Intermediate Effort | Review - Deadpool 2 ft. Deadpool

I just saw someone online call your movie Minions for adults.

[Holy shit, that’s actually very accurate. Although, I would counter that Minions is Minions for adults. At least if Facebook is a clue.]

Do people still use Facebook for that? I only log in to pimp myself out. Not unlike you actually.

[Lovable hacks think alike you random fucking blogger you!]

Yoooo, back up. Did the guy who shoe-horned some new-age remix of “Tomorrow” into his movie just accuse me of being a hack?

[Is that not the correct term for some dude recapping a movie while using the disembodied voice of a fictional character to fill in the gaps of his scatterbrain critique?]

Oh no, we’re reviewing this in full. It’s the romcom event of the summer, after all: When Cable Met Wade.

[Gasp! I knew it! He did do it for me!]

Yeah, he did. It was pretty obvious.

[I know, right? Mind running that by long, tan and handsome for me?]

No, thank you. He is very scary and will hurt me badly.

[He is also a fictional character, by the way.]

True facts, but we can’t talk about him yet. That’s in spoiler territory.

[Well, good thing I don’t give 2.75 shits about spoilers, isn’t it?]

As crazy as it is to imagine, people out there in the world want to go out and see your sequel in the cinema. Out of respect to them, I keep my spoilers clearly marked off after the initial review.

[Jesus, that sounds like some pretentious meta-boy shit. Not only that, but it appears, e-squire, that your most-read article in this “Who Knows, Who Cares” corner of the interweebs managed…hrm…one hundred forty-two hits. I can infer then, that whoever’s grandma is reading this won’t mind a bit when I tell them about how REDACTED was able to REDACTED by REDACTED. Wait, you did not just Metal Gear me!]

Sure did! That’s admin privileges there, bud. It’s like coming down with Thor’s hammer, except…not really because…Thor doesn’t have a hammer anymore after Cate Blanchett blew that shit up. Fuck me. Can I start over?

[If we were doing this on YouTube, I bet the dialogue would be much snappier.]

Wade Wilson, ladies and gentlemen!

[Took your damn time introducing the star of the show.]

So did you, genius!

[Fine. I will concede that the end of the First Act is maybe a wee bit late to run the title sequence. And don’t call me Wade Wilson, please. The movie is not called ‘Wade Wilson: The Re-Up’ it’s called ‘Deadpool Dos,’ thank you.]

We have to pay royalties for using your made-up name, so you’re definitely Wade Wilson. Are you ready to hear what I thought about this dumb-ass movie?

[Talking to them now?]

Talking to them.

[I feel some very intense micro-aggressions coming from this direction, so I’ll let you guys chat for a while.]

Alright, bet. Deadpool 2 is, in every way a sequel movie. More than that, it’s an action sequel. Really, it could have been Rush Hour 2 that was printed on my ticket stub and I wouldn’t have questioned it. Not to say it’s bad, but it is what it is.

I won’t have much recapping to do here, because there isn’t that much to recap. Wade Wilson has been working around the world as the Red Guy With Swords And Guns for two years now and things are generally pretty good for him. Despite his success, though, Wade decides that he wants to die. Why, you may be asking, does a leading man with an uber-profitable franchise at the top of his game want to bite the big one? Easy. Logan did it first.

[Talk about a hack! Fucking guy. He thinks he can steal my thunder by making an old man say “fuck” and dying in the arms of a cute kid? That’s not playing fair!]

Wade wants his tear-jerking scene, too. The more exploitative the better. To get there, he’ll need to start with helping young Russell Collins (Julian Dennison), a teenaged mutant with the ability to conduct and manipulate flame who is being abused by the headmaster (Eddie Marsan) of the Essex Home for Mutant Rehabilitation. Uh… Something you’re trying tell us here, Wade?

[That every one of us is serviceable just the way we are!]

That’s true, but couldn’t you say that without such a transparent analogy?

[A better question: is this the hill you wanna die on after fifty years of the X-Men failing to convince America that racism is bad?]

Good question.

[Speaking of racists, let’s talk about Cable now!]

Well, he isn’t racist but he is a cybernetic soldier from the future. More accurately, a future that has been fucked up to an unimaginable degree and also one where Russell has grown into a flame-throwing megalomaniac who has killed a lot of people, including Cable’s wife and daughter. Overcome by his anger and grief, Cable (Josh Brolin) has travelled back in time to deal with the problem at its source.

[Yeah, by killing a kid! I’ve done a lot of foul shit, I’ll own up to that, but even I wouldn’t murder a kid.]

He wouldn’t and that particular moral quandary is the most interesting wrinkle this movie produces. It’s also, unfortunately, the only interesting wrinkle produced, as the rest of this movie can be chalked up to the Homecoming Effect.

[Homecoming Effect? O-M-Effing-G. My movie was as good as Homecoming?]

No, it was not. But it was at least as entertaining. The Homecoming Effect, for those uninitiated, is when an otherwise average movie with generic plotting and uneven pacing is saved by a combination of excellent performances, above-average dialogue, and a killer third act. Deadpool 2 is funny throughout, therefore I never have to look at the time and wonder why our hero has been trapped in a box for fifteen minutes. What it has instead, is a basic A-F third act, complete with not one but two reconciliation scenes, an eleventh-hour arrival and the aforementioned exploitative death scene. This isn’t a spoiler, by the way, since Wade kills himself in the first five minutes.

[Try and wrap your thinking muscle around that one!]

