I was a huuuuge fan of the first Deadpool from two years ago. It was so unexpected, so fresh, so original…and just so *good*. So, could this sequel live up to that? Even after losing its director due to creative differences…? Yes and no.
THE BLURB:
Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool joins forces with three mutants — Bedlam, Shatterstar and Domino — to protect a boy from the all-powerful Cable.
WHAT WORKED:
The movie. On that fundamental “did I just watch what they promised?” level, yes, this movie WORKS. It’s funny, it’s exciting, irreverent, and it uses all that to surround a very real human core…which is precisely what made the first movie so surprisingly excellent. So, bravo in that regard.
Ryan Reynolds is SO. FUCKING. GOOD. as Deadpool. It’s insane. He might be the strongest casting choice for a superhero since Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. Seriously, he is GOLD. It hurts me how good he is in this role. It’s a role of a lifetime for Reynolds, and he doesn’t waste. The way he walks the line between goofy, witty, badass, and heartfelt is magic.
Domino, however, steals this movie. She’s a superhero with what SOUNDS like a dubious power. They spend almost all of her screentime, in fact, making fun of that power…except that it’s fucking badass. The best action sequences–which are another thing that at the very least *work* in this movie–are the ones with Domino skating amongst the carnage untouched. Zazie Beetz is wonderful. So is Brianna Hildebrand, returning as Teenage Warhead. She’s grown up SO MUCH since the first movie, and she’s such a badass because of it. And gay, which is awesome to see.
There are also a few cut scenes during the credits (and all the Marvel-universe references in general) that are legitimately FANTASTIC. Laugh outloud funny. I *did* laugh in this movie. Just enough.
WHAT DIDN’T:
So…while this movie WORKS…it’s frustrating in the sense that it should have been so much better. They made a series of choices in this film that I was really REALLY disappointed with, chiefly of which was to undercut the opening scene by instantly making fun of what had happened. What the first movie did so well was that it realized it TRULY was a love story. The heart at the center was real, and very, very emotional. It’s what made the jokes so funny, and the action so gripping. This movie didn’t understand how to do that. I know they TRIED, and they clearly understood it needed to be there, which is why I think the movie still mostly worked at the end of the day…but they couldn’t deliver in the end. I mean, the themes of loss, helplessness, despair, and redemption they were dealing should have had me in a PUDDLE at the end of this film…and I felt nothing.
Walking the line between drama and comedy is not easy. Tim Miller, the director of the first movie, understood how to do it. David Leitch has never done it before. Just as I’m writing this and doing research as I go am I realizing that he’s the guy who directed Atomic Blonde, another movie that was sooooo close to being great. John Wick is his prize offering, which was engaging yes…but it was very straight and single-minded. It wasn’t a dance between laughter and tears. And, in my estimation, it’s because they didn’t take the drama serious enough.
But, it wasn’t JUST that. The jokes also weren’t as funny. Not as funny, yes, because the drama wasn’t there, but the COMEDY just wasn’t as there, either. And thats the rub of a sequel, right? It’s always compared to the first. Well, I wish they’d leaned into that more. Deadpool was partly so funny because it was taking the Comic Book Movie Genre, and it was dropping its trousers and taking a shit on it, lighting it on fire, and then throwing it out to the audience through the window of a crashing car. They could have done that with the “sequel!” They didn’t. The jokes just weren’t as smart, biting, or unexpected.
The other, final, major missing piece for me was the relationship between Wade and Russell. It just never quite worked. And, man, given the arc we’re set on, that was a CRUCIAL piece to this movie punching us in the gut at the end. Russell should have ADORED Wade. We should have fallen in love with them. And that dynamic ultimately falls onto Deadpool’s shoulders; Russell is supposed to teach him something, and as I sit here, I can’t really tell you what that was. In the first movie, Wade has to accept who is, that there is no cure for what happened to him, and that he still deserves love despite all that. In this movie…it was muddy. They TRIED to make him learn something, but I can’t actually pinpoint exactly what that was, or how it was tied to the loss he sustained at the beginning of the film.
One line here about the villian: woefully undeveloped. Same for the X-Force, who are literally only used for a joke (beside Domino, anyway).
So…yeah. I wrote a lot about this one, and it’s because ultimately this film was frustrating for me. It was so clear they were reaching for something that they fell short of. There’s a scene at the beginning of the movie that I won’t spoil, but it made me SIT FORWARD in my seat. It was shocking. It showed me a truth about what it would *actually* be like to be a superhero, to constantly be in jeopardy, and the cost of that…and then they undercut that in the very next scene, in the scenes right after that, and then again in the end. It sucked. So close, guys. So close.
Deadpool 2 is a cover song. It’s a good cover song…but it’s still just a cover.
6 out of 10 – go see it, have fun, but it’s frustratingly short of great