X gonna give it to you! Deadpool teams with Colossus and a teenage mutant to battle evil. Time to make the chimichangas! Photo/Collider
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]eloved character Deadpool officially headlines his own movie, after blood, sweat, and a lot of tears — mostly from fans — and news couldn’t be better for diehards. The Merc with a Mouth grossed a whopping $152.2 million his opening weekend (hitting $491.9 million globally as of this weekend).
That’s a lot of chimichangas but, to top it off, the film may be the most faithful adaptation of a character ever. Even more surprising is it comes from Fox, the home for hit-and-miss attempts at X-Men — muddled continuity and all — and botched efforts for Fantastic Four.
Ryan Reynolds is Wade Wilson (for the second time), a wisecracking mercenary who becomes Deadpool after an experiment in genetic manipulation gives him enhanced abilities and healing, but scars his body. Wade goes into hiding to plot his revenge against the villainous Ajax, AKA Francis (Ed Skrein), and his army, who tortured Wade and kidnapped his girl, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin).
Worse yet, Wilson’s bloodsoaked antics attract the attention of canting goody two shoes X-Man Colossus (fully CG, voiced by Serb actor Stefan Kapicic), who badly wants to recruit Deadpool as one of Xavier’s “gifted youngsters,” but will bring him in if need be.
Deadpool isn’t the first R-rated superhero movie (Blade and The Crow beat it to the punch back in the 90’s), just the first in a long time to break any ground. Which may make R ratings the trend going forward for this type of outing — a sequel is already in the works, and rumors swirl that the next Wolverine will be bloodier too.
R ratings are nothing new for franchise Marvel movies, as shown by Blade, which Ryan Reynolds is very familiar with. Photo/Ace of Geeks
How far they’ve come is lost on no one involved: jokes and winks at the audience concerning X-Men Origins and Reynolds’s past as Green Lantern are scattered throughout the picture.
Breaking from cliche and convention between references and talking to the audience, there are still lingering tropes identifiable with Marvel films — a Stan Lee cameo and a post-credit sequence. Some cues are taken from Guardians of the Galaxy too, namely a soundtrack rife with oldies pop songs.
Tim Miller, a first-timer for features, deserves a lot of credit for the execution of this fourth-wall-breaking, self-referential romp. His name, however, is replaced by a gag in the opening credits of the first scene, a frozen sequence capturing in great detail Deadpool’s brawl in an SUV during a car crash.
It is Ryan Reynolds ultimately who the spotlight belongs to. He embodies Wade to the very last frame, and delivers a performance as sardonic and quip-laden as fans have hoped for.
And why shouldn’t he? Reynolds too is a fan: his ties to and passion for the role go back a decade, before Deadpool was thought of as a viable property.
Like with Ant-Man and the Guardians, lesser-known characters becoming box-office draws that spawn franchises is second nature to Marvel at this juncture. Wade Wilson evidently won’t have a problem riding that wave.
