Deadpool 2 - Review Thread

Think I may have preferred it to the first one not sure really 8.5/10

Buy better eggs. The sulfur is getting you. Happened to me a lot as well.

What thread is this again?

How much 4th wall breaking we seeing in this? And is it only Deadpool or does everyone get in on the act?

Blasphemy!

Not really...

Pretty damn good film 

10/10

You may be waiting a while.

I liked it.

Dracula doesn't know how to have fun

It's stating the obvious to say that right now we're operating in a golden age of superhero films. This year alone has seen massive hits in the form of Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War dominating the box office and also being critical darlings, and we've basked in what's been nearly two decades of the best run of comic book adaptations the film world has ever seen. Yet despite best attempts at shaking up the formulas, even the best of the MCU films can feel a bit repetitive at times, even if the end result is a good one. So when people clamored in 2016 about what a breath of fresh air Deadpool was for the superhero genre, I can't say that I disagreed. While not a film itself that has much going for it outside of its humor, that humor was more than enough for the original film to lean on and coast on its clever laughs despite a mediocre villain and a real lack of spectacle overall. From breaking the fourth wall to making one meta joke after another about superhero films or even the star of the movie, Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool was the vulgar comic book escapism that was a welcome pariah amidst the more family friendly fare. It was also a massive hit, breaking numerous records and undoubtedly assuring us a sequel. I remember watching the original and saying "that was fine, but the sequel is going to be vastly better." Why? Well for starters, no one at Fox knew how big of a hit Deadpool would be, and the amount of money put into as opposed to the bigger X-Men films wasn't on the same playing field. Also, the character has now been established, we can move past his run-of-the-mill origin story and crappy villain, and in the sequel we'll get a bigger, more polished movie overall. Wow was I wrong. It's almost amazing to me to see that on Rotten Tomatoes the film is sitting in the low 80s percentage wise, but if you look at top critics it sits closer to 65%, which does make sense to me. Deadpool 2 is a pretty astounding misfire of a film, the movie we thought the franchise would fall into by the 3rd or 4th entry, but wouldn't bow out with such unoriginality in just the 2nd outing. I'd implore anyone writing a positive review of this film to write about anything other than its humor to make your point, and I'm sure the struggle will be an immense one. From awful CGI to a plot reminiscent of a low-rent Looper, Deadpool 2 is an obnoxious film that despite poking fun at other films has nothing to back up the trash talk with on its own merits. Deadpool 2 is a glossy episode of Family Guy, a movie with no compelling plot or characters that just pummels the viewer with one unmotivated joke after another in hope that you aren't paying attention to anything else. Aside from some solid jokes, and to be fair there are plenty of times that I laughed heartily throughout the film, Deadpool 2 is a shallow movie that should spend less time mocking superior franchises and actually create a compelling universe of its own.

The original's plot was hardly anyone's favorite part of the film, but like the first entry in all comic book films it worked well enough steeped in a revenge-driven origin story. Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) becomes Deadpool after agreeing to a shady experimentation process, and wanted to exact his revenge on those who did it to him, a la Wolverine. Deadpool's villain could've been pulled from a Van-Damme film no problem and certainly wasn't memorable, but again the film does have its plot and thus Deadpool's motivation as a character steeped in revenge, and it worked well enough. Deadpool 2's plot is far flimsier and is one of the worst of any comic book film I can think of. Like I mentioned earlier, it essentially functions as a low-rent Looper where a mutant child (Julian Dennison) is being So yeah, a low-rent Looper. It was about halfway through the film when I realized that this wasn't just a meandering subplot but the actual plot of the film and began to really get bored and irritated by the movie as a whole. All of my hopes that for the sequel we'd be able to explore more of this hilarious protagonist or that he'd be pitted against some kind of stakes were quickly dashed. Everything in the film is predictable, and none of it feels in the least bit important. I'm not trying to compare apples to oranges here, and it's certainly unfair in a way to even make this comparison since Deadpool 2's goal and scope aren't on the same level, but after just watching Avengers: Infinity War where the fate of the universe is in play and then going to Deadpool 2 where the plot is about attempting to talk a hormonal mutant teenager out of burning down an orphanage is pretty weak. Josh Brolin as Cable is a fun villain, especially when deflecting Deadpool's constant barrage of insults and quips, but once the act two plot revelation is revealed he's really just relegated to tactical support and not much more. There is a funny introduction of Deadpool's X-Force squad in one of the few comedic sequences actually motivated by the plot, but after that we're left with a new character named Domino (Zazie Beets) who I found to be incredibly uninteresting and whose gags are even more one note than Deadpool's where lucky occurrences keep happening for her. The gags in the film work for the first half hour, but then you realize that the writers keep going back to the well, and there's little more up their sleeves than what they already showed in the original. Again, if you're going to be this meta, make fun of other properties type of film, fine, but when you don't have anything to show yourself you just sound annoying and preening.

