Well, the "Is It Overrated?" post for The Dark Knight was pretty popular, at least for my standards of success, anyhow. So let's do another one shall we? In keeping with the tradition of these so far (this only being the second one), we're going to do another comic book movie. Which comic book movie over the past few years has been hyped, seen and hailed as a masterpiece of achievement? Well, Deadpool really. For those who don't know, Deadpool is a Marvel Comics superhero that's known for his wisecracking attitude while he disembowels people with katana swords and blows their limbs off with combat weaponry. Pretty exciting, right? Well I'm about to take all the popular internet opinions of Deadpool and give my own two cents on them. Prepare to be utterly disgusted, internet goers, because here we go!
OPINION #1 - It's the Best Comic Book Movie Ever: Far from it. Again, that's not saying it isn't good, so don't get your panties in a bunch just yet. I've said it before and I'll say it again; comic book movies have come a long way since they started rolling off the assembly line in 2000 with X-Men. Even before that, but much less frequent was Batman in 1989. Before that even was the Superman franchise, starting with Superman in 1978. There's a plethora of sixty or more comic book movies out there to choose from, watch and enjoy...so why was everyone shitting their pants when this movie's first teaser trailer dropped? What makes this movie so sought after over the others ones? What, because Deadpool's character is funny? Give me a break. You could make a comedy superhero movie out of literally anyone else and it'd be just as funny, or you could even make up your own comedy superhero and that one would work too. As for the "best comic book movie ever"? I'm going to have to balk on that. Quite a lot of different and much more artistically pleasing comic book features out there.
OPINION #2 - Ryan Reynolds Steals the Show: Yes, of course he does. He's playing the lead character, I would hope he would at least steal some of the spotlight in certain scenes he's in. He's acting no more vulgar than he has in other movies, especially Van Wilder. So when you watch a lot of Ryan Reynolds movies, then watch Deadpool he doesn't really feel like he's playing Deadpool even though he's clearly on the screen. So is it Deadpool who steals the show or is it Ryan Reynolds? The beauty of this is that it's a mixture of them both, which is why Ryan Reynolds' casting as Deadpool was so well praised and received. He just knows what to do with the character and knows how to make him fun for the audience.
OPINION #3 - The Comedy Was Amazing: If you watch a lot of teen comedy movies from the late 90's, early 2000's like I do, the vulgar, often raunchy dialogue can start to wear thin and you really start to question if anything can shock you anymore these days. Deadpool was no exception for me. I watched it and while I found many bits amusing, nothing was ever "laugh out loud, ribald hilarious" or "embarrassingly and ethically shocking and degrading". "What about the mashed potatoes in his butt?" I watched American Pie where Jim humps a pie because it feels like a vagina. Case closed. There were more subtle things about the movie I found hilarious, like Ryan's one-liners that were not apart of the conversations going on around him. "Oh your poor wife", "Or is that the on switch?", "Cup shot!", "I'm about to do to you what Limp Bizkit did to music in the late 90s!" The other scenes that were supposed to be funny, like all the goddamn fourth-wall breaking, came off as really forced and had a sense of "please laugh, we're funny, we swear". No, let me amend what I just said by saying I never read the Deadpool comics when I was growing up, so I had relatively little expectation while watching it in terms of its comedy. He does have some funny lines and most of which did make me chuckle, but I still didn't think it was 'amazing comedy'. It was just several one-liners strung together by one guy who made situations more amusing and gruesome at the same time. TJ Miller on the other hand was wasted comedy relief. He kind of just sat there, rattled off rehearsed one-liners and didn't really do much. One of the most sought-after comedians in Hollywood and he has to take a backseat to Van Wilder in spandex.
