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#63 - Deadpool
Tim Miller, 2016
When a terminally ill mercenary is horribly mutated by an experimental super-soldier program, he swears revenge against the people responsible.
With most films that come out, I usually have a pretty good idea what to expect from them. I see a trailer, read an article or an interview, take note of which creators are involved on both sides of the camera, and am usually able to come to a pretty simple conclusion as to whether or not it is something that I am liable to appreciate. That being said, it was hard to get a read on Deadpool when it was finally confirmed to be in production and the trailers started trickling out. I mainly knew the red-suited anti-hero by his reputation for not only being an extremely efficient soldier of fortune but also for his crazier qualities that included constantly cracking jokes, extremely eccentric behaviour, and being very aware of his status as a comic-book character. Each new piece of promotional material promised that his characteristically irreverent nature would be kept intact for his proper big-screen debut (the creators naturally aren't counting the abortive attempt at debuting the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and neither should you). The trailer jokes didn't do much for me, but I figured that the rest of the film could make up for that. Early reviews tended to be extremely positive - sure, there were some dissenting opinions, but why wouldn't there be? Even so, there was enough doubt that I actually had no idea whether or not I would actually enjoy Deadpool, and that doubt only served to increase my excitement. What would the film actually be like?
Let's start at the beginning. Deadpool begins in medias res with an opening credits sequence that seems designed to evoke the sensation of scanning a two-page comic-book panel for humourous details, immediately setting the tone for the film by swapping out cast and crew names with tongue-in-cheek epithets like "overpaid tool" or "God's perfect idiot". After introducing us to the eponymous anti-hero (Ryan Reynolds) as he prepares to take sweet revenge on arch-enemy "Ajax" (Ed Skrein) during an especially bloody melee on the freeway, the film jumps back and forth in time to explain Deadpool's origins and the events that led him to this incredibly chaotic moment. It transpires that Deadpool was originally a cocky mercenary named Wade, who had managed to find love with equally sharp-witted sex worker Vanessa (Morena Baccarin); however, the couple end up having their happiness crushed by the revelation that Wade has terminal cancer. When a shadowy businessman offers him a shot at a miracle cure, a desperate Wade signs up only to be thrown into a torturous program designed to forcefully create mutants like those found in X-Men. By that point it's pretty obvious what happens to Wade next.
I understand that, with a film like Deadpool, the actual story is going to be of very little concern. It's an origin story, and the majority of people who are going to turn out for Deadpool are likely to know a superhero origin story's narrative beats back-to-front. People are turning out to see Deadpool joke and fight his way through a hundred minutes of assorted shenanigans and if that has to be centred around an extremely stock-standard narrative in order to happen, then so be it. However, considering how Deadpool's most infamous attribute is a left-field sense of humour that pokes fun at the medium in which he is currently appearing, the fact that he lets so many of these extremely samey beats and developments slide without comment is especially distracting. Even if the approach would more than likely feed into the film's already-rather-toothless attempts at parody and satire, one can't help but wonder if it'd really be that much worse than the film's awfully dry attitude towards narrative development. If there is one thing to be said in favour of the narrative, it's that the decision to frame much of the exposition through segmented flashbacks shakes things up a little bit (complete with match-cuts between past and present). However, it's going to take more than transitional trickery to help me disregard some of the story's more tiresome elements, even if the tighter focus on one man's vengeance helps it to avoid quite a few of the usual superhero clichés.
Since Deadpool is working around a decidedly pedestrian narrative, it needs to be able to compensate in virtually every other regard. As a result, a lot of the weight rests of the performers who must make the characters great. Though Reynolds has definitely been putting in the hard yards over the years to prove that he has what it takes to play the so-called "Merc with a Mouth", his work as a fast-talking piece of hired muscle whose rapid-fire humour deflects his inner anguish and self-loathing only goes so far without solid writing to back him up (and even his improvised gags don't land well). Unfortunately, the comical oversimplifying of characters that is carried out during the opening credits only foreshadows how the rest of the cast gets very little in the way of observable depth. Baccarin may match Reynolds when it comes to foul-mouthed quips, but she is under-served not just by the scripted dialogue but also by her status as a flat love interest. Conversely, Skrein is credited as nothing more than "a British villain" and does nothing to distinguish himself favourably in this regard, nor does Gina Carano as his super-strong and largely-silent offsider. At least the comic relief (which you'd think would be a redundant term in a film that already plays up its comedy so much, but whatever) is serviceable; T.J. Miller does okay as Weasel, a deadpan bartender who frequently swaps insults with Deadpool, as do the two lower-tier X-Men - CGI metal-man Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic) and sullen agent of destruction Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) - who are tasked with keeping tabs on Deadpool and come and go as the film sees fit.
