Marvel which makes no sense to me is people's fatigue with Multiverses, for which this movie relies on heavily. I am confused because no one seems able to voice a genuine critique as to why they are objectively bad as a storytelling framework. The go-to is 'well there's no stakes because you can do anything to someone from one universe and they'll come back as a different version of themselves." My challenge is this- literally when has that ever actually happened in a film? It's a common problem with the comics, but the only film that has attempted anything remotely close to that would be Guardians of the Galaxy 3 wherein the resurrection of Gomora is a chief talking point. The only real critique I've seen is that they are overdone to a poor degree- to which I find Deadpool to be rather decent salve to.

Getting to experience all the oodles of cameos tucked away in this movie fresh was a fantastic showcase of the potential of these kinds of stories done right. Of course, assisted somewhat by the meta-leaning of this movie that allowed a lot of leeway in exactly what they could pull and why there are doing it- which for me is really the crux of a Deadpool film. When you get stuck too staunchly on the meat of the movie and the grounded terrestrial stakes of film, those secondary aspects of the film, then you'd be forgiven in not having as good of a time- but that takes a wanton rejection of the very heart of the film in order to achieve. Judge the film for everything it isn't and all you'll see are the mistakes- the clumsy story, the hand-waving plot points, the bizarre interactions- let yourself go with the film and I'd consider this one of the best Marvel movies in their entire line-up.

So it's safe to say that I like Deadpool and Wolverine and as a cap-off for the franchise I think they did a mighty good job settling everything down in a way that I don't think the FOX universe was capable of or even deserved in a lot of respects.  But it's always nice to see someone who holds the utmost respect for something demonstrate the admiration even if you don't full comprehend it yourself. And that's what the movie was, a love letter to a long-departed ex who left your goldfish without food before going off on holiday. Which is to say that I thought the movie was downright marvellous. Such a shame about the next one being Venom 3. Thanks for that, Sony.