The summer blockbuster season continued into June for me with a much-anticipated viewing of Deadpool 2, featuring our favorite foul-mouthed mercenary with the red suit and a black heart. I found myself laughing through most of Deadpool 2, and in spite of my trepidation that it wouldn’t be as strong a movie as the original, I greatly enjoyed it from its Bond-inspired opening sequence to its mid-credits play on time travel. That’s my one-line summary of the experience, but as always, let’s dig a bit deeper.
One of Deadpool 2’s many cinematic shout-outs, in this instance to Flashdance, and featured in the fantastic opening credits sequence.
Deadpool 2 in essence scratches the same itch as the original Deadpool – it’s an itch that needs to be scratched, and better yet it’s a comparatively hard-to-reach itch that Ryan Reynolds and fellow writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese seem to scratch effortlessly most of the time. It’s a vehicle for the same often-raunchy, often-parody-based humor as the first film, doubling down on the strengths of the now-franchise, but with a higher budget this time around – a basically doubled budget that, I might add, certainly isn’t wasted in its CGI-driven action sequences. Other additions from Deadpool to Deadpool 2 outside of the obvious increase in production value is the injection of a surprising amount of dramatic gravitas into the film, which actually centers around Deadpool himself more than anyone else. More generally speaking, Deadpool 2 makes a decent amount of story decisions that you won’t expect, and seems to take more risks than Deadpool did, carrying us to places definitively unexpected throughout the course of its plot. While Deadpool seemed to have no lack of confidence in its ideas and in its appeals to both the raunchy action-comedy market and the behemoth (and overpopulated) superhero market, Deadpool 2 appears to have even more of that shameless bravado, if anything.
Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool – the superhero with the kind of character America probably deserves these days.
But it chiefly gives its audience exactly what they showed up for, which is a non-stop frenetic supply of jokes that often aren’t even long enough to be called one-liners – they’re half-liners at best, beautifully executing all of the tongue-in-cheek pop culture, political, and comic book in-jokes that you’d expect. It’s all fueled by Ryan Reynolds’ magnificent performance, which at this point has to be considered career-defining – he was indubitably borne for this role, and his devotion to the character coupled with his ability to deftly jump between fourth-wall breaks, pokes at Jared Kushner, and jabs at the much maligned DC universe (to name a few) within single scenes weaves together a vulgar tapestry onscreen that’s undeniably fun to watch. Another must-mention about his portrayal of the Merc with a Mouth is that it doesn’t seem remotely afraid to poke fun at Ryan Reynolds himself, and some of the biggest laughs in Deadpool 2 come at the actor’s expense. It might be too much to say that he carries the film and/or the franchise – the impressive likes of the supporting cast work to ensure that that’s not the case – but he’s obviously the most critical piece of the puzzle, even with his role in the uphill production battle of the first film notwithstanding.
This scene features some of Deadpool 2’s more potent physical comedy (not shown).
The aforementioned supporting cast features both familiar and unfamiliar elements – T.J. Miller, Morena Baccarin, Brianna Hildebrand, Karan Soni, Leslie Uggams, and Stefan Kapicic return as Weasel, Vanessa, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Dopinder, Blind Al, and Colossus, respectively, and as for new faces, there are the ones you’ve heard about – namely Josh Brolin as Cable, Terry Crews as Bedlam, and maybe Zazie Beetz as ultra-cool character Domino – and many others you haven’t, mostly in a cameo sense. I won’t spoil any of those here, but keep your eyes open when you see Deadpool 2 – some of these cameos are similar to a lot of the jokes in that they’re brief to the point that if you blink you may miss them. All in all, the additions to the already superb cast are fantastic, with the ultimate creation of the X-Force (not a very original name, but also more gender-inclusive, as Deadpool 2 itself points out) heralding the creation of the Deadpool franchise’s own less comedically restricted band of heroes, or perhaps antiheroes. It’ll be exciting to see where these characters go, if only because their progression is sure to be different than that of the well-treaded MCU.
Peter – proof that there’s a hero within all of us, albeit maybe not a superhero.
While each joke is great, and while there are very few that don’t hit, the thing to write home about with regards to Deadpool 2‘s humor is without a doubt the sheer quantity of jokes. It’s a film that pulls off a feat that’s rare even for pure comedies in that in all of the marketing and promotional materials (which are brilliant in their own right, by the way), maybe about a tenth of the laughs are actually shown, and the result is a film that’s very refreshing in terms of how many revelations it saves for the theater experience. On top of that, the humor of the movie is often augmented by a truly incredible soundtrack ranging from shockingly poignant (Celine Dion’s Ashes, which she recorded to pair with the Bond sequence, and an unplugged version of Aha’s Take on Me, to name a couple) to songs that drive running jokes (Skrillex’s Bangarang, used as a pastiche to make fun of dubstep) to a number of classics shouted out in one-liners or in reference to other films (Careless Whisper, Tomorrow, All out of Love) to composer Tyler Bates’ obscene choral arrangement. Seriously, if you want to get a better sense of the soundtrack’s mammoth scope, check out this bananas Spotify playlist.
Deadpool about to block a freaking bullet with a sword.
Deadpool 2 is the uncommon sequel that may in fact improve on its predecessor, using a solid foundation of R-rated comic book violence and surprisingly well-choreographed fight scenes as a base layer upon which to sprinkle hundreds of great and smartly written bits of topical humor. It needs to be seen by anyone who enjoyed the first film, and is worthy of all the success it’s sure to enjoy.
Tuesdays with Cory 