Deadpool 2 – Review

Hello interweb, Nate here.  So I saw this movie a few weeks ago but just haven’t really found the time to review it until now.  So here’s probably the last review of this movie you’ll see on the internet for a while hehe.  Anyways, non spoiler thoughts?  I think I like this movie better then the first one, but my reasoning is slightly biased as I’ll explain a bit more in this review.  If you liked the first film, you’ll love this one.  It’s just as funny, has more characters, and has a more interesting story to it.  So now that that’s done, leggo!  SPOILER WARNING as per usual.

 

Movie Info

Movie Title: Deadpool 2

Produced by: Marvel Comics

Distributed by: 20th Century Fox

Writer: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds

Director: David Leitch

Producer: Simon Kinberg, Ryan Reynolds, and Lauren Shuler Donner

Running Time: 1 hr 59 min (At this point, would anyone be upset if I just wrote “2 hr”?)

 

Review

So, I had high expectations for this movie going into things.  I loved the first film for bringing my favorite comic book character to the big screen and doing him well, but the story of the first film was very much a straight forwards origin story with nothing too interesting about it.  So with the sequel I wanted it to have a more interesting story, make Wade a more complex character, and keep up the same level of comedy from the first film.  Did it succeed?  In my humble opinion?  F*** yes!

So, what’s the story?  Wade Wilson has been doing his Deadpool mercenary shtick since the end of the first movie and has been pretty good at it.  Until one of his missions lead the love of his life, Vanessa, to get shot and killed.  Now he doesn’t know what to do with his life so the X-Men Colossus takes Wade under his wing in hopes that he could one day become an X-Men! (For now, he’s just a trainee).  But after an incident involving a mutant named Russel goes haywire, Russel and Wade is thrown into a mutant prison.  This doesn’t stop the man out of time, Cable, to come back in time to the present in order to try and kill Russel who will apparently cause a post-apocalyptic future to come.  Will Deadpool save Russel from being killed by the mutant from the future?  Will Wade ever get to see Vanessa in the after life?  And will Deadpool ever get to stick his d*** in Chrome Dome’s big metal buns o’ steel?

The story itself is really well written if not a tad disjointed.  It’s not so glaring that it distracts a lot, but we have quite a few subplots going on at multiple points that is only somewhat loosely tied together.  We have Vanessa dying and Wade being depressed over his loss, we have the formation of X-Force (or at least maybe a parody of X-Force?), and we have the main plot of Cable trying to kill Russel with Deadpool trying to prevent him from doing so.  The X-Force bit was meant as a joke and it did flow into the main plot quite smoothly, but Vanessa’s death just kind of loosly tied into the main plot by somehow involving Russel allowing Wade to meet her in the afterlife?  It was somewhat confusing, not gonna lie.

As an aside, does it bother anyone else this annoying trope in movies where dead characters suddenly become 1000x wiser just because they’re dead?  I mean, Vanessa dies and then she suddenly goes into “wise dead person” mode and tells Wade that his heart’s not in the right place and yada yada yada.  Like, what?  I don’t get how or why she would be like that.  I’d think her more likely reaction would be excitement that Wade’s there with her.  In fact, Wade can’t really permanently die due to his healing factor.  So, why can’t they talk to each other normally when Wade dies before Wade’s yanked back to life?  No need for Vanessa to go all “I’m suddenly wiser because I’m dead!”  I don’t know, just doesn’t make much sense to me.  Plus, thanks to the end credit scene this whole subplot was basically meaningless.  The fact that Wade basically became depressed after her death was nice since it somewhat touches upon his depression from the comics, but in the comics it worked really well and even has a big emotional punch to it when reading Gerry Duggan’s run on the character.  Here, it just doesn’t have a big impact.

Ok ok, I’m focusing way too much on the negatives here.  I said I liked this movie better then the first one, right?  So, what’s good about it!

Well, the story, despite being slightly disjointed, is much more interesting than the first film!  The interesting thing I even noticed is there really wasn’t much of a villain in this movie.  The most we get are the pedophiles in the Essex School (oh trust me, I’ll be talking about that in a bit) but there’s no really big villain.  Cable was antagonistic near the beginning, but he really was only trying to save the future and he even changes his tune when Wade saved Russel and thus the future.  And Juggernaut was mostly just here to have a big fight with Colossus.

Furthermore, and this is somewhat where my bias for this film might show the most obvious, but this movie was gay as f*** and I loved it!  The Essex School was a clear metaphor for gay conversion therapy since they were trying to “convert” mutants (mutants already turning into a metaphor for gay rights in modern times).  Wade’s pansexuality was made painfully obvious in this film and even highlighted by Vanessa pointing out Wade’s obvious attraction to Colossus.  Negasonic and Yukio was adorable (despite having little to do honestly).  All of this just made me love this film even more since I’m bisexual and Deadpool is my favorite comic book character.  So seeing these queer elements in a Deadpool movie just made me love it that much more.  I remember doing a post a while ago (which you can read here) discussing a possibility of a pansexual Deadpool and whether or not he should get a boyfriend.  Now, Wade didn’t get a boyfriend in this movie, but I honestly didn’t mind.  What they did was enough and it still made me smile.

