Movie Info
Movie Name: Deadpool 2
Studio: Marvel Entertainment
Genre(s): Comic Book/Action/Adventure/Comedy
Release Date(s): May 18, 2018 (Premiere)/May 18, 2018 (US)
MPAA Rating: R
Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is back but he might not be back for long. Deadpool is on a mission to save an angry mutant teen named Russell “Firefist” Collins (Julian Dennison) but finds himself making an enemy of Russell in the process. With a time travelling soldier named Cable (Josh Brolin) going after them, Russell might make a new friend of his own and ditch Deadpool. Deadpool has his own game plan and his own team to free Russell and win back his trust…but Russell might make a mistake that could doom the future of the world, and Cable won’t let that happen!
Directed by David Leitch (who replaced first director Tim Miller), Deadpool 2 is a comic book action-comedy. A follow-up to Deadpool in 2016, the movie was released to strong reviews and a massive box-office return.
I was surprised I enjoyed Deadpool. I’m not a Ryan Reynolds fan and I’m not a fan of the character Deadpool. Those two factors should have doomed the movie, but somehow, they worked together to make an enjoyable film. Though I still overall enjoyed Deadpool 2, I felt it wasn’t as strong as the original. Due to major plot-points, a ******spoiler alert****** is in effect for the rest of the review.
Deadpool 2 faces the deadly sequel syndrome. The first one was a bigger success than ever expected and you have two choices: go bigger or do more of the same. The movie does both, and it comes close to falling into the Alien3 trap. Alien3 unceremoniously killed off the beloved characters of Aliens after Ripley spent all of Aliens trying to save them. Here, Deadpool’s love and the heart of Deadpool Vanessa (played by Morena Baccarin) is killed pretty early in the movie with Deadpool on a quest to make her happy by helping Russell. It does put a bit of a damper on things, but they do incorporate her more into the story making it the thrust of the story unlike Alien3 did.
However, the story is really loaded. It has a lot of characters put into the plot and I don’t know that they all get a fair shake. Deadpool absorbs the movie so much that the likeable characters like Domino, Cable, Colossus, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead never get their deserved screentime. The Black Tom Cassidy character was originally going to have a bigger role, but the role was reduced because of the crowded plot.
Part of the reason is that Deadpool is about Deadpool, and Ryan Reynolds and the writers smartly play that up. Josh Brolin and Zazie Beetz could carry movies themselves, and Brianna Hildebrand (and her fun girlfriend Yukio portrayed by Shioli Kutsuna) could really use the extra time. Reynolds gets to also be the voice for the Juggernaut (making him really a majority of the plot), but the movie also contains cameos by the X-Men (James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee) and even Alan Tudyk and Matt Damon as the rednecks. The best part of the cast (and joke) is X-Force with Lewis Tan, Bill Skarsgård, Terry Crews, Rob Delaney, and Brad Pitt (who was originally considered for Cable).
The movie is bigger than Deadpool. It obviously had a bigger budget, but Deadpool didn’t look small in comparison. It has a great open featuring the Celine Dion song wish James Bond-esque visuals which helps set the tone (or continue it from the previous film). The movie has big, boisterous battle scenes like the scene on the train, but honestly, Deadpool doesn’t really need them as long as the jokes are solid (it doesn’t hurt the film though).
Deadpool 2 is fun and essentially the superhero version of South Park in that it makes fun of rather “current” things like Avengers: Infinity War and the DCU movies. It isn’t the level of Deadpool (though I also went into it with more expectation than I did Deadpool), and it takes more of a Family Guy approach to humor aka throw a bunch of s*!# at a wall and see if any of it sticks…and some of it does stick for good laughs (but the rest slides off). Deadpool 2 is worth seeing, and you can be sure that a Deadpool 3 will surface soon.
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