By Abby Lass
Managing Editor of Arts
It may be hard to believe, but the release of Captain America: The First Avenger is five years come and gone. This means that all the 13 year olds who cheered as good old Steve Rogers beat back the Red Skull (and sacrificed himself with the sort of straight-laced heroism that one would expect of the 1940s) are now 18. They’re a little more bloodthirsty, a lot more cynical, and they expect to be able to latch onto a franchise wholeheartedly if they’re going to bother to commit at all.
Lucky for them, Deadpool delivers on every front.
The Merc with a Mouth, first played by Ryan Reynolds in 2002’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is what would result from combining the angrier side of Tumblr with a self-absorbed 30-something-year-old man with a pinch of the sardonic humor of a 14-year-old girl talking to her step-mother whose DNA has bene crossed with a rabid coyote. He is delectably irreverent, both to the characters in the film and to the audience in several moments of fourth wall breaking, and viewers can’t help but love this wise-cracking a-hole.
You could make the case that the plot for this movie is a bit cliché, and I probably would have to agree with you. The basic structure is nothing we haven’t seen before in some form or another: A mercenary with a heart of gold falls in love with someone whose weirdness, to quote Dr. Seuss, matches his, but all hope is lost when a terminal diagnosis is given.
Things start looking up when a sketchy private research company offers to lend a hand, but, of course, they’re manufacturing “super slaves” in the form of mutants (this device, while somewhat reminiscent of characters like the Winter Soldier, is actually relatively new in the X-Men franchise). Our anti-hero escapes but is then forced to save the love of his life from the hands of the sadistic British scientist that made him what he is.
We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again, but what this old fashioned structure does is provide a solid framework on which Deadpool can climb, hang, and murder as he likes. In getting the overarching plot points out of the way, director Tim Miller is free to play with the details and these are what make this movie so devilishly enjoyable.
There’s something deliciously deplorable about the joy in Deadpool’s voice as he goads a lovestruck immigrant cab driver into kidnapping his arch rival so that he can secure his true love, not to mention the rampant, giddy sarcasm with which the Merc ponders masterbation with a semi-regrown hand and fights with his girlfriend to see which of them had a more traumatic childhood.
Deadpool’s misconduct (and I refer to the character and not the actor because Reynolds has truly immersed himself in this persona) is infectious to the point where the audience is left cheering when our protagonist turns down hero status and instead blasts through the skull of someone who certainly had it coming (probably spoilers, but not really).
This movie, according to moviepilot.com, includes three obscene hand gestures, eight mild obscenities, nine religious exclamations, 19 anatomical terms, 21 sexual references, 34 scatalogical terms, and 84 f-bombs, and that’s not even counting the graphic violence and wrenching depictions of torture. It is rated R for good reason. But even if this means you can’t attend a viewing with your nine-year-old cousin, I must insist that the decision to go all-out in terms of offensiveness really was best for the film.
Where Disney’s Marvel has built up a vast empire that spans multiple forms of media and is relatively accessible to all age groups, 20th Century Fox’s depiction of the X-Men has always been a little darker, a little edgier, a shade or two more grim. This attitude, however, is part of what makes these movies so strong as stand alone films.
When I see the newest Iron Man or Captain America movie, I know I’ll enjoy myself, but I also know that really I’m just trying to stay updated so that I will inevitably be able to catch all the easter eggs hidden in the final installment of Infinity Wars. It’s all good fun, but most of the new material that is shoved down my throat comes with a bitter aftertaste of obligation.
Maybe it’s because there are fewer films coming out every year, or maybe it’s simply because I sense less of a carefully structured marketing scheme every time I discover a new Apocalypse trailer, but I genuinely enjoy the X-Men films (the newer ones, at least) because I feel like they each serves their own purpose, as opposed to creating a towering Colossus like that of Disney’s Marvel studio.
There’s something to be said for a movie like Avengers that is accessible to casual fans and fanatics alike, but it’s so pleasant to sit down and enjoy a superhero film where the pandering doesn’t interfere with the plot.
With Deadpool, 20th Century Fox made the choice that it was better to alienate some viewers so that they could deliver a more enjoyable experience to those who were eligible to watch, and it more than paid off.
For more information on the film, click here: http://deadpoolonline.hi2.ro/Deadpool/Movies/Play/Now/
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