Review: Deadpool's Origin Story Subtracts From Its Action & Comedy
- Feb 3, 2018
- 2 min read
After the failure that was Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds reclaimed the role by producing and starring in his own film based on the popular character. 2016's Deadpool was an origin story loaded with more fourth-wall-breaking humour and in-jokes than your average season of Community. But its runtime was a little too short, as the character's wacky persona suffered from far too much reality being introduced by the origin story.
Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is a contract killer who meets his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) while she's working at his favourite secret bar as a prostitute. But after being diagnosed with cancer, he accepts the offer of a strange man to participate in a program to cure him, which turns out to be a superhuman slave farm which tortures people in order to activate dormant mutant genes. He gains the ability to heal from anything, but it leaves him disfigured. He escapes the compound, and being too scared to confront Vanessa while looking like he does, creates a supersuit and begins to track down the man who caused it, Francis (Ed Skrein). With the help of the X-Men's Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), he must save his girlfriend from Francis.
The plot is extra simple and incredibly effective, but at the end of the day, it's a movie about an immortal badass assassin who kills without remorse and cracks jokes while doing so, with an incredibly low amount of this happening. Ryan Reynolds' portrayal of the character is, frankly, perfect, but his only real time to shine as Deadpool was in the one action sequence towards the start (which drags on throughout the first half of the movie, in between origin stories). The "12 bullets" scene in question was, without a doubt, one of the coolest and funniest action scenes of the year.
Deadpool is, more than anything else, a comedy film. It does so incredibly well - I can't remember a film in recent years that I've found as funny as Deadpool, especially the self-aware opening credits and the constant references to Ryan himself. But it's also an origin story, which is something that no-one really asked for. It's an entertaining one, but I still feel like it wastes far too much time that the film could have spent on real Deadpool action.
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