In the famous words of the Bloodhound Gang, “like a scrotum, here it is in a nutshell;” Deadpool 2 was awesome. Not surprising is the fact that it topped the box office with a $300 million opening already. At this point, I really don’t want to root for any of Fox’s work on Marvel properties.
Many Marvel fans want the X-Men and Fantastic Four to come to their proper home which is Marvel Studios, to get the proper treatment and have moviegoers entertained as they should be. But Fox has been doing great lately with their two Deadpool films and Logan. If Fox keeps this up, it will take some time before the MCU can properly adopt them. Rebooting so soon wouldn’t be a good idea. Just like in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, if something’s doing great, it doesn’t need a reboot.
The X-Men, however, is fair game because the way I now see it, Deadpool is its own franchise. A standalone, funny, entertaining, and violent superhero film that just happens to have a few X-Men characters in it. Fox may be onto something because the Marvel Cinematic Universe is terribly tough to emulate. The MCU works much like a comic book publisher with Kevin Feige as a strict editor-in-chief. Geoff Johns may be in Kevin’s position, but the suits at Warner Brothers are still calling all the shots. Fox meanwhile may have just given up on the shared X-universe with Deadpool. But what about that end-credits scene? (Won’t spoil it yet) Or how about that scene in the X-mansion? (That too) Those are just Wade being funny, at least I’d like to think so. But back to Deadpool 2. This is a very funny and entertaining film and I kind of like it more than the first one.
The plot is very simple with a simple homage to Terminator. The ties to Cable’s character in the X-Men is very loose, that is until Deadpool 3 does try to give him more character and actually ties him to his X-Men roots. If the plot is simple, why do we need 119 minutes? Because there’s plenty of action and comedy to fill in the gaps. It’s almost like Avengers: Infinity War which is more action than plot (which is not bad). Watching Deadpool 2 is like watching an old 80s action film with lots of action, gunshots, and swordplay. Not to mention the gore often found in B-horror films because Deadpool getting disemboweled is pretty normal. If you thought the hand thing in the first film was funny, things get disturbing in this one.
The comedy? There’s plenty of that around especially involving Deadpool’s X-Force. If you’re thinking of the comic book X-Force, it’s a bit different. You know how Fox works by now. Watch out for Terry Crews, Lewis Tan and Bill Skarsgard and a surprise cameo. Barkeep Weasel and cabbie Dopinder also get plenty of screentime do dish out some laughs.
This film has a lot of heart, which is literally mentioned several times. Now when we say heart, first thing that comes to mind would be Vanessa. She has more of a dramatic role here but works quite well in the film despite the shocking first act (Not spoiling that yet, was the word shocking a giveaway?). This film kind of gives Deadpool a bit more depth and emotion in his quest to find his real place in the world aside from being a do-good bloodthirsty psychotic mercenary. That, and his ability to care for other people. The heart of this movie is best explained by Reynolds.
“The first movie is a love story masquerading as a comic-book movie, and this one is kind of a family film masquerading as a comic-book film again.”
By the way, is Josh Brolin open for the Terminator reboot? Because he really nailed the role with this. This is not a spoiler as even the most casual geek knows who Cable is. He’s a time traveler who goes back in time on whatever mission he feels would save the future. In this film’s case, he goes back in time for a kid as shown in the trailers. Josh Brolin really nailed that Terminator look with the bionic eye, just as he nailed Thanos which gave the MCU its first well-defined villain. Cable’s story, mission, and motivation here was simple and nice but really nowhere near his original comic book origin. Speaking of nailing it, Zazie Beets was awesome as Domino. I’m not really too familiar with the character, but her action scenes were just great. Overall, if you just want to see an entertaining superhero film and don’t really care much about continuity, Deadpool is for you. You might even find it surprisingly profound.