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 (052618)
As the superhero movie spreads like a forest fire to every corner of
mainstream film-making, it has branched out in unexpected ways. In the last two
years or so we've had superhero slapstick (Thor:
Ragnarok), superhero metaphysics (Doctor
Strange), superhero feminism (Wonder
Woman) and superhero self-satire (Deadpool).
Though that last film was praised to the skies by some critics for its daring
nihilism, I found it a tiresome, nasty, misogynistic production, in which the
anti-hero's whining mockery was interspersed with spectacularly unpleasant
outbursts of violence. It had no charm and showcased Ryan Reynolds at his most
irritatingly smug.
My expectations of the sequel, then, were not sky high. But while no
masterpiece, Deadpool 2 is funnier than the original, and not nearly so
objectionable. In the 2016 film, we were introduced to Wade Wilson (Reynolds), a
well-intentioned mercenary who's working Manhattan's mean streets when he's
diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He's reeling from this news when a
mysterious stranger offers to inject him with a special serum that will cure his
disease and unleash hidden mutant superpowers. It did that alright, but also
severely disfigured him, after which he became a vengeful and unstable masked
avenger.
Wade's superhero alter ego is Deadpool and his powers include great strength,
agility and an ability to recover from even the most terrible wound. But he
seems unsure about superhero etiquette, and tends to leave a trail of mangled
corpses in his wake. He's a kind of punk X-Man who swears like a longshoreman,
drinks to excess and uses duct tape to stop the arse of his homemade superhero
suit from falling out.
The one civilizing influence in Wade's life is Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), a
former prostitute to whom he's hopelessly devoted. At the start of Deadpool 2,
they're planning to start a family together when a criminal gang stages a brutal
raid on his apartment. Wade and Vanessa are separated and without her calming
influence he descends into a tailspin of nihilistic violence and ends up in
prison. There he befriends a teenage mutant called Russell, who can shoot fire
from his fists but seems lost and vulnerable. Meanwhile, a cybernetic mutant
soldier called Cable (Josh Brolin) has travelled back in time and seems
hell-bent on killing Russell. But what Wade wants to know is why?
Based on a 1990s Marvel comic book character,
Deadpool and Deadpool 2 are unruly offshoots of the X-Men
franchise and intended as salty satires on the pompous wholesomeness of that
film series and the superhero genre in general. The first film had shock value:
its violence was nihilistic, the F-word was dispensed with gay abandon and Wade
seemed to mock the very idea that anyone could claim to be a hero at all.
Its looseness and low humor made Deadpool a surprise hit: made for under $60m,
it grossed almost $800m worldwide, revived Reynold's moribund movie career and,
in the US, became the second most profitable R-rated film ever, behind Mel
Gibson's Passion Of The Christ. There's a reference to that in Deadpool 2, which
is full of such knowing in-jokes. When Deadpool is asked for an autograph, he
signs it Ryan Reynolds. He breaks the fourth wall constantly and comments
regularly on the superhero genre. When he first meets Josh Brolin's character
Cable, he says "you're dark - are you from the DC Universe?". All of this is
wonderful news for diehard superhero buffs, who tittered dutifully from murky
corners at the screening I attended. Deadpool 2 is very pleased with itself, and
not nearly so subversive as it imagines: for all its swearing and preening
cynicism, it's still a superhero film and that's about as blandly mainstream as
you can get.
But the writing's funnier this time and Reynold's exhaustingly energetic
performance holds the show together. There is a scene involving Wilson gathering
his team, X-Force, and their first mission that had me in sustained laughter for
a solid 3 minutes. The result is a broader, more expansive film then the first
in every way: it has more kinds of jokes than the first film (in which
everything was either mocking formulaic comic book movies, or hoping the “F”
word was intrinsically funny), more and better action, substantially more of an
attempt to have some kind of strong emotional content. What made the difference?
Could just be as simple a thing as the change in director. The most significant
change to the creative team is that Tim Miller (who had never directed a film
prior to
Deadpool and still hasn't made a second)
has been replaced by David Leitch, co-director of the 2014 John Wick, who made
his solo debut with 2017's under-rated Atomic Blonde. This has one obvious,
major effect on the film, which is that its action scenes are vastly superior
not just to those in
Deadpool, but to almost every other superhero movie of the last
several years. There's a very good car chase in the middle of the film that
moves between different stages of action with excellent timing, and a climactic
slug-fest between two CGI blobs that is one of the very best CGI blob fights
I've seen, actually suggesting a clash of two heavy, large fighters with
substantial weight and mass. It's, like, a proper action movie, something a
superhero film hasn't been since I don't even want to think of when.
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