Deadpool, as
every trailer, poster and ad has screamed at you for the past few months, is
not your typical superhero movie.
The adaptation
of the fan-favourite comic series – notorious for its humour, goriness and meta
fourth-wall breaking – promises to be the antidote to everything wrong with
superhero films.
In one fell
swoop, the Tim Miller effort aims to take the billion-dollar superhero factory
that has built itself around bland, sexless PG blockbusters (with bland,
photogenic heroes) and stab it, shoot it a few times, and sit on its face.
In the place of
yet another generic hero (we’re looking at you, Ant Man) stands Wade Wilson/Deadpool
(Ryan Reynolds) – a violent mercenary-turned-antihero who takes nothing
too seriously, always has a comeback, and dedicates himself to subverting
pretty much everything.
Credit has to
go to Ryan Reynolds for fully embodying the ‘Merc with the Mouth on the the big
screen for two hours of off-the-walls fun – and doing so in a way that never
truly alienates him from the audience, leaning just the right side of inane and
childish.
His performance
is truly commendable, managing to bring so much to the role
despite spending most of the film in a full-face mask. We can’t imagine
any other actor pulling it off so anywhere near as well.
Reynolds also
brings a sexuality to the role – and it’s hard to overstate how much this helps
Deadpool feel fresh, in what is ultimately yet another bloody superhero movie.
It’s an
unspoken rule that LGBT characters are taboo in major superhero blockbusters;
when you’re trying to angle your designed-by-committee behemoth at a ‘global’
market, such battles fall by the wayside.
We’re 100%
certain that Miller isn’t the first director to try and put an LGBT character
in a comic book film – but he deserves all the credit for finally breaking down
the barrier.
Two years after
a talking tree and an overgrown raccoon got their own team-up, we can’t help
but feel Deadpool‘s pansexual (Miller
is very insistent about the phraseology) lead hero has dropped in not
a moment too soon.
From a
corporate point of view, this may be more of a happenstance than a plan – Deadpoolwas
already cursed to be shut
out from much of the Chinese and Asian market through its gratuitous,
censor-aggrieving violence and crudeness, and so Mr Pool’s pansexuality was
unlikely to tip any scales or balance sheets.
Mercifully,
this means there’s no attempt to slide the issue under the censors: Deadpool
banters and flirts with women and men in the same heartbeat, from hinting at
liaisons with a popular X-Man to offering blowjobs (the drink apparently) to
strangers.
However, it’s
such a shame that for all the film’s personality and flair, it has to be built
around the world’s most generic origin story.
Spoiler alert:
Hero gets girlfriend, hero gets cancer, hero gets powers, bad man kidnaps
hero’s girlfriend, hero seeks revenge.
That’s pretty
much the entire plot arc of the film, and it fits in a tweet.
For all of Deadpool‘s
commendable narrative-jumping, fourth-wall breaking, risk-taking quirks,
the lack of ambition in the by-the-numbers plot arc really leaves us
cold.
And while Wade
Wilson’s relationship with sex worker-turned-girlfriend Vanessa (What is it
about Firefly’s Morena Baccarin that makes every casting director think
‘prostitute’?) is genuinely heartwarming, it’s a bit sad that a film built
on so much subversion resorts to typical heteronormative damsel-in-distress
tropes for its second act.
The villains,
Ed Skrein’s Ajax and Gina Carano’s Angel Dust, are also a bit bare-bones,
failing to conjure any sense of menace or larger threat.
While a
conscious choice was clearly made to pare back the threat and give the ‘Merc
with a Mouth more room to shine, we can’t help but wish there was someone more
colourful for him to play off against than Ajax and an endless army of generic
mooks.
A brief
skirmish with X-Men ally Colossus (Deadpool informs us the budget wouldn’t stretch
to an A-list X-Men cameo) provides a hint of what could have been – and the
pair provide a few of the film’s stand-out moments.
But for its
flaws, Deadpool remains a truly thrilling, fantastically
enjoyable off-the-walls film – and one that tears up so much of the superhero
rulebook and urinates on it.
It might not
seem too important in a world of Danish Girls and Stonewalls, but a LOT of
people watch superhero movies – enough to make a billion-dollar industry – and
if a pansexual badass like Deadpool can be out and proud, we feel like that’s
some form of progress.
PINK STAR
RATING: 4/5 ****
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