Review for Deadpool

Introduction

I’m trying to think of another situation, where an actor has portrayed the same role in two films, but said films are inconsistent with each other to the point of not even being in the same continuity. It’s almost as if acknowledging that the first time was a screw-up, and then asking for a second chance to get it right. That never happens. Normally the solution is to re-cast. But sure enough, Ryan Reynolds first played the Deadpool character in X-Men Origins Wolverine, which is a big enough hurdle in the first place, without even getting as far as the characterisation. That wasn’t the Adamantium Clawed one’s finest hour in celluloid, and is better left forgotten. The same is true for that iteration of Deadpool.


Ryan Reynolds also serves as producer on this new version of Deadpool, and it quickly becomes clear that it’s a passion project for him. The setting moves from the seventies to the modern day, the character gets a whole new origin story, and this might just be the first R-Rated superhero movie since the original Blade. Actually, this Deadpool is unlike any superhero movie I have seen before, and that is a good thing.


Wade Wilson is a tool. He’s a mercenary who works small jobs ‘helping’ people, though it’s really just an excuse to let out his aggression and his twisted personality. But even for Wade Wilson, life came to verge on the perfect, when he met, had plenty of sex with, and eventually fell in love with prostitute Vanessa. It would have stayed perfect were it not for terminal cancer. When all else fails, call the creepy ‘recruiter’ who offers a cure and special abilities. That leads to a grimy, grungy laboratory, where he’s restrained, injected with a serum, and subjected to extreme torture in the hope of awakening a mutant gene. And it succeeds, curing the cancer and giving him super strength, super agility, and super healing. Only it has the side-effect of turning him into some kind of sun-burned testicle. That’s the kind of thing that would put a damper on his sex life. So now Wade Wilson dons the red suit of Deadpool, looking for revenge, and a cure although not necessarily in that order. Only there are some people who think that he can be an honest to goodness actual hero.

The Disc

There’s nothing to whinge about here, just as you would expect with a recent movie presented on Blu-ray. The 2.40:1 widescreen transfer is pixel perfect to my eyes, while the DTS-HD MA 7.1 English track immerses you in the action in just the right way, beefy and explosive when it needs to be, yet keeping the dialogue clear throughout. You also get audio in DD 5.1 Audio Descriptive English, Spanish and French, with subtitles in these languages. Deadpool is a lower budget movie, certainly not a mega-budget summer blockbuster, but that rarely shows on screen, with excellent production values and seamless action and effects sequences. The one issue might be some undercooked CGI; certainly Colossus lacks polish in some scenes (pun intended) while the post climax aftermath needed a couple more render passes. Deadpool’s brilliance is in the dialogue of course, but the music soundtrack could give Guardians of the Galaxy a run for its money, really dipping into the cool end of the record collection.

Extras

You get one disc in a red Blu-ray Amaray wrapped in an o-card. There’s a code for a digital copy within. The disc boots to an animated and foul-mouthed menu screen. This is also one of those discs that hold its place in player memory after being ejected.

You get 10 deleted scenes running to 19:14 with optional director’s commentary, and some of them are pretty good.

Also surprisingly good is the Gag Reel (6:12), which for a change is actually funny.

The big making of featurette is From Comics to Screen... To Screen running to 1.20:00 in total, although split into five mini-featurettes. This is your usual making of with interviews, behind the scenes footage, and clips. And I have yet to watch it in its entirety.


I also have yet to listen to either of the commentaries, the first with actor/producer Ryan Reynolds and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and the second with director Tim Miller and co-creator and comics artist Rob Liefeld.

There is a Gallery with Concept Art, Costumes, Storyboards, Pre-Vis, and Stunt-vis-Shipyard, again which I have yet to peruse.

Deadpool’s Fun Sack offers 23:54 of promotional videos (again very funny), and another stills gallery.

I now realise I need one lifetime to watch these movies, and another lifetime to watch the extras, and yet another lifetime to listen to the commentaries.

Conclusion

This is the best super-anti-hero movie ever! That may be hyperbole. I don’t know too many super-anti-heroes, but this is certainly the most fun I’ve had with a comic book adaptation in years, not counting Guardians of the Galaxy. Indeed, both this and Guardians of the Galaxy have bucked a trend in superhero movies for me of diminishing returns, with the DC movies getting ever darker and morose, while the Marvel movies have become wise-crackingly formulaic, with grand arrays of movie stars competing for screen time in super-hero team mash-ups. The more money they put on the screen, the less character and style there is in these things, and it begins to feel like a production line affair.


Not with Deadpool, which is smart, sassy, and all about character. Indeed it does three things which the usual comic book tent-pole movies avoid these days. The first thing is that it is small. Deadpool was a risk, a profane character, not heroic in the conventional sense, and prone to extreme violence. It’s not your usual Marvel fare, which is why the movie got less than the usual budget (They could only afford 2 X-Men). Speaking of which, in terms of budget and risk, Deadpool reminds me of the first X-Men movie from 1999, which too was a massive risk in an industry that had given up on superhero movies following the Superman and Batman movies in the seventies and eighties. I love the first X-Men movie because it is small, it’s all about character, and it keeps the story focused, the cast compact, and doesn’t need to egregiously shell out on the effects shots. Deadpool is exactly the same way. You get a perfect sense of the story and the characters, and everything flows naturally from there. You’re not waiting for the obvious cameo, and ticking boxes off an increasingly long cast list. Ooh, Samuel L. Jackson cameo. Tick!


The second thing is that it is profane, violent, and sexy. It’s an R-Rated comic book movie, and even now you don’t get too many of those. Studios still tend to chicken out at the last minute and decide to fill cinema seats instead of maintain creative integrity, as the recent Suicide Squad movie has apparently done. I can’t recall a similarly unrelenting comic book adaptation since the original Blade (Oh yeah, Ryan Reynolds, epic swear, Blade 3). But the violence is bloody, the language deliciously foul, and quite frankly, the character deserves nothing less. Although I am surprised that it got through the BBFC with a 15 rating.


The third thing, and unique to Deadpool in my experience of comic book movies, is that the fourth wall shatters. This is a movie that invites the audience in, with pop culture and comic book references galore, each one a delight. You’ll be guaranteed to miss most of them on the first watch, demanding that you re-watch Deadpool again and again. It’s also self-referential, walking a narrow line between knowing winks and outright parody, while still keeping the honesty of the characters, the emotional weight of the story intact. You may laugh at the Patrick Stewart, James McAvoy reference, but you are by no means thrown out of the movie, the suspension of disbelief remains intact throughout, and that is this film’s mark of genius. And there is a post credits coda. It is a Marvel movie after all. One that thinks it’s a John Hughes movie...


Deadpool is the best comic book adaptation in ages, actually knocking Guardians of the Galaxy off its perch in my estimation. It’s because it does all the ‘wrong’ things, Deadpool comes as a delightful surprise, a superhero movie unlike any other superhero movie. I do have a couple of qualms about a potential sequel though. Now that the first one has worked, the studio is liable to dump a bucketload of cash over the sequel, and I also suspect that the fourth wall-shattering is a thing that can only work once, before it starts feeling like a gimmick. But it does work perfectly here. Forget Suicide Squad, forget Captain America Civil War, and forget Batman v Superman, there’s only one superhero you need this year!