Now let’s get into the characters, starting with Wade Wilson.  Now, I think this movie did a lot to make Wade a more interesting character then the last movie and they pulled a few things from the comics to do this.  They touched a little bit on his depression after Vanessa died (although, here I think it was more for the comedy then character complexity).  They also showed Wade’s grey morality and his soft spot for kids.  After he noticed Russel being abused (something nobody else noticed, by the way) he shot at those abusing Russel and even announced that he did the right thing.  It just makes me love the film even more when they present Deadpool as more then just a comedic character made for laughs.  Cause Deadpool is honestly a very interesting and complex character that a lot of people just boil down to the comedy.  In the comics alone he suffers from depression, he has a grey moral code for a reason, he’s actually a rape survivor believe it or not (yes, that happened), and he has a soft spot for children and even had a biracial daughter!  That’s right, Deadpool’s a dad!  So to boil this character down to just a bunch of meta humor and jokes just bugs the crap out of me because he’s so much more then that and I love this film for trying to present that side of him.

Cable was a character that I was worried about and was pretty satisfied with his portrayal.  The issue with Cable as a character is that he’s a very confusing character that would be difficult for a movie.  He’s the future child of Scott Summers (Cyclops) and that Jean Grey clone (whose name escapes me at the moment) and just has a confusing history of time travel and crap like that.  Plus he’s a very 90’s character with extremely over the top design and attitude.  He’s mellowed out in recent years though.  I’d say that I still prefer the version of his character in the Cable & Deadpool comics (which I highly recommend by the way) but his role in this was sufficient enough.  I’ve even noticed his portrayal in this film spawned quite a lot of Cablepool shippers on the internet.  Cablepool btw being older then Spideypool, but just hasn’t gained the same recognition until recent years.  The only major issue I had with this version is that he’s criminally under powered.  I mean, in the comics there was an entire story arc surrounding Cable’s god-teir psychic powers and how he wanted to force the world to be a better place.  Here…what is his mutant power?  Does he even have one?  Or is it just “Futuristic high-tech arm with gun”?

Yukio and NTW were adorably gay, but I almost feel like they didn’t do anything.  I mean, they make a few cameos, then they help take down Juggernaut (after Colossus did most of the damage) but that’s pretty much it.  I feel almost as if if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re a lesbian couple, they probably would’ve been scrapped from the final draft.  The only real reason they’re here is because “Look!  Lesbians!  We’re progressive!!!!” Which, okay they’re not bad or anything, and they are adorable, but couldn’t you have written them in better?  Just a thought…

Ok, confession time…I’m like lowkey crushin on Domino right now.  The actress is gorgeous and her character was so much fun!  She was OP as f*** but that was kind of the fun with her.  Her luck powers basically made everything go her way in super convenient ways.  I just hope she’s in Deadpool 3 or X-Force cause I want to see more of her.  Plus, I liked what they did with her design.  In the comics, Domino is a white woman (like, literally white…not Caucasian, white…in fact, I don’t even know what she is racially in the comics…) with a black spot around her eye (hence “Domino”).  Here, she’s a black woman with a vitiligo spot around her eye.  Plus, her costume is awesome!  I also kinda thought it was cool that they had the balls to show her cleavage in this since in today’s super-feminist political era I would think that would be like frowned upon or something since she’d be “objectified” by the “male gaze” or some bulls*** like that.

Finally, let’s discuss X-Force real quick.  X-Force is honestly a really cool team and I’d recommend anyone to check out Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force run.  In terms of movies, I was surprised by the trailers when they planned to do X-Force in this and then was somewhat disappointing by it just being a joke.  It was hilarious, don’t get me wrong, but I hope they actually do a really good X-Force movie in the future!

With all that said and done, I give this film an 8.5/10.  It’s hilarious, it shows a more complex Deadpool, great story, and gay AF!  I recommend everybody above the age of like 16 to check this film out.  If you liked the first one, you’ll love this one!

 

My Rating System

10 – Perfect: nothing is wrong about this movie

9 – Almost perfect: has one or two minor nitpicks that holds it from perfection

8 – Amazing: not a perfect film but still absolutely loved it

7 – Good: has a few problems but overall a great film

6 – Ok: has several major problems but I still like it

5 – Mediocre: neither good nor bad just forgettable

4 – Bad: a few major problems that ruins the movie

3 – Awful: lots of problems that ruins the movie

2 – Terrible: there may be one or two good things about the film but everything else is garbage

1 – The worst: literally nothing went right