The second act of Deadpool 2, the sequel to the hyperviolent and potty-mouthed 2016 blockbuster, shows the title character assembling a team of young superheroes to serve as his sidekicks. Such a thing would seem a violation of everything Deadpool stands for. As we learned in the first film (and as you comic-book readers knew already), Deadpool is a mean and selfish loner who doesn’t believe in anything.
But then, in one of the movie’s many Brechtian asides, Deadpool helpfully explains that “we need ’em tough, morally flexible, and young enough to carry their own franchise for 10 to 12 years.” Nor does the gag end there. After the sidekicks are recruited—they include a guy named Peter who has no superpowers whatever but does sport an excellent 1970s ’stache—Deadpool 2 then features a sequence in which (spoiler alert) all but one of them die in comically gruesome fashion largely due to Deadpool’s inattention and sloppiness. Somehow, the sequel actually succeeds in matching the first movie in storytelling irreverence.
How you feel about that irreverence should provide a guide to whether you would like this movie. Deadpool 2 continually deconstructs itself. The only other movie of its kind, I think, is the hilarious and wildly underrated Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which is an all-out, Looney Tunes-inspired parody of the original. Throughout Gremlins 2, characters debate the ludicrous rules governing the emergence of the titular monsters; like, if they only emerge at midnight, what would happen if one of them were on a plane that crossed the international date line? At a key moment in Deadpool 2, as one character attempts to explain how his time-traveling works, Deadpool turns to the camera and says, “Well, that’s just lazy writing.” Later, he travels back in time to the point at which the actor Ryan Reynolds is first reading the script for his mammoth superhero flop Green Lantern (2011) and shoots Reynolds in the head. Ryan Reynolds is, of course, Deadpool.
If you really love the genre, you might be annoyed by this stuff and feel it destroys your ability to suspend disbelief. And to be sure, if you can’t take violence, cursing, or extreme sexual references, this is not a movie for you. As for me, I’m so desensitized by now from the idiocy of superhero plots, conversations overheard on subway platforms, and a horrified reading of 50 Shades of Grey that I accept we’re already living in Idiocracy and will take whatever despairing laughs I can get. And I laughed a lot during Deadpool 2.
Though there are amusing side character bits here and there (one of them by T.J. Miller, the deeply troubled comic actor who is probably going to go to jail for phoning in a bomb threat to Amtrak), Deadpool 2 is a one-man show for Ryan Reynolds, who also cowrote it. He’s dazzling. Reynolds spent more than a decade on the cusp of major stardom as a present-day Gary Cooper who could also do fast-talking comedy. But he never really broke through until he put a red mask over his gorgeous punim, slapped on uglifying makeup (the same process that gives Deadpool his indestructibility also makes him look like he has third-degree burns all over his body), and cracked nihilistic dirty jokes like a strip-club comedian.
The original Deadpool was made by Fox, one of three movie studios in the Marvel comics-to-movies biz. Made at a cost of $58 million, or roughly $250 million less than Avengers: Infinity War, it grossed nearly $800 million. And considering how seriously these companies protect the image of their “intellectual property,” its assault on the genre was so unexpected it was as though someone were screaming, à la When a Stranger Calls, “The attack is coming from inside the house!” But its success also opened the door to a newer, rougher kind of R-rated superhero picture—in particular, last year’s Logan, also released by Fox, a terrific and heartfelt neo-Western about the last days of two X-Men characters. Needless to say, Deadpool 2 begins with a spoof of Logan’s death. Now, if only Deadpool 3 could be set in a universe in which Reynolds goes back in time and blows up the set where they were making Batman v. Superman . . .
