With the studio riding high off the back of the worldwide success of Days of Future Past, it was time for Fox to let another of their X-universe characters out to play in a movie all his own. Having done so very badly with the character of Deadpool in their first onscreen adaptation of him in the execrable Origins: Wolverine, could the studio possibly redeem him in a new movie? And would they really commit to the sort of R-rated angle that many hardcore Deadpool fans wanted?

Ex-special forces soldier turned low rent enforcer for hire Wade Wilson is riding high with the girl of his dreams when his life is brought to a screaming halt by a terminal cancer diagnosis. But a last, desperate hope for a cure will backfire horribly, and give the world it’s newest, mouthiest super(anti)hero.

 

Deadpool is, in many ways, a small miracle of a film. Development first began back in 2004, with Reynolds attached to the project, before the character was finally put in Origins: Wolverine in 2009 to the delight of, well, nobody. After that turn, and the disastrously received Green Lantern, it was fair to assume that Reynolds’ chances of being taken seriously in the genre were poor. Let alone his chances of helming a successful adaptation of the character he’d already played to such monstrous response from audiences.

In truth though, Reynolds was always perfect for the role. As bad as the eventual ‘Deadpool’ Weapon XI character was, his early turn in the film as Wilson himself drew praise. Reynolds has the hyperactive screen presence and motormouth to portray the Merc with a Mouth, and that was demonstrated right up to the point where his mouth got sewn shut and he started firing lasers from his eyes. So when some test footage that had been developed for a ‘proper’ Deadpool movie with Reynolds was ‘leaked’ to the internet in 2014, the response from the public was enthusiastic enough that Fox gave it the green light.

The issue of course then became how far the studio would allow the movie to go. Deadpool in the comics exists as a fourth wall-breaking walking satire, commenting ironically on the nature of his own existence and the other characters in the Marvel universe. How much could the studio allow the character to take that venom against his stablemates in a fairly patchy cinematic universe? As it turned out, quite far.

The main quality of Deadpool is that it seems to inherently understand the point that Deadpool himself is a character that can get boring if over-exposed. When you add up the actual screentime that the familiar red-suited immortal merc gets in this movie, it accounts for a fairly small chunk  of the film. By cleverly breaking the narrative flow with various flashbacks, telling the story in a fractured, dislocated fashion, the movie avoids the over-exposure it knows will deaden the joke. Moreover, it avoids the telling of a conventional origin story narrative, which was something audiences were getting increasingly restive about in light of various Batman and Spider-Man reboots in particular.

What that means is that we actually get to see Reynolds do a lot of work sans the mask, and that’s good because as funny as the snark can be, Reynolds is also a genuinely talented actor, and the film gives him a lot to do. Even before he becomes the titular antihero, Wilson is a genuinely intriguing character. He dresses terribly, looks permanently unkempt and does bad things to people ‘worse’ than him for money. But he also demonstrates nuance beyond his apparent carefree, freewheeling exterior. He does jobs for certain people because it’s right, without taking money. Though he meets the love of his life as she’s engaged in working as a prostitute, he never actually treats her in any demeaning way, in fact paying her for a Skee-ball date so they can get to know one another. They then engage in a mutually loving and supportive relationship, which importantly doesn’t involve him asking her to give up her work or even commenting on it. Sure, there’s a kind of assumption that she starts doing other work, but it’s never something the film feels the need to address. Wade – regardless of his protestations of how awful he is – is actually a fairly enlightened millennial gentleman.

That sort of character work is important because it helps us root for him when we see him take the journey to become Deadpool later on. It isn’t that Deadpool’s quest to avenge himself upon the shadowy figures responsible for so much torture and pain on himself and others isn’t justified or sympathetic – it is. But the orgy of violence on which he embarks in order to get there – in which it’s impossible to assume that innocent people don’t get caught in the crossfire – is a harder sell. As is the gleeful way in which he embarks upon it. Put simply, we need to know that there’s a good side to Wade Wilson, however deeply it may be buried, so that we can not just feel repelled by his nastier proclivities. And given that those proclivities are the essence of what the character is, it’s a balancing act that absolutely is required to be done.

