Deadpool

Time for some longer thoughts on Deadpool.  Currently the film is performing very well and has already it's taken four times it's relatively modest $56m-ish budget.

It is being suggested that this shows there is an appetite for comic book adaptations that are aimed at an adult audience instead of the typical 12A/PG-13 bracket. I'm not so sure, I think it more suggests there is a market for filthy, crude and violent comedies that have good marketing.

I wouldn't expect a 'straight-laced' X-Men film pitched at an 'R' to perform as well, although admittedly Blade did well enough to produce a couple of sequels but tellingly it was marketed as a horror-action picture rather than a comic book property at time of it's release.

Anyway as for the film itself, Deadpool starts with energy and a high level of imagination with in particularly amusing credit sequence. Although as soon as this sequence ends there is the first signal that the film might not be able to keep up the level of creativity.

This is because the first major sequence is a retread of the test footage that infamously lead to the film being green lit in the first place. It still a fairly striking sequence but you do wonder about why after a few years it's still being re-used.

From here we get the perfunctory entrance of two other X-Men characters who serve to be butt of a few jokes and the disappear again until the final reel showdown before we flash back to how Wade became Deadpool.

Its a standard approach of a desperate man making a bad choice to trust someone dodgy, the issue for me being though that nature of the constant smirking, smutty script doesn't really allow any kind of drama to breathe and in particular it's hard to sense any sincerity in the central relationship when it's basically a string of sex jokes and not a lot else.

Indeed the female characters are very poorly served. Wade's girlfriend is established into the story as a hooker, is kidnapped working in a strip joint and not given much else to do then offer sex or look a bad sad when required. Apart from that we have a teenage 'goth' girl cliché and strong woman who Colossus doesn't want to fight because she's a woman. Neither of which grows at all beyond those very basic outlines.

So when we get to the inevitable "I'm too ugly to face my love" cliché it feels hollow but then I despite being constantly told otherwise I didn't think Wade's scarred face was all that bad.

Meanwhile as the films on it falls into a standard three pattern building to the final reel showdown with an undeveloped villain with very vaguely sketched powers. In that way the film actually matches Marvel Studios own origin story films by having a forgettable antagonist.

In terms of how he plays it, if you seen Reynolds in Blade : Trinity, you know how he plays it. Which is fun for a bit but does start to wear thin the longer it goes on as sadly whilst in comic form Deadpool's ISP of breaking fourth wall is not taken advantage of fully. There are a few fourth wall breaking moments (including a good gag about breaking the fourth wall side a fourth wall break) but I felt so much more could have been made of it. The chance was there to not only deliver a few pop culture gags but really work in some satire on the nature of super-heroes and movie genres.

But having said that I did laugh a number of times and there is cracking joke about our very own David Beckham. I just fell it could have been funnier if they'd stepped back from the crudity a little and approached things a bit smarter.

Oh, the post credits scene is nicely done as is the post post credit one.