Review: Deadpool 2

Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) suffers a personal loss that sees him becoming suicidal and completely despondent, until mutant Colossus comes along to attempt to bring him back from the brink. They find themselves involved with a violent young mutant named Firefist (played by Julian Dennison), who is currently being hunted by the gruff, Terminator-esque Cable (Josh Brolin). Cable, however is no mere black-hatted supervillain. He comes from the future and has been sent back to prevent Firefist from becoming the uncontrollable sociopathic killer who kills Cable’s family. Firefist, meanwhile is hooking up with the formidable mutant Juggernaut, who is all-round bad news. This time out, Deadpool assembles himself an also-ran team of weirdo would-be superheroes like Vanisher (allegedly played by a big star), average guy Peter (Rob Delaney), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgard), smart alec Domino (Zazie Beetz), Bedlam (Terry Crews), and Shatterstar (Lewis Tan).

The first “Deadpool” was a smash hit with critics and audiences alike. Then there was that one guy who didn’t see what the fuss was all about. That one guy dislikes this 2018 sequel from director David Leitch even more. In fact, at times I found it really quite foul and off-putting for reasons that actually surprised me given many of my own cinematic loves. I think I’ve figured out why I don’t actually find these films funny. Watching this one, I realised that while I enjoy an action film with a good sense of quip-y humour (“Commando”, “Die Hard”, “Lethal Weapon”, “The Running Man” etc), if your action hero spends almost all of their time responding to every violent or serious situation with flippancy…it makes them a sociopath. It probably helps explain why I hated “Iron Man” too, actually and it’s unmistakable in this film. For all the talk about Julian Dennison’s young violent offender character being a ‘sociopath’, Deadpool is the real detached killer here. He doesn’t respond to a single thing here with any identifiably sane human emotion whatsoever (He’s the human Bugs Bunny, and I’ve always been a Daffy Duck guy, if you’ll allow me to be a bit cute for a second). As last time, Ryan Reynolds plays the character exactly as conceived and written. Great casting in theory. And perhaps Deadpool is meant to be a sociopath in the comics, it wouldn’t surprise me. However, here I don’t think Reynolds, his co-writers Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick (who scripted the previous film), or director Leitch realise that at least here on-screen the character’s sociopathic personality and behaviour are off-putting in the extreme. It probably works better on the printed page. I certainly can’t imagine how the PG-13 version of this would work satisfactorily, it sounds even worse. I know people say Batman is a sociopath too, but with the obvious exception of Adam West, I don’t recall Batman yukking it up during fist-fights, let alone quite violent ones. I think it’s probably the relentlessness of it all that bothered me here, as it’s not like I don’t enjoy violent movies with a sense of humour. Trust me, I haven’t got a weak stomach and can laugh at some pretty sick and violent things…but for 2 hours straight of just nihilistic flippant humour peppered around violent action? It was a bit too much for me, I’m afraid.

Like last time the humour isn’t even all that funny anyway. Yeah, there’s a couple of chuckles like the first film. We get funny credits again like ‘Directed by one of the guys that killed the dog in “John Wick”’ (That would be “John Wick” co-director Leitch). Meanwhile, a granite-like and armed-to-the-teeth Josh Brolin delivers his second impressive turn in a comic book movie of 2018, here as the stoic and violent Cable. He’s terrific, but rather underused. However, the hyped superhero tryouts scene (was Rob Delaney’s normal guy Peter meant to be an actual joke? It certainly wasn’t funny) was a poor man’s “Mystery Men”. Yeah, it makes sense for Deadpool to have his own shithouse version of the “X-Men”, but it’s still a rip-off of “Mystery Men”. I’ll admit that Vanisher is a pretty cute gag, and once the group is formed, the film’s funniest moment is the team’s ill-fated parachuting descent. Really, really ill-fated. There’s also a genuinely clever bit where a cameo-playing Bill Skarsgard pays tribute to a particular Steve Buscemi character. I can’t deny the bit where Deadpool free-balls it with his new legs is grossly funny, too. One of the funniest bits is simply a reaction shot of Reynolds’ to something suspicious-sounding and letting the audience make the joke. Otherwise though, I’d much rather watch a film about Cable than anything else here. The Juggernaut (apparently voiced and mo-capped by Reynolds himself) looks impressively formidable, but I still prefer Vinnie Jones in the role. I was almost yearning for the previous film where the flippancy merely robbed the film of any urgency and tension to its comic book plot. That’s far more palatable by comparison than a film where everyone worries about a kid doing sociopathic shit with Juggernaut whilst ignoring the fact that Deadpool is a sociopath himself. I normally love in-jokes, but here most of the 4^th wall-breaking meta humour and name-dropping just made the titular hero seem like a soulless sociopath I didn’t especially want to be in the company of (References to Thanos and “Batman vs. Superman” just made me roll my eyes). In another less pulpy, superhero context where the filmmakers weren’t trying to make you root for him, I might not have minded. Here, it rubbed me the wrong way.

A couple of chuckles, one really good performance, but off-putting in the extreme. If you liked the first film, you won’t care what I think of this, but I think this one goes way too dark for something that also wants to be 2 hours of smart-arse humour and superhero theatrics. Unimpressed, though I did like the “Goonies” in-jokes and a brilliant end credits bit that clears up a bit of “X-Men” timeline consistency (The dig at a certain DC movie was less amusing to me because I’m the only person in the universe who liked that particular film that shall remain nameless).

Rating: D+