OPINION | Deadpool 2, or how "more of the good stuff" isn't always better
🎵 He's a maniac, maniac, on the shooting floor... (?)
In July 2014, a mysterious 1 minute and 48 seconds' test footage was leaked to the Internet, becoming a must in geek and comic fans' conversations around the world soon enough. The aforementioned video seemed to be the opening sequence of a live-action film starring one of the most badass, violent and funny characters ever depicted on Marvel Comics' book pages: Deadpool, a mercenary and anti-hero whose regenerative powers and otherworldly skill with weapons of all kinds are only matched by his singular bravado and ability to swear and make fun of everything in the face of the Earth.
Voiced by Ryan Reynolds and given life in CGI by the always wonderful maestros working at Blur Studio, it would soon come to light that the footage was originally pitched to 20th Century Fox by film director and co-founder of Blur, Tim Miller. Going viral in a way few other things that year did (well, except maybe that spider-dog prank), it was met with near universal acclaim: no one, absolutely no one in the whole world could understand how Fox wasn't producing a Deadpool movie ASAP, specially taking the rise of comic and superhero movies into account.
Even though the circumstances regarding the true nature of the leak never were fully clarified, with various rumours about the real culprit or culprits behind it (some journalists and specialized press outlets said Tim Miller was responsible, while other ones accused Ryan Reynolds or people very close to him), the mission was accomplished: by March 2015, with Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner and Ryan Reynolds as executive producers and Tim Miller helming the project in the director's seat, the production of the one and only sleeper hit of the 2010s, to both critics and audience, was on its way.
Premiering on February 2016 and amassing about $783,1 million worldwide, Deadpool was not only a massive event and made the delight of comic book fans everywhere, but a clean slate for Ryan Reynolds's career, which was in pretty bad shape after working in the abysmal movie adaptation of Green Lantern and being utterly wasted in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, curiously, playing the exact same character.
Given the massive income and audience acclaim involved, Fox not making a Deadpool sequel was nearly unthinkable. In February 2016, the studio greenlit a sequel with the involvement of the same creative team as the first one; however, creative differences between Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds forced the former into resignation from the project, being replaced by a newcomer who already made its mark in the action film scene after the huge success of John Wick: David Leitch.
And, after an otherwise fluid filming, Deadpool 2 premiered in May 2018 to high expectations of fans and critics alike.
WARNING: Even though this review is coming quite late* and this shouldn't be a motive for concern, this article will contain only mild spoilers. It will assume, as well, that the audience has watched the first Deadpool.
And if you haven't… dishonor to yourself, dishonor to your cows, dishonor to your farm (?)
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Judging by Deadpool 2's first minutes, Wade Wilson's life can't be better than it is. With his mercenary and contract killer career on the rise (depicted in a sequence that is as hilarious as it is dynamic) and having the time of his life with his beloved Vanessa Carlysle, who seems to have accepted the physical transformation of his boyfriend - produced by the events of the first Deadpool movie - quite calmly, the Merc with a Mouth is simply on fire.
However, given a little miscalculation on Wade's part in one of his missions, Deadpool 2's first act quickly smashes every part of his ideal life and forces him out of his comfort zone to deal with, not only one, but two threats that change him completely and force him to rekindle old alliance and establish some new ones, in order to achieve his mission. The first of said threats, a young mutant named Russell Collins (known by X-Men fans as the relatively obscure Firefist), will make him face the results of torture and aggresion inflicted to the young pyrokinetic by the employees of a mysterious orphanage and mutant reeducation center, suspiciously related to a certain Mr. Essex…
The second one, pretty much responsible of the high expectations and the initial movie trailer's outstanding reaction, is the coming of a visitor from far, far away in time, a soldier from the future with a particular set of skills and power that make him into an instant rival of Deadpool and that, calling himself Cable, travels to our time with Russell on his sights - an even more dangerous proposition that Wade would ever believe -, forcing the latter to assemble a team of superheroes with compatible or complementary skillsets (in other words, the birth of the X-Force, the not-so-sweet-but-violent-as-fuck version of the X-Men) in order to face this powerful antagonist and to save Russell's life before it's too late.
On the paper, given its premise, this doesn't only seem to be a natural evolution of the character and its plot, but an adventure that holds tons of action in a more closely-related-to-the-comics universe and expands the Deadpool cinematographic universe in bold, unique ways…
… but, as everything in life, sometimes you have to be really careful about what you're asking for.
The recipe for Deadpool 2: everything that worked well with the first one multiplied by infinite, for better or worse... while adding a bit of Cable to taste
An aspect of Deadpool 2 that quickly makes itself to be self-evident, and which crucially marks the whole movie, is the attempt of screemwriters Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick to raise the bar on every level. Not only the action scenes are even more violent, outlandish and fun than in the first movie (Really? Well, it seems it's possible), but the plot's machinations send it and our heroes to darker, more grim moments than your usual blockbuster fair. Nevertheless, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and, sadly, Deadpool 2 ends up becoming a terribly unbalanced movie in its plot and its intentions throughout its running time.
The first act of the movie, no matter how well throws Wade Wilson through the events that will deeply change him as a character throughout the plot, even with the thrill of the amount of things happening onscreen, feels incredibly slow and dragged-down. In addition to a very important change in Wade and Vanessa's relationship that, for the sake of spoilers, I'm not going to address - suffice to say, it feels kinda forced, unconsequential and unimaginative in a freezing kind of way -, the first half hour of Deadpool 2 suffers from overexposition and a bloated approach to its themes and scenes that, even though David Leitch does his best attempt of going through with, it still smells like “Hey, man… when does this thing actually begin?”.