The flatness of pretty much every character in the film could easily be overlooked if they were being used to prop up some decent comedy on the film's part, but the quality of said comedy is...debatable, to say the least. The most notable way in which Deadpool distinguishes itself from most Marvel-based superhero films is that it carries an R rating thanks in no small part to its extreme violence, crude humour, and frequent combinations of the two. Given how the humour is arguably the biggest draw when it comes to Deadpool, I think I should at least examine in detail why it doesn't exactly work for me. The obvious examples would be the way in which the film indulges a tendency towards the politically incorrect, crossing however many lines it can in order to elicit laughter of any kind from an audience. Even when the film's not invoking some predictably faux-edgy treatments of touchy subjects (with a prominent example being Wade and Vanessa trying to one-up each other while discussing their abusive childhoods), it goes after some fairly easy low-brow jokes (such as the montage where Wade and Vanessa "celebrate the holidays"). Not to say that the broadly comedic side of things is completely devoid of laughs - one of the few chuckles I got out of the film involved Deadpool being shot in one especially painful and unexpected manner - but most of the time it really doesn't feel like the movie is making the most of the freedom offered by an R rating.
In addition to the film's general vibe of bloodthirsty raunchiness, Deadpool's other significant source of laughs (and, by extension, personality) is the main character's perpetual wise-cracking, which continues even under the harshest of circumstances and draws many frustrated comments by other characters. Of course, this rapid-fire approach can just as easily feel like an example of the film valuing quantity over quality to a fault. This is best exemplified by the frequent volleys of friendly insults that occur between Deadpool and Weasel throughout the film, which feel like deleted scenes from a Judd Apatow movie. Even the sly meta-fictional humour isn't up to scratch, with Deadpool doing little more than offering the occasional aside to audiences or openly referencing the X-Men movies while talking to actual X-Men. This type of humour does have the potential to be endearing; however, when it's combined with an already-underweight sense of plot and characterisation, it might as well not even exist. That's without figuring in the jokes' infrequent dispersal and their inability to truly justify their presence within the film as a whole. It's not enough to simply call attention to your breaking of the fourth wall and expect that to be its own joke; this is made abundantly clear when the film's post-credits sequence provides an empty spoof of one of the most iconic breakers of the fourth wall in cinema history, further underlining how Deadpool's pride in its own sense of cinematic cleverness is thoroughly unwarranted.
Another one of my main problems with Deadpool is that, if the humour doesn't work, then there's really not a whole lot else of worth here. Its status as a superhero movie means that there is also a demand for action, and the R rating allows it to indulge in the sort of gory carnage that most superhero movies avoid like the plague in order to secure a more accessible rating. Director Miller is making his live-action feature debut after working mainly in visual effects; to the film's credit, there's just enough polish to the proceedings so as to make it seem greater than its relatively modest budget might suggest. While said budget naturally forces the creators to get a bit more creative when it comes to crafting individual action scenes (most notably in an instance where Deadpool forgets to bring extra ammunition to a shoot-out and must conserve his bullets), more often than not the action scenes feel very far from exciting even with the presumed inspiration caused by budget constraints. The odd spot of visual creativity (such as the opening credits or the bullet-counting scene) are often the out-liers as the bulk of the action scenes tend to reflect the story's lack of true surprises. The attempts to incorporate blackly comic sensibilities into the proceedings don't exactly work (especially in a montage where Deadpool violently goes after lead after lead in search of Ajax), but the film suffers even more when it tries to get serious; as a result, scenes such as Deadpool's various confrontations with Ajax or the actual finale don't invoke amusement or tension or, well, anything.
Though Deadpool seems like it will herald a revitalisation of a genre that has once again started to stagnate thanks to a focus on cinematic universes and dark thematic approaches, on its own it offers little more than the most superficial variations on one very well-worn theme. The extremely by-the-numbers plot could easily be forgiven if the film was able to provide anything to make it worthwhile, but it proves a disappointingly dull venture when it comes to both action and comedy. The years of dedication that have been put into making this film a reality don't automatically translate into an especially fresh piece of work. It may take some well-deserved jabs at X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but it's not much better at providing its own tedious exploration of a mutant anti-hero's traumatic back-story and subsequent path to vengeance (with a tragic romance thrown in for good measure). Jokes are blandly crude at best and thoroughly fatiguing at worst, the action starts off promisingly but soon offers nothing but quickly diminishing returns, and the film's inherently conflicted approach to providing irreverent fun within a recognisable narrative framework results in a film that's almost completely free of enjoyable substance. There are signs of wasted potential that may yet be realised in the inevitable sequel, but I wouldn't be surprised if that potential not only ended up being squandered but also got given a hollow ribbing by Deadpool himself as he tosses off joke after joke about why sequels are inherently bad.
