The first Deadpool changed the face of comic book movies almost overnight. Would Taika Waititi have been able to get away with the son of Odin’s reinvention as a wisecracking, fourth-wall-breaking god of thunder in Thor: Ragnarok without Tim Miller’s freewheeling splash of superhero irreverence? Almost certainly not. Even more vitally, it established that the audience for these films is maturing, that there is room in the comic-book pantheon for some R-rated, amusingly puerile buffoonery, and that Ryan Reynolds (against all previous evidence) really does have the star power to lead his own superhero franchise.
And yet sequels, as Deadpool 2 notes, are notoriously difficult beasts. Moreover, as Miller was replaced by David Leitch, the director of Atomic Blonde, for the follow-up, there is no guarantee the same chemistry flows through the potty-mouthed mutant’s veins this time around.
The critics, however, have largely pulled Leitch’s film into an embrace and gently cupped its buttock. The sequel currently boasts a rating of 86% “fresh” on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, which is slightly better than the score posted by its much-praised predecessor in 2016. What did you think of Deadpool 2? Here’s your chance to get suitably loquacious on the movie’s key talking points.
Putting Marvel and DC to shame on diversity
The X-Men comic books were a natural place for Marvel to begin introducing LGBT superheroes in the 1990s, starting with Northstar’s coming out in 1992 as the publisher’s first openly gay costumed titan. On the big screen, both DC and Marvel have ignored the pleas of campaigners to introduce non-heterosexual characters, despite the best efforts of Waititi and Tessa Thompson in Ragnarok.
Given Deadpool’s own fluid sexuality on both the big screen and in the comics, it makes sense that part two sees the (pleasingly casual) revelation that Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead is dating fellow X-Man Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna). But that’s not the only place where Deadpool 2 wins brownie points for diversity and subverting stereotypes: we are also introduced to a self-described “plus-size” version of Firefist, in the form of Julian Dennison’s troubled young mutant Russell Collins. In the comics, the character is usually depicted as a typically muscular blond.
The strange death of Vanessa Carlysle
Does Deadpool 2’s self-reflexive irreverence and supercharged irony excuse its writers from indulging in the infamous “fridging” trope, whereby the death of a female loved one is used to propel the male-centric narrative forward? In the comics Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa Carlysle has her own superpowers, as the shapeshifting mutant Copycat, but on the big screen she is once again little more than a foil for Deadpool to showcase his serious, emotionally wrought side for a moment or two – a Patsy Kensit in Lethal Weapon 2 for the Marvel generation. Is that satire, or just lazy writing?
A very short-lived X-Force
Much has been made of Deadpool launching his own superhero team in Leitch’s movie, but even here the writers succeed in overturning our expectations to wonderfully comic effect. The appearances by Terry Crews’s Bedlam, Lewis Tan’s Shatterstar and Bill Skarsgård’s Zeitgeist turn out to be little more than gruesome cameos, as they fall victims to Deadpool’s spectacularly poor planning skills during that disastrous parachute drop. Rather fittingly, it turns out to be a rather less ostentatious figure, taxi driver Dopinder, who ultimately plays a far more vital role in taking out Eddie Marsan’s abusive orphanage headmaster.
Proof that time travel really is cheating
Killed off a character and later regretted it? Planning a reboot of an old sci-fi favourite with a brand new cast? Time travel is the obvious solution to any Hollywood screenwriter’s creative dead end, but never has it been used to such impressive effect as at the tale end of Deadpool 2. Wade Wilson cheerfully brings Vanessa back from the dead, wipes his earlier appearance as Deadpool in the execrable X-Men Origins: Wolverine from the Hollywood history books and even shoots Ryan Reynolds before his alter ego is able to sign up for Green Lantern. Oh, and he brings back all those dead members of X-Force for good measure. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
Deadpool can never join the MCU or any other universe
With Marvel rights holder Disney and X-Men studio Twentieth Century Fox now well on the way to being one company, it’s long been suggested that big-screen crossover events are inevitable. But if Deadpool 2 achieves anything, it’s to establish that Wilson exists in a place so tonally idiosyncratic that he should never be allowed to visit other movie universes. Deadpool’s inclusion in an X-Men movie would only serve to highlight the dull, grey and insipid nature of the super-serious Fox franchise. Put him in the MCU and he would probably try to hump Spider-Man’s leg. Nope, all in all, Deadpool is best off staying single.