Even though the film is significantly more fluid and fun in its second act, with some standout scenes (the setpiece in which Deadpool and his newly-formed X-Force try to prevent Cable from accomplishing his nefarious plans against Russell is absolutely hilarious and epic to a degree), it isn't able to top the natural and irreverent way the first movie's plot presented its situations and scenes. Yes, a lot of jokes and sketches will take your breath away one laughter after another, but Deadpool 2 still feels like, at the very least, three movies in one sluggish plot-centipede of a film. The most effective sub-plot – because of its familiarity and simplicity - is Russell's story, a character that lends himself to the audience's empathy and that, in the hands of the young New Zealand actor, Julian Dennison, becomes a sad and somewhat heartbreaking metaphor for all the angst and anguish a bullied kid must endure at its childhood and adolescence.
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Have you checked your vision lately, Mr. Summers?
The lukewarm-at-its-best adaptation of characters and events of classic comic book arcs that the movie is clearly inspired upon doesn't help that much either. Although Cable's involvement with the plot (played by an effective Josh Brolin, who we already know as one of hell of a badass when it comes to playing morally-dubious and hardboilded characters) and his antics are as close to the comic books as it can be done given the copyright limitations of the material, he ends up feeling so removed from the X-Men equation that he has always been a crucial part of, his reason to travel back in time so close to Deadpool's own traumatic voyage through the first act and so poorly justified to give him the appearance of an antagonist... that, by the moment he does a very comprehensible face turn, he has lost quite a lot of his initial appeal, ending up as Deadpool's cool partner from the future de Deadpool. Even with a fun but brief wink at Terminator included...
Nevertheless, Deadpool 2 does have its virtues. One of those is Domino - a character that is usually Cable's partner and love interest in the comics -, who constantly steals the scenes she's in with her particular way of doing things and behaving around other characters. What seems to be an internal joke by Deadpool during her recruitment into the X-Force, referring how boring and non-cinematic her superpower must be (one that Domino acknowledges as "mere luck", but that comic book fans know it's a little more complicated than that), ends up being the absolute opposite of that, as Domino's antics are responsible of some of the funniest, more creative scenes of the movie. It certainly helps that Zazie Beetz does an outstanding job with the part, keeping her head cool in every stituation and becoming an incredibly helpful addition to the team.
To everyone who ended up flaming the Internet because of Domino's skin color, I feel sorry for you guys... Zazie Beetz is easily the best part of the movie
Besides, as pretty much everyone expected, Deadpool 2 is truly the showcase of Ryan Reynolds actually becoming Deadpool; for he's not only capable of turning jokes that would have felt phony or forced otherwise into instant laughter, out of his sheer charisma and love of the character, but he gives the Merc with a Mouth's affinity for breaking the fourth wall its best outing ever. He truly doesn't take hostages at all with his jokes, ranging from our current, somewhat sickening politically correctness to even a certain self-awareness about the plot's quality that we're left to ponder if they were actually intended or ad-libbed, making this iteration of Deadpool one of the most transgressive and fun ever and saving, all by himself, the film's second and third act from a, nevertheless, very pressing sense of monolithic and cumbersome aspirations.
Finally, the return of a variety of characters from the first movie (Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead being the highlights), as well as an impressive lot of characters from both the X-Men and Deadpool comic books appearing in some capacity, does the impression of having a more articulated and organic cinematic universe a good favour, less isolated than the first Deadpool movie. Sadly, as we already know (thanks to most of those character's copyrights divided between Marvel and Fox and the single thing that keeps being Deadpool's kryptonite... its budget), most of said appearances end up being only glorified cameos to rob the audience of one or two laughs.
Even so… The post-credit scenes of the movie are some of the most awesome scenes I've ever watched in the movies in years. And don't get me started about that opening, or that particular HALO jump…
Deadpool Solid 2: Mutant Eater...
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Is Deadpool 2 a worthy sequel of the first one, an awesome, fun and self-aware film and a nice addition to what is shaping as a fun, wild romp of an attempt at doing a Deadpool cinematic universe?
I'd love to say "yes" to all of those questions, but I just can't do that without reservations. Even though Ryan Reynolds, Zazie Beetz and Josh Brolin do awesome stuff with their roles, Deadpool 2 is a showcase for how wanting to have a lot of stuff in a single movie ends up robbing it of the fluidity and irreverence its prequel had, by doing a overtly ambitious plot that tries to be a jack-of-all-trades but doesn't master a single aspect of its narrative. To make things worst, it's painfully obvious that Fox still doesn't fully believe the success of Deadpool and that, even though it had an amazing reception with critics and made a lot of money, there's so much work to be done between the budget limitations, the possible integration of its universe with the MCU and trying to correct and nurture the course of Reynolds and company's well-intentioned plans that, you know, making the Deadpool we always have wanted for a third or even fourth time might need a little time…
… at least, until Fox and Disney actually decide what the hell they'll do with their impending merger.
Thank you for reading my opinion of Deadpool 2!
*As you might already know, this article is coming a little late because 20th Century Fox, the distributors of Deadpool 2 in Venezuela, decided to close operations in said country and we never actually got to watch it on the theaters. As it made its way into home media, I was able to watch it just days ago. Yeah, I know... communism sucks 😪
As usual, my fellow Steemian: if you liked this post, write about it in the comments section and let me know; if you really liked it, resteem it!
And if you truly loved it… What do you think about talking all those juicy comic book references Deadpool 2 made in a later article? I'll be very interested to know your opinion about it! 🤗