Tim Miller, 2016
When a terminally ill mercenary is horribly mutated by an experimental super-soldier program, he swears revenge against the people responsible.
With most films that come out, I usually have a pretty good idea what to expect from them. I see a trailer, read an article or an interview, take note of which creators are involved on both sides of the camera, and am usually able to come to a pretty simple conclusion as to whether or not it is something that I am liable to appreciate. That being said, it was hard to get a read on Deadpool when it was finally confirmed to be in production and the trailers started trickling out. I mainly knew the red-suited anti-hero by his reputation for not only being an extremely efficient soldier of fortune but also for his crazier qualities that included constantly cracking jokes, extremely eccentric behaviour, and being very aware of his status as a comic-book character. Each new piece of promotional material promised that his characteristically irreverent nature would be kept intact for his proper big-screen debut (the creators naturally aren't counting the abortive attempt at debuting the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and neither should you). The trailer jokes didn't do much for me, but I figured that the rest of the film could make up for that. Early reviews tended to be extremely positive - sure, there were some dissenting opinions, but why wouldn't there be? Even so, there was enough doubt that I actually had no idea whether or not I would actually enjoy Deadpool, and that doubt only served to increase my excitement. What would the film actually be like?
Let's start at the beginning. Deadpool begins in medias res with an opening credits sequence that seems designed to evoke the sensation of scanning a two-page comic-book panel for humourous details, immediately setting the tone for the film by swapping out cast and crew names with tongue-in-cheek epithets like "overpaid tool" or "God's perfect idiot". After introducing us to the eponymous anti-hero (Ryan Reynolds) as he prepares to take sweet revenge on arch-enemy "Ajax" (Ed Skrein) during an especially bloody melee on the freeway, the film jumps back and forth in time to explain Deadpool's origins and the events that led him to this incredibly chaotic moment. It transpires that Deadpool was originally a cocky mercenary named Wade, who had managed to find love with equally sharp-witted sex worker Vanessa (Morena Baccarin); however, the couple end up having their happiness crushed by the revelation that Wade has terminal cancer. When a shadowy businessman offers him a shot at a miracle cure, a desperate Wade signs up only to be thrown into a torturous program designed to forcefully create mutants like those found in X-Men. By that point it's pretty obvious what happens to Wade next.
I understand that, with a film like Deadpool, the actual story is going to be of very little concern. It's an origin story, and the majority of people who are going to turn out for Deadpool are likely to know a superhero origin story's narrative beats back-to-front. People are turning out to see Deadpool joke and fight his way through a hundred minutes of assorted shenanigans and if that has to be centred around an extremely stock-standard narrative in order to happen, then so be it. However, considering how Deadpool's most infamous attribute is a left-field sense of humour that pokes fun at the medium in which he is currently appearing, the fact that he lets so many of these extremely samey beats and developments slide without comment is especially distracting. Even if the approach would more than likely feed into the film's already-rather-toothless attempts at parody and satire, one can't help but wonder if it'd really be that much worse than the film's awfully dry attitude towards narrative development. If there is one thing to be said in favour of the narrative, it's that the decision to frame much of the exposition through segmented flashbacks shakes things up a little bit (complete with match-cuts between past and present). However, it's going to take more than transitional trickery to help me disregard some of the story's more tiresome elements, even if the tighter focus on one man's vengeance helps it to avoid quite a few of the usual superhero clichés.
Since Deadpool is working around a decidedly pedestrian narrative, it needs to be able to compensate in virtually every other regard. As a result, a lot of the weight rests of the performers who must make the characters great. Though Reynolds has definitely been putting in the hard yards over the years to prove that he has what it takes to play the so-called "Merc with a Mouth", his work as a fast-talking piece of hired muscle whose rapid-fire humour deflects his inner anguish and self-loathing only goes so far without solid writing to back him up (and even his improvised gags don't land well). Unfortunately, the comical oversimplifying of characters that is carried out during the opening credits only foreshadows how the rest of the cast gets very little in the way of observable depth. Baccarin may match Reynolds when it comes to foul-mouthed quips, but she is under-served not just by the scripted dialogue but also by her status as a flat love interest. Conversely, Skrein is credited as nothing more than "a British villain" and does nothing to distinguish himself favourably in this regard, nor does Gina Carano as his super-strong and largely-silent offsider. At least the comic relief (which you'd think would be a redundant term in a film that already plays up its comedy so much, but whatever) is serviceable; T.J. Miller does okay as Weasel, a deadpan bartender who frequently swaps insults with Deadpool, as do the two lower-tier X-Men - CGI metal-man Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic) and sullen agent of destruction Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) - who are tasked with keeping tabs on Deadpool and come and go as the film sees fit.