Other elements of Deadpool 2 are actually even worse, namely the shockingly terrible special effects. You could ignore the spotty effects work in the original because, as I stated earlier, it was a film that didn't have the financial backing that most comic book films do, and also benefits from being a comedy where things like bland lighting and camera setups are mostly ignored in comparison to dramas. But for the sequel of one of the highest grossing films of all time, there's no excuse for how shoddy everything looks. Colossus and in particular were exceptionally bad, and when the two of them fight it's comical to the point where you're surprised Deadpool doesn't look at the camera and make a quip about not having the budget to do this CGI showdown properly. It's just unacceptable for a film like this to look as bad as Deadpool 2 does. The cinematography has no flair or style to it, and coupled with the ugly FX work (the flames coming from the kid too, good grief it looked like total shit), this is an example of how a DP and director really have no style of their own and are just mercenaries. And again that leads me to my biggest problem with this train wreck of a film; it's so busy being derivative and poking fun at other properties that it thinks it doesn't need to have an aesthetic of its own. And how's this for disappointing blockbuster sequel: there's no signature action sequences to reflect on. Compare this film to the original, where we open on a delightfully absurd fire fight mostly in slow-motion on a bridge to introduce the character, the style, the violence, everything. And then think of any sequence in this film and tell me how it compares to any of what I just mentioned. Not only is this film unoriginal, it's worse, it's dull! The action stinks, the CGI stinks, and there's no flair to anything here. Even generic elements that the blandest of summer blockbusters can fall back on are nowhere to be found here. We're also forced through some extremely cringe-inducing sequences of catching up with some of the characters from the original (save for a clever sequence of Deadpool's lower body), and it really just didn't work for me. T.J. Miller was probably the worst part of the movie, no surprise since he's straddling the line of hopefully no longer having a career in general, and was just embarrassingly unfunny every time he's on screen, though fortunately it's not often. We're all just making the same jokes, telling the same stories as we did in the first movie, nothing new to see here. Equally mediocre are the two scenes with Veronica (Morena Baccarin), who is relegated to pure cameo status here, both of which are predictable cliches of sequences, with the ultimate one in a sort of "Heaven through the eyes of Vittorio Storaro" culminating in a . Yup, the movie that just loves to poke fun at other movies is as ripe with cliches, contrivances, and total lack of originality as they are. This is why I'm picking on this bad movie as much as I am; a bad movie is one thing, but a bad movie that postures itself as being something grander deserves all the scorn it can receive.

Deadpool 2 is a shallow film that hopes to coast by on its laughs and the general goodwill that mainstream audiences usually reward comic books films with. It's a film that features a dismally uninteresting plot, no signature action pieces, recycles the same jokes from the first film, has some of the worst CGI you'll see in a movie of this budgetary caliber, and has no style of its own. For a film that loves to laugh at the flaws of other movies, Deadpool 2 sure doesn't bring a whole lot to the table in its own right. Maybe people just aren't expecting much from this franchise, which is fine, but neither was I going into this. It's a clunker of a film, one that despite all of the ability to take the viewer in an exciting direction with an admittedly hilarious protagonist to guide them there elects not to, instead vying for one joke after the next and neither pushing us more into the forefront of X-Men level excitement or making Deadpool's universe one that on its own merits is worth exploring further. Jokes are great, and this is after all a comedy film. But great stunts aren't enough to make an action film worthwhile either. This is a movie I simply couldn't give a pass to. It's comprised of a total lack of originality while posturing itself as this omniscient authority on cinema, and that is an arrogant sin that's too much for this mediocre film to get away with.

5/10