Deadpool (2016) - Written Review

Honestly, I'm not very well acquainted on the character of Deadpool. Aside from his appearance in the much-hated X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I've only become vaguely familiar with Deadpool since this movie was announced. Therefore, I find myself looking at Deadpool completely objectively with no prior knowledge about the character.

Deadpool follows ex-soldier Wade Wilson, who is diagnosed with cancer, persuading him to leave his girlfriend and join the Weapon X program. However, leader of the program Ajax performs a variety of experiments on Wilson to awaken his recessive mutant genes, giving Wade super-healing abilities but also charred skin. In an effort to try and fix himself, Wade escapes the facility and hunts down Ajax, now with the name Deadpool...

Put simply, Deadpool is unlike any superhero movie we've seen before. Not only is it one of the few 15-rated ones, but it is also the only one to break the fourth wall. Deadpool constantly acknowledges the audience, and the way the film is structured means that he is essentially telling the audience his origin story through flashbacks. It's all quite cleverly structured, giving the beginning of the movie a big action scene and then dealing with the set-up and a majority of the plot in small doses over the film. It's hard to tell whether this structure works at all. Like Man of Steel, once the flashbacks end, the film kick-starts its third act and then ends not long after, meaning that all you really get from the movie is the origin story.

This isn't helped by the fact that Deadpool has an otherwise non-existent plot. Once the origin is out of the way, it's Deadpool hunting down Ajax. That's it. There are other elements to the plot, of course, but that is the main narrative with no twists, no surprises and nothing to add. Now, simplicity often leads to complexity in movies, particularly origin stories, but in the case of Deadpool, once you've taken out the jokes, you have barely anything of a film left. In fact, if this movie was played straight, it probably wouldn't be nearly as long as it is. Wade Wilson doesn't undergo a dramatic character arc, there is nothing learnt about the villain, and the love interest is barely in it.

This leads onto Deadpool's other problems. Ajax - the villain of the piece - is boring. Don't get me wrong, the actor is very good, and certainly has a certain menace to him, but when we don't even know what he's doing in the current segments of the film, why he's doing it, who exactly this guy is, if he's tied to Stryker from the X-Men movies or not, or anything about him...how can we find this character interesting? I'm used to origin movies having bland villains, but when you don't even know why the villain is the villain, it just seems like poor writing of a character.

Guardians of the Galaxy was criticised for Ronan the Accuser being a really dull villain, but at least you knew why he was attacking Xandar and what threat he posed to the Galaxy. With Ajax in Deadpool, he's just...evil. Because, you know, reasons...

Oh, and Ajax's sidekick - Angel Dust - has pretty much nothing to her either.

Then we have the love interest - Vanessa, played by Morena Baccarin. Now, Baccarin and Ryan Reynolds have fantastic on-screen chemistry, to the extent where you can really believe the romance between the two characters, but otherwise I have nothing else to say about Vanessa. She becomes damsel in distress in the third act and pretty much follows the superhero love interest trope a little too well for my liking. She wasn't a terrible character, but there was nothing to her, meaning that when Vanessa is moaning at Wade for leaving her, you can't empathise very much with her character.

The real standout of the show though is Ryan Reynolds as the titular merc with the mouth. He's having so much fun on this movie and puts 100% effort into every single scene he's in. His performance is surprisingly layered, and despite most of the time being the centrepiece for all of the jokes, the film does genuinely make him an empathetic character. Wade's transformation is a terrifying scene to watch, and you really see why he is so twisted and almost psychotic in his hunt for Ajax.

There are also the additions of sidekicks Blind Owl and Weasel, who are fun supporting characters who have some great little moments with Wade, but the only other characters to talk about are Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. While it is odd that Colossus is played by a completely different actor and looks very, very different from his X-Men counterpart. I would assume that Deadpool and X-Men are set in the same Universe, but this just confuses things. Anyway, we do have the addition of Negasonic Teenage Warhead, who despite an incredibly awesome name and pretty neat powers...has nothing to her character. Deadpool pretty much sums her character up in their first scene together and the movie just rolls with that.

Now, I'm not saying that Deadpool needs to have real depth to it, with incredibly complex characters and a thought-provoking narrative, but aside from Wade Wilson, all of these characters lack depth. That's pretty much this movie in a nutshell - style over substance.

That's not to say that the script is bad, though. There are some great lines of dialogue, if one joke falls flat there'll be another one in the next minute that'll make you laugh and there are some creative moments throughout, but the plot and characters are quite thin.

Director Tim Miller really impresses her though. The action sequences are incredibly well-staged, and the whole film has a wonderfully distinct visual style. Many movies nowadays follow similar visual aesthetics, but Deadpool just takes everything straight out of a comic book and puts it on screen, resulting in a very colourful and stylistically impressive film. The visual creativity on display here and amazing, and I love the opening title sequence.

The music by Tom Holkenborg is very good, and manages to develop its own very unique style that blends in almost seemlessly with all of the song choices throughout the film. Holkenborg seems to be growing in popularity for film composing, and his score for Deadpool is a clear indication that his sudden surge in popularity is for all the right reasons.

Overall, Deadpool is the definition of style over substance. There's lots of jokes, awesome action sequences and a fantastic central performance to hold the whole thing together, but when you begin to focus on a character who isn't Wade Wilson, you realize how bland they are, and the plot is so basic that when summed up, it's amazing that Deadpool is as long a film as it is. Is this movie bad? No, but I don't think it's great. It's worrying that when writing this review, I've found more and more problems with it. When I walked out of the cinema, I would have given this film a 7 or 8 out of 10, but upon acknowledging Deadpool's flaws, I realize that this is just an average movie that distracted me from its problems during its running time, but now looking back and applying thought to the film, really isn't that great.

In summary, Deadpool is kinda average. It's not bad, not great but works as an entertaining and funny time at the cinema. I just wish there was more to it.

I give Deadpool a 6/10.