The flatness of pretty much every character in the film could easily be overlooked if they were being used to prop up some decent comedy on the film's part, but the quality of said comedy is...debatable, to say the least. The most notable way in which Deadpool distinguishes itself from most Marvel-based superhero films is that it carries an R rating thanks in no small part to its extreme violence, crude humour, and frequent combinations of the two. Given how the humour is arguably the biggest draw when it comes to Deadpool, I think I should at least examine in detail why it doesn't exactly work for me. The obvious examples would be the way in which the film indulges a tendency towards the politically incorrect, crossing however many lines it can in order to elicit laughter of any kind from an audience. Even when the film's not invoking some predictably faux-edgy treatments of touchy subjects (with a prominent example being Wade and Vanessa trying to one-up each other while discussing their abusive childhoods), it goes after some fairly easy low-brow jokes (such as the montage where Wade and Vanessa "celebrate the holidays"). Not to say that the broadly comedic side of things is completely devoid of laughs - one of the few chuckles I got out of the film involved Deadpool being shot in one especially painful and unexpected manner - but most of the time it really doesn't feel like the movie is making the most of the freedom offered by an R rating.
In addition to the film's general vibe of bloodthirsty raunchiness, Deadpool's other significant source of laughs (and, by extension, personality) is the main character's perpetual wise-cracking, which continues even under the harshest of circumstances and draws many frustrated comments by other characters. Of course, this rapid-fire approach can just as easily feel like an example of the film valuing quantity over quality to a fault. This is best exemplified by the frequent volleys of friendly insults that occur between Deadpool and Weasel throughout the film, which feel like deleted scenes from a Judd Apatow movie. Even the sly meta-fictional humour isn't up to scratch, with Deadpool doing little more than offering the occasional aside to audiences or openly referencing the X-Men movies while talking to actual X-Men. This type of humour does have the potential to be endearing; however, when it's combined with an already-underweight sense of plot and characterisation, it might as well not even exist. That's without figuring in the jokes' infrequent dispersal and their inability to truly justify their presence within the film as a whole. It's not enough to simply call attention to your breaking of the fourth wall and expect that to be its own joke; this is made abundantly clear when the film's post-credits sequence provides an empty spoof of one of the most iconic breakers of the fourth wall in cinema history, further underlining how Deadpool's pride in its own sense of cinematic cleverness is thoroughly unwarranted.
Another one of my main problems with Deadpool is that, if the humour doesn't work, then there's really not a whole lot else of worth here. Its status as a superhero movie means that there is also a demand for action, and the R rating allows it to indulge in the sort of gory carnage that most superhero movies avoid like the plague in order to secure a more accessible rating. Director Miller is making his live-action feature debut after working mainly in visual effects; to the film's credit, there's just enough polish to the proceedings so as to make it seem greater than its relatively modest budget might suggest. While said budget naturally forces the creators to get a bit more creative when it comes to crafting individual action scenes (most notably in an instance where Deadpool forgets to bring extra ammunition to a shoot-out and must conserve his bullets), more often than not the action scenes feel very far from exciting even with the presumed inspiration caused by budget constraints. The odd spot of visual creativity (such as the opening credits or the bullet-counting scene) are often the out-liers as the bulk of the action scenes tend to reflect the story's lack of true surprises. The attempts to incorporate blackly comic sensibilities into the proceedings don't exactly work (especially in a montage where Deadpool violently goes after lead after lead in search of Ajax), but the film suffers even more when it tries to get serious; as a result, scenes such as Deadpool's various confrontations with Ajax or the actual finale don't invoke amusement or tension or, well, anything.
Though Deadpool seems like it will herald a revitalisation of a genre that has once again started to stagnate thanks to a focus on cinematic universes and dark thematic approaches, on its own it offers little more than the most superficial variations on one very well-worn theme. The extremely by-the-numbers plot could easily be forgiven if the film was able to provide anything to make it worthwhile, but it proves a disappointingly dull venture when it comes to both action and comedy. The years of dedication that have been put into making this film a reality don't automatically translate into an especially fresh piece of work. It may take some well-deserved jabs at X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but it's not much better at providing its own tedious exploration of a mutant anti-hero's traumatic back-story and subsequent path to vengeance (with a tragic romance thrown in for good measure). Jokes are blandly crude at best and thoroughly fatiguing at worst, the action starts off promisingly but soon offers nothing but quickly diminishing returns, and the film's inherently conflicted approach to providing irreverent fun within a recognisable narrative framework results in a film that's almost completely free of enjoyable substance. There are signs of wasted potential that may yet be realised in the inevitable sequel, but I wouldn't be surprised if that potential not only ended up being squandered but also got given a hollow ribbing by Deadpool himself as he tosses off joke after joke about why sequels are inherently bad.