Ever remember watching Batman cut someone’s head off? How about Superman taking a bullet up “main street?” Or Spider-Man counting down the bullets in his clip?
Didn’t think so.
The superhero film has become an almost guaranteed money-maker as of late, and with box office and critical hits such as Marvel’s The Avengers or Christopher Nolan’s haunting Dark Knight trilogy, it is ridiculous to try and mix things up. But with Marvel and Fox’s latest super-powered protagonist to hit the screen in “Deadpool,” they do just that. With an R rating never before given to a Marvel film, the audience gets a glimpse of a new, and perhaps, more exciting kind of hero.
But Deadpool makes it clear (mainly through his numerous fourth wall breaks) that he is no hero. “I may be super, but I’m no hero.” Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is a former special forces operative turned mercenary during the film’s exposition, using his unique set of skills to take care of other people’s heavy lifting. He soon meets Vanessa, an escort played by Morena Baccarin, at a bar and turns a one-night stand into a fiery passionate relationship, proposing to her after a year. But his plans take a turn for the worse when Wade is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Despite his most sincere wishes, Vanessa won’t leave him to die in peace. “I want you to remember me.” He tells her. “Not ‘The Ghost of Christmas’ me.” Then, while spending time at the bar owned by his wise-cracking best friend Weasel (T.J. Miller), Wilson meets Agent Smith, a recruiter from an underground organization, who tells him that he and his employers can cure his cancer. Wade accepts, and is sent to a remote laboratory run by a man called Ajax (Ed Skrein). Ajax, who doesn’t appreciate Wilson or his sense of humor, tortures him not only to trigger a mutation (superpower), but for his own enjoyment. But when he takes Wade’s suffering to an unnecessary height, he inadvertently makes Wade immortal. There’s a setback for Wilson, perhaps the worst thing that could ever happen to him – he’s horrendously ugly. Now scared to face the girl he left, Deadpool searches for the man who ruined him.
Created in the 90s as an amusing antihero, this is not the first time the Deadpool character has been in a movie. Reynolds played the sarcastic crime fighter before in the 2009 flop “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” but with brief screen time, audiences weren’t too exposed to the character’s form of acrobatic anarchy. But in “Deadpool,” he takes center stage, ripping jokes and villains apart left and right. The Deadpool character is also a ton of fun. The jokes range from awkward to ok to hilarious, most are good, including an opening credit sequence for the ages featuring “God’s Perfect Idiot,” “A Moody Teen,” and “A British Villain.” He is a stand-up act in spandex.
Directed by Tim Miller (“An Overpaid Tool”), “Deadpool” is a fun, slick, engaging, and sexy superhero movie. Reynolds is impressively hilarious with a role in a genre taken, as of late, much too seriously. “Deadpool” has striven to be a new kind of superhero movie, a cutting-edge superhero movie, and with Reynolds and his whacky character, Marvel has succeeded.
