"Deadpool" Review

My girlfriend asked me to save seeing Deadpool for Valentine's Day, so from Thursday to Sunday night, I was bombarded with comments from giddy fans and coworkers who wanted to know what I thought.

Well, in yet another edition of Unpopular Opinions to Popular Movies, I didn't like it.

Ryan Reynolds stars as Wade Wilson, an ex-Special Forces operative and mercenary. When he develops terminal cancer in his "liver, lungs, prostate, and brain," he travels to a top-secret experimental treatment center. Surprise, surprise - the treatment is a front for an illegal genetics-altering facility, led by the sadistic Ajax (Ed Skrein). Ajax injects Wade with a serum that will unlock his mutant powers if exposed to enough stress. Wade is tortured mercilessly, but becomes a mutant. He develops near-limitless regeneration, but at the cost of physical deformity throughout his entire body. Seeking revenge, Wade puts on the costume and mask, and adopts the moniker "Deadpool", hunting down anyone who can get him closer to Ajax.

Those who know the Marvel Comics character know there are four essential qualities he must have: he holds allegiance to no one; uses the 4th wall as a jump rope; can't take three steps without taking a shot or swipe at someone; but most importantly, his absurdity is hilarious.

Reynolds gives it his all, snapping goofy banter and filling the screen with the widest mischievous grins possible. However, the writing fails him. It's laden with too many metaphors that read like nonsensical Mad Libs. Using words like "dicktits" and "shitbuckets" mistake raunchy for absurdity.

Much of the first half is ripped from the trailer. Even worse, the trailer features the best jokes, which to their credit, are wonderfully wacky, but when hearing them for the second time, doesn't give as strong of an impact.

It also seems strange that a Deadpool movie would have such a generic plot. Deadpool fights waves of henchmen to get to the second-in-command, beat them, fight the big British baddie to try and save his girlfriend. The story tries to break up the formula by bouncing between the highway scenes from the trailer and flashbacks, but this backfires. Every time the movie returns to the highway, the story progresses just a little before taking three steps back to the flashback.

And this is Deadpool. For a hero like Blade, Thor, or Captain America, I would expect this, but for a character whose existence serves to subvert and surprise, a typical origin story seems like a neutering move.

Keep in mind, Deadpool has done the following in the comics:

- Romanced the literal personification of Death 
- Assembled the Deadpool Corps, made up of Deadpools from alternate universes, including Lady Deadpool, Dogpool, and the severed head of Zombie Deadpool
- cooked 372,844 pancakes for breakfast
- shot someone in the head for saying they enjoyed the Star Wars prequels more than the originals
- teamed up with the ghost of Benjamin Franklin to destroy a group of resurrected zombie presidents
- successfully incapacitated Carnage with a super-powered mp3 player full of dubstep
- switched costumes with Spider-Man to fight (and kill) the Chameleon

There are glimmers of brilliance. I love the production design, where each and every corner of the frame is covered in Easter eggs, memorabilia, and goodies for fans to catch and revel in the geek culture. (When Negasonic Teenage Warhead took off her jacket, I nearly whooped.)

The best parts of the movie feature Reynolds out of the suit, romancing it up with his girlfriend, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). They have extraordinary chemistry, the kind of couple where one will crack a dark joke and the other will run with it as far as possible. While her character, in the grand scheme isn't given much, Baccarin gives her genuine, hysterical charm. In this aspect, Deadpool works really damn well as a Valentine's Day movie. I caught myself often leaning over to my girlfriend and whispering, "That's us."

For people whose experience with comic-book movies starts with X-Men and ends with Ant-Man, they'll find something new in the violence, the level of comedy, and the unique tone for a superhero film. After Deadpool, I'd recommend checking out films like Watchmen, Hellboy, Kick-Ass, 300, Sin City, and Scott Pilgrim vs the World, if one's interested in getting away from the safeness of Marvel and DC.

I think this is the most secure bet a studio could provide for a character like Deadpool. Recently, we're getting more obscure characters - look at Guardians and Ant-Man - but the stories borrow from one another - Avengers and Iron Man, respectively, and it's getting to a tipping point of boredom.

I honestly think audiences are ready to get strange. With Doctor Strange coming in November and Avengers: Infinity War - Part I coming in 2018, I hope Marvel and their properties, across multiple studios, take the kind of risks that characterized them eight years ago, with the creation of the cinematic universes.

Let's throw in some magic, some aliens, some inter-dimensional hopscotch.

Let's get weird.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.