But whether one enjoys the film will depend on whether one can enjoy both the massively over-the-top gore as well as the gleefully puerile humour. And when I say ‘enjoy’, the word choice is deliberate – if you can merely tolerate that sort of thing in the service of something greater, then this isn’t the film for you. That’s not to say that Deadpool is just a film that involves gore and nonsense, but it is to say that it takes that R-rating and runs gleefully away with it. At every opportunity to do something gross, the film doesn’t shy away. Whether it’s the series of extremely graphic kills, the constant sexual jokes or the endless stream of profanity, the film really wants you to know just how very anarchic it is.

That, in itself, is actually a key part of the cleverness behind the screenplay. The film wants to be anarchic, and desperately tells you over and over again that it is. But no amount of toilet gags and decapitations can hide the slickness of a fairly boilerplate superhero script. Hero is established. Hero suffers misfortune. Hero gains powers. Hero sets off on journey to avenge himself on those who caused him pain. His enemies capture his girl. He rescues his girl. Roll end credits. Even the elements unique to this particular picture – the deformity of Wade and his concern that Vanessa can no longer love him for example – are lifted from any of a thousand other stories. Deadpool shouts so very loudly about what a naughty, subversive piece of filmmaking it is so that maybe you won’t notice how conventional it is beneath it all.

Not that this is a criticism – conventional stories become conventional because they work, after all. It’s not so much the story you tell as how you tell it. Deadpool starts with the odd jumps back and forth between the ‘present’ and the past, and adds buckets of graphic violence and gore and gratuitous profanity. But what makes it live are the performances.

Fiction has its great couples. For me, it’s Gomez and Morticia, for you perhaps it’s Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, or Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund. I would submit Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson and Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa to this list. The chemistry shared by the pair as they meet and fall in love is absolutely spot on. Their frankly appalling game of one-upmanship is the sort of couples shorthand that feels real, rather than something someone scripted, and the only shame is that the script doesn’t let us see more of them.

But the other cast have an important role to play too, and it is simply this – they all, with the exception of Reynolds, play it absolutely straight. Sure, it’s a daft premise, and it tells a far-fetched, ridiculous story, but the only way that story (and Wade’s character) can work is if everyone takes things seriously. Deadpool is the only character who breaks the fourth wall at any time, and every time he does so, those around him either don’t notice, or just assume that he’s talking to himself. His constant asides to camera and pop-culture references that could only be directed at the audience (‘Which one, McAvoy or Stewart/ These timelines are so confusing..’) are treated by everyone else as just some verbal tic. Perhaps even a symptom of his instability. This is vital, because if everyone else joined in on the joke, it would quickly fall flat and the film would lose all momentum as a narrative. Instead, Reynolds’ constant motormouth rambling proves a unique selling point that helps to elevate the standard story the movie seeks to tell.

In terms of its visuals, it really is quite incredible how good the film looks considering its relatively meagre budget of just $58million. Again, the film does make some clever choices in this regard to hide some shortfalls in available budget – Wade’s constant ‘forgetting’ of his guns or ammo for example. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that from the opening credits freeze frame version of the action scene we’d all seen in the leaked footage to the final battle, the visual FX and stunt work on display are impressive. That action scene on the highway in particular wouldn’t look out of place in a much higher budget, more mainstream project, though the film does manage to use that one set piece several times throughout its length, indicating that perhaps a lion’s share of the budget went in that direction.

And as for how savage it’s willing to be with regards to the franchise of which it’s technically a part, the answer is about as much as you’d expect given that it’s the same studio. Yes, Wade applies many colourful adjectives to his descriptions of the X-Men and superheroes in general. Yes, he references more than once the budgetary constraints of his own film, and the silliness of the genre in general. But again, the jokes feel very much as if they were carefully hashed out with the studio (which of course they were) and for all its ‘look at me’ anarchic stylings, the film never really feels like it’s pushing the boundaries it might want you to think.

As an entry in the Fox X-Men canon, Deadpool is an oddity. It doesn’t try to do anything to advance the overall plot of that franchise, preferring to stick with the self-absorption of its main character. Yet it so constantly references that franchise (and indeed uses two characters from it – at least one of which will be familiar to casual fans) that it can’t be set aside as some ‘offshoot’. Whether the X-Men like it or not, Wade lives in their world, and makes a big mess while he’s there. But he also provides a lot of laughs, a more faithful take on his own source material, and a palate cleanser in what was becoming a rapidly saturated genre. That was good enough for me at the time, and it still holds up just fine now.