Deadpool

I checked my blogs and lo-and-behold!  I had never covered the eccentric and terminally humorous Marvel Comics superhero before.  Allow me to rectify this egregious oversight, effective immediately.

He started out as a supervillain in the comics, before eventually morphing into more of an anti-hero and getting his own comic, then his own movies.  Naturally I haven’t read any of these, except for a more recent compilation.  I’m not really motivated to read comics and prefer to enjoy the movie.  Actually, I do a lot of reading, it’s novels and stuff without pictures.  Anyhow.

The authors gave his original human alter ego the name Wade Wilson, apparently completely oblivious to the Minnesota Vikings quarterback from 1981-1991.  

DP 0: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).   His first appearance, indeed portrayed even at this early hour by the one and only Ryan F’in’ Reynolds, was here.  He faces off against both Wolverine (Hugh Jack-Man) and his big brother Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) atop the cooling towers of Three Mile Island.   As my cousin Jimmy alerted me to the power plant’s location just south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I stopped by there on my way back on my last visit to New Jersey.  The trio, as you might imagine, was long gone by that point.  And as those who bothered to watch all the way to the end of the credits know, he survived that encounter.  However, his next appearance seems to be a complete reboot – by popular demand, in fact. 

Deadpool (2016).   We get the “origin story”, so to speak.  Mainly he makes smart-ass remarks, kicks butt, and when his own ass is kicked he has to go into hiding and recuperate.  His healing powers are such that it’s almost impossible to kill him.  He often makes negative comments about Spiderman and Wolverine, though neither of these appear in the films with him (though I know there’s a Deadpool/Spiderman comic book).

He has a girlfriend, Vanessa, played by Morena Baccarin, who some might recognize from “Firefly”. Not only is she a brasileira (female Brazilian) but a carioca (someone from Rio de Janeiro); cariocas seem to be proud of that.  Having been to RJ itself five times I can say the pride is well justified, favelas notwithstanding.

Deadpool’s major deal during this film is trying to take down Ajax (Ed Skrein), the guy who “made him”, while brushing off Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, the B-list heroes assigned to recruit him into the X-Men.  Needless to say he triumphs over Ajax.  Oh, and there’s an Indian cab driver he befriends.  Overall a toxic dose of nonstop irreverent humor, which is good because too many of these superhero movies, particularly the DC Comics ones, have too little humor and take themselves too seriously.

Ironically, the movie made a huge killing in gross worldwide sales ($783 million) despite a relatively modest budget ($58 million), AND an unheard-of R rating for a superhero movie.  They really got their money’s worth from Reynolds.  Needless to say a sequel was going to happen.  And it did.     

Deadpool 2 (2018).  Now he has a nemesis to bump ugly against, Cable (Josh Brolin).   He’s befriended a particularly unhappy mutant, Collins/Firefist, and eventually sent to the Ice Box with him, a supersecure prison for mutants.  It seems that in the future, Firefist will kill Cable’s wife and daughter, so a time-travelling Cable comes back to prevent that or avenge the deaths.  More humor but with the requisite dose of action and adventure we’d expect from any of these films, which makes it that much more remarkable and enjoyable. 

As you might imagine, the sequel also killed, $734 million worldwide versus a budget of $110 million, still highly successful though not as profitable.  Lucky for us, Deadpool 3 will be forthcoming.  With Hugh Jackman retiring as Wolverine after Logan, the best we can hope for is Spiderman (Tom Holland) herein.  However, I think we can expect to be highly entertained.  Stay tuned.