Bored Now at the Movies

Deadpool (2016)

       One of the most eagerly anticipated comic book adaptations of recent years, and conversely, one  of the best reviewed movies of 2016 so far. Deadpool is also notable as being the first ever eighteen  certificate comic book picture in history.  It is the filmmaker's desire to make the film more edgy,and  to keep the comic book audience on side which I believe its big flaws.

The ever improving Ryan Reyolds takes on the title role as former special forces operative Wade Wilson who following a tortuous experiment at the hands twisted, but flash wiz kid Ajax (Ed Skrein),develops abnormal healing powers, allowing him to morph into Deadpool, an rogue anti-hero out for revenge.  Stand-up and improv guy T.J. Miller plays geeky best friend and bartender Weasel, Morena Baccarin plays girlfriend Vanessa whom Wade can't face following the physical results of the treatment, and subsequently must win back/rescue from Ajax.  Stefan Kapicic and Brianna Hildebrand play Deadpool's oddball partners in crime Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead respectively. 

The one big positive is Reyold's charismatic performance.  His deadpan, and sharp witted delivery is well suited for this more sacarstic and cynical comic book hero. The actor also smoothly embodies the physicality of Wade/Deadpool.  Some of the action setpieces are well staged, and the film has a slick, but distinctly gritty visual palette.  However, these aspects also highlight the massive issues with Deadpool.  Firstly, yes Reyold's does steady job in the title role, but I he does well within a restricted characterisation.  By making the character so cold, and frankly unlikeable, the film distances him from the viewer (or at least this viewer).  As a result, Wade/Deadpool lacks the complex humanity seen for example, in the recent Batman films.  The upshot is that when he embarks on his revenge mission and attempts to save his ex-girlfriend I just didn't care.  Of course, this is part of the film attempting to be post-modern and edgy.  Call me old fashioned, but I like to be invested in these things.  Personally, I never cared when Wade was supposedly dying because I never liked Wade, and I cared even less about his mission to save Vanessa, because I never for one minute believed that he truly loved her.

The self-referential, comic book humour is just too heavy handed, and the results of this, along with the film's attempts to appeal too much to its core audience creates multiple problems. The action sequences may have a certain zip and style to them. On the other hand, the over relience on slow motion camera movements, and overally stylized violence gives them a dated feel, and to me they seemed too derivative of early Tarantino films and The Matrix, you know those films released during the mid-late 90s!  Many of these scenes are attempting to be too clever by half, in fact much of the film in general is.  The post-modern humour is taken to the extreme.  It gets to the point where every five seconds a scene will be broken up so that a character, normally Deadpool can break the fourth wall, or force feed us a random pop-culture reference which has no impact on the characters or story.  When it works well, post-modern humour is a brief moment, which works because the audience has character engagement outside of it, and because it is working to add to an established character(s) within the universe of the film/television show.  In this case we get over drawn out, smug, and dense running commentaries which breaks up the flow of the narrative too much.  As a result of appealing too much to the core comic book audience, the gender politics are outdated, and rotten. Simply speaking the treatment of women is sexist.  Poor Baccarin (known for credible roles in Firefly and Homeland) represents the stereotypical, highly sexualised, nerdy geek babe, who is always in position to serve her man.  Basically, Vanessa is the idealised dream girl for the largely teenage and male comic book crowd.  The other female representations are reduced to a mix of weird, but quirky, or weird and muscle bound.  Depressing.  

Keith Beard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xithigfg7dA