There’s really no one to blame for this flick’s unevenness. As with most sequels, it feels indicative of what happens when production is hamstrung to cash in on the momentum of a hot property. Getting a movie produced and distributed on even the smallest scale is impossibly difficult on the best days. The first Deadpool was toiling in development for the better part of a decade, then got produced after much buildup and a disastrous turn in an X-Men spinoff movie.

[Fixed that.]

Being given a little over a year to film and release the follow-up to the most-successful R-rated feature film of all time is a little unrealistic, especially when the Studio That Killed Wolverine still won’t pony up the bucks for an X-Men member more famous than Colossus (Stefan Kapičić).

[Where were you when they greenlit this? I’ve literally been working for 400 days straight.]

There are many things to like in Deadpool 2, the performances as noted. Josh Brolin takes an otherwise one-note character and, as could be expected from him, gives it much needed dimension. Similar to what he did in that other comic book movie.

[LOL. He put on a green suit and played a purple alien guy.]

The best outing here, besides that of Wade himself, is from Domino, played by Zazie Beetz.

[Ooh! Was that the alt-chick with the weird birthmark and invisible luck powers?]

It was, and without the proper casting, she would have been yet another hot hacker girl in a universe that has no shortage. Zazie Beets was able to bring her own spin to a character that was only given so much to do and made the most of what time she had on screen. Great energy, inspired delivery, and impressive chemistry with the rest of the cast. Go see this movie to get your first look at a talented performer who will be quite busy in the very near future.

Deadpool 2 is a good movie that should have been a great movie. You can see the brief flashes of that movie peeking out from behind the line of seventeen (?) asshole jokes. It’s hard sometimes to get a grasp of what the tone should be. Deadpool is a character whose very existence takes the piss out of every comic book story ever told. There’s plenty of that here (to the point of several digs at how dark the DC Comics adaptations have been) but it also comes alongside moments that aren’t played for laughs at all and sometimes very dark. Even though we want to, it’s hard at points to empathize with Wade’s continued suffering throughout as it occurs in the middle of abject death and destruction.

Even a surprisingly poignant performance by Eddie Marsan isn’t enough to take his paper-thin character up above a trope that is over-cooked even in the funny pages. That’s what Deadpool is for and that’s fine but Wade is the only one in on the joke. Having the majority of the cast play it straight in a flick that is more or less by-the-numbers feels cheap. The movie itself isn’t cheap, just rushed; at least it feels that way. Hopefully they take their time developing the X-Force standalone and third Deadpool. There are lots of things you can do with this character and the world he lives in. This is evidenced by Deadpool 2 being the first movie since Get Out that made me ask aloud as the credits rolled, “What the fuck did I just see?”

[Hell yeah! Good old-fashioned incredulity! That’s worth three stars at least!]

You’re damn right, and it would have been worth four stars if we had gotten a clip of you updating your LinkedIn page tacked on to the interview montage.

3.5 Stars Out Of 5

[You mark your spoilers with CG Bradley Cooper?]

Yeah, don’t you?

[I don’t mark spoilers at all. There’s no point. Anyone who has an Internet connection is disqualified from bitching about spoilers. Quit browsing Reddit and get some fresh air, Clarence!]

Anyway! Part of what made Deadpool so engaging was Wade’s girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). She was, from her introduction, the second-most interesting character in the movie. It was refreshing, also, to see a female character that, even when playing the damsel in distress, never lost hold of her own agency. She was also really funny in her own right. So, imagine my surprise when she gets John Wick’d by the bum-ass gangster Deadpool let get away in the opening sequence.

[Don’t blame me, it was Leitch! All this guy does is kill off the cutest thing on-screen.]

Either way, she was gone for most of the movie and not having someone that can work as a foil for the main character was a bit of a drag.

[Did MIB wipe your memory of half this movie? Cable was there.]

Cable was there, but he was the antagonist for the majority of the runtime. And by the time he did start working with the team, there wasn’t enough movie left to really develop the relationship between you two.

[Ah, but that’s what a Cinematic Universe is for: making up for lack of development by kicking the can down the road. Hellooooooo X-Force: The Movie!]

He’s got me, there. And while I’m thinking of it, good job using Cable’s time disc device to save Peter (Rob Delaney) from your terrible plan. It was maybe the second good thing you did in that movie.

[You know he’s gonna be in Rush Hour 4.]

What about Dopinder (Karan Soni)? He killed the shit out of the pedophile bad guy. Does he get to come on a mission, now?

[Brown Panther gets to drive the car to the mission like always. Peter can hang at the mansion with the other two X-Men and be our Alfred in the Chair. Hey! That was a reference!]

Oh, thanks for reminding me. Look no further than any Deadpool story to see how pop culture references can be done well. Unlike Ready Player One, which literally reads them off to you like Santa would read to a small child.

[Remember kids: if the choice is between writing your movie dumb or condescending, there is no choice.]

That’s actually solid advice. Did you know there are people out there who think the Ready Player One novel is better than the movie?

[Not possible.]

I’ve seen it with my own two portholes. The purists were not pleased.

[You mean to tell me there were grown adults willing to pay fourteen dollars plus tax to watch Baby Driver Jr reenact the entirety of Monty Python and the Holy Grail?]

(This actually happens in the book.)

Fanboys and their money are easily parted.

[A fan of the classics, huh? Would you like to see the draft of Billy Shakespeare I’m adapting for the next movie?]

Maybe later, Wade. I think we’ve reached a good stopping point.

[Yeah sure, but I should at least share the safe word I use with Cable.]

Uh, I don’t think that’s-

[It’s Martha.]

This was a big mistake, and I apologize to everyone.