“Feel the love.
The origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who, after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.” – Letterboxd Synopsis
The Deadpool movies are surprisingly all a journey for Deadpool as a person trying to navigate through love, friendship and find a place in the world. And you can tell that Ryan Reynolds really loves this character. After the disaster that was X-Men Origins and Green Lantern, I’m very glad he got to have his moment with a character that he truly cares about. And rewatching this movie, I really enjoyed it all over again. It was just as enjoyable as it was all the way back in 2016 and seeing where everything has come now, this was the starting point to one of the best super hero trilogies to date.
Ryan Reynolds is the perfect Deadpool. There are certain castings that make so much sense and end up fitting so well that I can’t imagine someone else playing them. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, RDJ as Iron Man and funnily enough Fox did this two times with the same set of characters with Sir Ian Mckellen and Michael Fassbender as Magento and Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy as Charles Xavier. They just play the roles so well. Ryan Reynolds is in that same category as those listed above and a few others. As Deadpool, he’s hilarious. 8 years later, most of these jokes still landed. The 4th wall breaks were funny. His relationship with the X-Men is hilarious here and becomes even more so given the context of the future movies and what his aspirations would eventually become.
The story here is pretty damn good. It’s nothing ground breaking, but what it does, it does well. It is one of the cleaner origin stories that we’ve gotten in super hero movies. Maybe it’s due to the fact that it really lends itself to a good amount of rom-com feeling elements and Ryan has a very storied history with that genre of film. Those elements work really well here. Often times in these comic book movies the love interest can fall flat, I can really only think of a few that I have really cared too much about, but I really mean it when I say, Vanessa and Wade’s relationship is amazing here and it lays a great groundwork for not only this movie but the next two to come. And the plot as a whole sticks the landing. From point a to b in this movie it is a great time. Its biggest sin was that the villain is sort of forgettable, but that doesn’t take away from the movie at all for me.
It also still looks really good. I just think in comparison to how other comic book movies (in the MCU specifically) have been shot recently, this movie is refreshing with its intentionally muted colors and well done cgi which is nice when there’s so much gore and grotesque body things in this movie. It almost feels like body horror at times, some of the things they do to Deadpool specifically, but it always looks good. And oh my, the thing that heavily persists throughout this trilogy is the wonderful fight choreography. Bravo to the choreographer, the stuntmen and everyone involved with the process. It is wonderful, impactful, hype, etc etc.
So yeah, I loved this movie when I first watched it, I still love it now so many years later and as I write this conclusion, I’ve seen Deadpool 3 and even though that movie focuses on different surrounding characters, the groundwork for Wade’s character and his relationship with others that’s laid here is so good and pivotal for this trilogy. Deadpool is a blast and to me, will always be a classic in the genre and in a sea of bad to great comic book movies that play it very safe a lot of the time, this movie was what the genre needed.
Deadpool – 10/10
Notes: This is the first of a handful of old posts that I never got around to finishing from last year and the middle of 2023. Don’t know what’s taken me so long but aye.