OPINION #4 - Deadpool, the Character, is Hilarious: Yes, he is. He makes all the scenes he's in painless and funny to listen to. As I've said, his use of one-liners is unparalleled and on par with Schwarzenegger, except Schwarzenegger used his to be a bad-ass. Deadpool just used his to act like a frat boy who drank for the first time. I can see why the character of Deadpool was often referred to as "The Merc with the Mouth", because he doesn't know when to shut the fuck up. Half the time I'm chuckling at his dialogue and sexual innuendos and two minutes later he's cracking more one-liners and sexual innuendos and I'm just hoping he'll shut up soon or the scene will change we can take a break. Even during the climax, he made too many pop culture references and one-liners, including a bit where he left his weapons in the taxi that drove him to the final battle.Jesus Christ, there's a time for comedy and a time for action, and Deadpool derails its action scenes with more one-liners, puns, quips and anecdotes than could fill the Grand Canyon.
OPINION #5 - This R-rating Was Absolutely Necessary: Was it? People talk about Deadpool being R-rated like it was the first R-rated superhero movie of all time and the only one that matters. Affleck's 2003 Daredevil movie was almost R-rated, I'm pretty sure at least one if not all of the Blade movies are R-rated. Hell, wasn't there another R-rated comic book movie that came before Deadpool where the characters were wise-crackers, talked filthy and made penis or other innuendo jokes? Oh yeah...Kick-Ass. This movie is nothing new, it was just an excuse to make sure Deadpool could be as raunchy as the studio needed him to be to sell tickets. Let's face it; if Deadpool was going to be rated PG-13, it wouldn't have done as well because kids aren't amused by something that has to feel like it needs censored. The R-rating for Deadpool wasn't required, but it was needed to make the film financially viable. Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing the character justice. So while it's not a new concept to make the movie raunchy and filthy, it really didn't have any other choice.
OPINION #6 - Ryan Reynolds Carried the Movie: Yes, and that was exactly its problem. The other characters? You couldn't even bother trying to reach into your wallet and pull out a couple of bucks to pay me to care about them. Even TJ Miller was a dud, and the fact that he got turned into a dud is still a sin in and of itself. The blind lady? His girlfriend? The bad guy? The two discounted X-Men that Fox could actually afford? You didn't give a shit about any of them. You just wanted to see Deadpool and Deadpool alone. If a scene didn't have Deadpool in it or didn't have any comedy in those scenes, it wouldn't have done well. The entire marketing campaign behind the movie relied too heavily on Reynolds' performance, even to the point of making him do extra-curricular appearances outside of the movie during its promotion just to get the point across that the movie's funny and you should buy a ticket.
Even Reynolds' performance was strong enough to hide the fact that the plot was completely recycled. From what? From literally every single other comic book movie you've ever seen? Wade Wilson's revenge story is so dull and phoned-in as a plot that you even wonder if the writers were even trying. Obviously, this further proves the point that the movie was written around Reynolds and the character he plays. He's as much Deadpool as he is Ryan Reynolds.
OPINION #7 - It Was a Fresh Movie for the Comic Book Genre: Yeeeeeah no it wasn't. Deadpool might've shattered box office records on its release and set up so many sequels that'll no doubt annoy the shit out of us and make our heads spin, but again, in terms of its plot, its dialogue and its action scenes, it's nothing we haven't already seen in previous movies. Deadpool may slice up a bunch of people, drop a lot of 'fuck' bombs and blow holes in people's faces with a shotgun, but is it really the 'breath of fresh air' for this comic book movie boom we're in? No, other R-rated comic book movies have gotten this violent and adult. It's a tough question: Will Deadpool be remembered twenty, forty or even fifty years down the road? Will it sink into obscurity, being remembered as nothing more than a product of its time? It's going to be fun to see. I'll be seventy-four fifty years from now (Holy shit balls), so if I'm still writing in this goddamn blog by then, I'll let you all know how it went and if they're showing Deadpool in my retirement home game room.
So, is Deadpool, the Merc with the Mouth's first major motion picture, overrated? Yes, quite a bit. It's fun, it's amusing, the action scenes do their job and the dialogue can make you choke on your soda, but beside that it's pretty run-of-the-mill naughty comedy schlock. Vulgar words strung together into filthy sentences in the hopes of getting cheap laughs out of you. It's still worth a watch, it's just not "the greatest comic book movie ever made" or "the greatest thing to come down the pike in recent years". We'll see if it remains notorious fifty years from now...
