Okay, as the last fanboy to see this movie, I have to say that I didn’t want to like it. Hell, I predicted it would tank at the box office.
That all being said, I felt the movie was a little oversold to me. Fanboys raved about Captain America: Civil War, but the hype lived up to the name. Deadpool fell a little short for me.
That isn’t to say that anyone that worked on the film is to blame. The screenwriters (Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) do their best to make Deadpool sympathetic. The thing is, he never really was. Much like the Bane villain in Batman, Deadpool is pretty unredeemable. Additionally, his creation by Rob Liefeld is extremely derivative. Mix Spiderman, Wolverine and Joker and that’s about it.
But the real problem with the comic book character is that he’s killed a lot of people as a mercenary. Much like Spawn, he’s a jerk. And while the film goes to great lengths to make him a jerk with a heart of gold, does anyone really believe that there is a secret society of bad guys that punish bad guys? Additionally, the secret organization that gives him his power isn’t all that clear.
I would compare this movie to American Psycho. It’s a great adaption of a terrible book or in this case, comic book. And, just as Christopher Nolan made Bane more sensible, this movie makes Deadpool make enough sense to tolerate in a movie. Ultimately, it still suffers from the same problems. Why do the good guys, in this case Colossus, give Wade so many chances? It’s not because it makes sense. It’s because Deadpool is popular and he’s the main character in the movie.
But this is a fun movie so you can overlook these inconsistencies to just enjoy Ryan Reynolds in a funny role. Probably the weakest thing is the make up, where Reynolds still looks fairly handsome, as opposed to the comic book version of his face. It probably would’ve been a slightly stronger movie had Reynolds actually been hard to look at, although the people around him reacting is almost enough.
So I give it a thumbs up. Not a super enthusiastic one, but a thumbs up nonetheless.
