Deadpool 2 is not your standard superhero film
One of the stranger complaints levied against films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that they’re too jokey. To be fair, one of the original goals of the films was to move comic books out of the realm of camp and strike a more serious, realistic tone.
Iron Man in particular was supposed to be about a billionaire arms dealer coming to terms with his role in the American military industrial complex. But superheroes are a goofy concept to begin with—capes and costumes and nemeses are more than a little silly. The jokes in Marvel are always a wink to the audience to remind them that the melodrama happening onscreen is, after all, just movie magic.
Marvel has, on occasion, built some complex emotional moments into their films and it can certainly seem a little jarring to suddenly be laughing at a one liner. But anyone hoping for genuinely challenging material in a comic book movie is misguided. These films are tent-pole action spectaculars.
Killing off a few popular characters doesn’t make them serious dramas. Avengers: Infinity War is a great movie that takes itself seriously enough. It doesn’t need to be more serious. If anything, comic book movies could use a lighter touch. Deadpool 2 debuted this past weekend determined to touch you all over.
Deadpool as a character is an anomaly in the comic book world. 2016’s Deadpool was a film that shouldn’t have worked. It was an extremely R-rated, vulgar, violent movie that seemed to have a limited audience. It could almost be argued that Deadpool was a vanity project for Ryan Reynolds, who took significant risks and a pay cut to ensure that the film was true to his vision.
However, the film was wildly popular, paving the way for more risk taking R-rated comic book films like Logan. What made Deadpool work (and continue to work with Deadpool 2) is its slavish devotion to the source material.
Even if you’ve never read a Deadpool comic, most people have encountered the character somewhere in memes in an online forum. Deadpool’s character is essentially a meme itself—he’s an inside joke, a pop culture reference factory, a sardonic smile. Ryan Reynolds was born to play him.
Since Deadpool is a meme, his movies are meant to point out the flaws inherent in the comic book movie structure, to send up the popular tropes and turn them on their ear, making audiences laugh at the silliness of the ideas. The first film did this well, but Deadpool 2 appears to have perfected the craft.
Deadpool 2 isn’t bogged down by exposition—there’s no origin story to slow down the narrative. The film starts off with the best use of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” since 9 to 5 and immediately gets to setting the plot in motion, giggling the whole way. The film is funnier than any comedy in recent memory while regularly doing a better job at the comic book part of the comic book movie than any of its more serious competition.
As with the first film, it takes familiar themes from comic book fare and turns them to the light to expose the silliness inherent in their creation. In particular, this film takes the idea of the superhero team up to task in some wonderful ways: arguing about what constitutes a super power, discussing the banality of working together, pointing out the hypocrisy of interoffice promotion, etc.
But overall, the film is a carnival ride of big laughs. It’s just a good time at the movies.There are plenty of people, of course, that aren’t going to enjoy this film. It’s crass. it’s violent. it’s dumb. Children, in particular, should probably avoid Deadpool 2 (although we all know that they won’t.)
It’s not that children need to be protected from this content, necessarily. It’s more that adults understand the need for code switching more than kids. I can laugh at a terrible joke in the movie and know that it’s the context that makes the joke funny. Kids think it’s the words themselves.
But parents can (or should) make those decisions. At any rate, Deadpool 2 a great comic book film. As the temperatures rise this summer, summer movies will likely get worse. See this one while you can.