After an almost two-week wait, I finally got myself to a nearby theater to see "Deadpool" this week. I'd read plenty of great reviews and gotten plenty of positive feedback from friends, and I'm happy to be able to say I was not disappointed. "Deadpool" was chaotic, hilarious, and most of all certainly well deserving of it's hard R rating.
The overwhelming praise for the film and its dominance of the recent box office doesn't just ensure that "Deadpool 2" is very much already in development, but it opens up a whole new set of options for studios in the future.
"Deadpool" is without any doubt an R-rated film. Gory fight scenes, foul language and a wide array of sexual humor fill the movie from start to finish. It was a fresh take on the superhero genre and clearly this approach hit well with audiences. Normally I wouldn't consider a movie as crude as "Deadpool" to be ground-breaking but the fact that it made $135,050,000 opening weekend with an R-rating is astounding. It's continued its success throughout the last two weeks as well and it seems like it could be one of the more profitable R-rated films of the past few years.
The reason I see "Deadpool" as such an industry-shifting release is because most super hero films these days are PG-13. Marvel's cinematic universe has twelve films released at this point, all rated PG-13. While DC did make "Watchmen" R for the blatant fact that it's a mature story, the rest of their recent films have been PG-13 as well. However, since the premiere of "Deadpool" Fox Studios has already been rumored to be giving "Wolverine 3" an R-rating.
In a recent article written by Ben Bussey of Yahoo Movies, he stated that, "An R-rating has long been deemed a commercial kiss of death by the studios - but the recent blockbuster success of ‘Deadpool’ has challenged this conventional wisdom."
The success of "Deadpool" is a possible kick starter of a lot more blockbusters going with the riskier R-rating in the future. For years an R-rating was avoided for most blockbuster films in order to get the highest ticket sales possible, but "Mad Max: Fury Road" did it last year and "Deadpool" is becoming even more of an R-rated powerhouse in 2016.
To me, news of studios considering more R-rated films is incredibly exciting. Not to say that R-rated movies are automatically better but they do give the directors, actors, etc. much more freedom and less restriction then a typical PG-13, PG, or G rated film would. I just wish "Suicide Squad" wasn't so far into production, otherwise I'd love to see an R-rated version of that as well.
We'll just have to wait and see how Hollywood shifts following this R-rated popularity. I'm excited to see what risks are taken in the future.
