Our resident film reviewer is writer Harry Casey-Woodward who will be sharing his opinions on things he has watched…
Deadpool, dir Tim Miller, 3/5
As I’m not a fan of superhero movies, I feel we are saturated with them at the moment. Not only is every conceivable Marvel and DC character being dredged up for adaptation but we are going through an era of multi-superhero films. Franchises like The Avengers are teaming superheroes up and pitting them against each other, criss-crossing story lines in a vast blockbuster market consuming web.
We’ve got Captain America: Civil War, Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman all coming out this year, and even superhero sequels for next year are being hyped up. It’s like Marvel and DC are in a furious race to get as many characters and storylines up on screen as possible and I’m getting sick of it. I feel like more than ever we need an antihero.
Cue Deadpool. I haven’t read the original comics but I have seen one panel where he shoots dead someone just for admitting they like the Star Wars prequels. After seeing his movie, to me this is a good summary of both the character and the film. There’s humour, violence and more pop culture references than you can shake a stick at. And more violence.
In short, Deadpool could be the first adult Marvel film. I don’t mean that in an erotic sense (although there are fair dollops of nudity) but it’s the only movie about a Marvel character I can think of that doesn’t hold back with the jokes, the swearing or the explicit violence. Often it combines all of these, especially in scenes where Deadpool gleefully dispatches henchmen in a variety of comically gruesome ways.
So yes the film is crude and savage but it’s also smart. It’s refreshing to watch a superhero cracking self-aware jokes not just at the idea of being a superhero but at other superhero movies. Many of these jokes are aimed at Hugh Jackman, which I relished after having to watch him in so many bad X-Men sequels. There were even stabs at Ryan Reynolds, the actor playing Deadpool, so try and get your head around a character making fun of the actor playing him. As for Reynolds’ performance, I think it’s the best I’ve seen out of him. He’s clearly in his element playing a wisecracking anti hero and having immense fun with it.
I expected the jokes and the violence. What I didn’t expect were the moments of seriousness underneath. The plot boils down to an ex-special forces man named Wade meeting the woman of his dreams (Morena Baccarin), getting cancer and taking up the offer from a shifty man in a suit of a cure that also gives him the ability to heal from everything else. Unfortunately it also leaves him with all over body scarring, destroying his fine looks. So he straps on some weapons and a costume, becomes Deadpool and rampages after the British sociopathic scientist named Ajax (Ed Skrein) who performed the process and ruined his life. Not only does he want revenge but he also wants the damage reversed so he can have the confidence to face his girlfriend again. As he tells us in the film, this is both a romance and a horror story. You feel sorry for Deadpool as well as laugh along with him. The scenes where he’s struggling with cancer and his relationship are quite touching, even with jokes.
Overall, what we get is a film that joyfully slaps all the clichés of its genre in the face while still taking its story and characters seriously. It’s kind of relaxing to watch a superhero movie that shrugs off the overbearing moral code that oppresses other such films and instead gives us a guy who likes killing people and cracking jokes, which you can kind of understand. Judging by the film’s box office success, this is what people have wanted. It’s fun, it’s different, it’s outrageous and it comes with a pumpin’ soundtrack. Plus we finally get a comic book character who sees the hilarity in wearing a skin-tight latex costume.