Deadpool (Movie)

So I just saw Deadpool (finally). I enjoyed it overall, but I found it lacking. I think mostly because it went as far as they dared for Deadpool, which if done all the way, would have been NC-17, at least (I don't think it can go higher). It was a fun action movie where they broke the 4th wall, but it ended up being a super hero romance movie, IMO. Ryan Reynolds was less Deadpool psycho and more just unfiltered.

As with a lot of other movies, I enjoyed it, not as a Deadpool movie, but rather Deadpool inspired character. In ways, Colossus felt more true to his comic book counterpart than Wade Wilson did.

What did you guys think?

Enjoyed it allot. Preordered to own. Cabt wait for number 2 with Kira knightly as Cable ;-).

She does have a lot of range.

This was the first time they actually got Colossus right...and it wasn't completely Deadpool, but it was definitely better and closer than their first attempt where they sewed his mouth shut.

It was a great movie, though, in my opinion. Definitely gonna own it when it comes out.

I loved all the little (and sometimes not-so-little, very on the nose) jokes, like the action figure of the first Deadpool rendition.

It was alright. The best part of the movie was the opening sequence (the whole 20min or so of it, right up until it was 'caught up' on the timeline).

While it may have been 'right' Colossus really grated on me (the final monologue was the 'nail in the coffin' so to speak). It felt really out of place to have a Sunday morning cartoon X-Men character as a contrast to Deadpool. It just struck as trying to hard to emphasize how funny and edgy Deadpool is. To make a poor metaphor, it felt like: "look how sharp this knife. Now, look at this ball of play dough! Isn't that knife sharp?!"

And, because this kind of thing can, for me, ruin an otherwise good movie, woman play nothing but a supporting role; and in fact hardly even that. To put it succinctly, the movie fails the Bechdel test (no woman says something to another woman that isn't about a man). The female characters are, quite literally, set pieces, for Deadpool to love, save, and make jokes about.

While I agree with Candi that the movie failed the Benchdel test, and that is potentially a problem, it seems pertinent to note that this was primarily an action film about a guy. The female cast made up 4 of the 8 main characters (I'm counting Weasel and Al as "Main Characters" just to be clear. I understand that designation could be argued.) As it was written, they had no chance to interact and talk about anything do mainly to the actions of the protagonist and the antagonist.

Wade ran away from Vanessa (who was the only female character for most of the film). Angel might have interacted with Vanessa after kidnapping her, but as the henchman to the big-bad, what could they possibly have talked about other than Wade or Ajax? In the time frame they had on screen together, I feel anything else would have been forced. Negasonic Teenage Warhead was also in conflict with Angel and had no reason to chat with her. Al never met anyone but Wade and Weasel because Wade wanted it that way.

In the next movie I totally believe Vanessa and Al could have a workable relationship outside of their connection with Wade and thus pass the Bencdel test. There is also rumor that they intend to give Wade a boyfriend/same-sex partner. I'm hoping that they reveal Vanessa is actually Copycat, the shapeshifter, and then we get into the topic of "What is gender when you can choose?" and that this boyfriend is actually Vanessa in a different chosen form. Or that Wade thinks its Vanessa in another form and doesn't care. That would make an interesting development in the character.

So, yes, the women in this movie border on "set pieces" but I think that is a flaw in the overall concept and conceit of the character. Now that they have established a few details about Deadpool, we can expand on the world around him. Al and Vanessa being the ones to make it into the next script.

As for the rest of the film, I was overall pleased. They managed to take a complicated and overly worked character and boil him down to his essential qualities. The writing was pretty good. I don't think Deadpool is for everybody though. It has to be written by the right person/people for me to care. I admit that the screenwriters and Ryan Reynolds are my cup of tea though, so I didn't have any issues.

The NC-17 rating may have allowed it to be even funnier, but I think that would be asking for too much. Not even the comic goes into NC-17 range (unless I've missed an arc or something). R is pretty good spot. It was strange for them to cover up Angel's breast even though they new it was an R they were shooting for, but it was funny for the reason of Colossus being a gentleman. I don't feel like Deadpool needed more gore either, he has never been one to torture or maim just for the love of gore (again, depending on the writer) so I thought the violence was fine. They could have pushed it more and still not gotten the NC-17 in my opinion, but didn't "need to".

I am looking forward to the next one, but I haven't made up my mind, they could ruin the momentum if they aren't careful.

I don't buy these kinds of post-hoc justifications for a failure to actually give women meaningful roles in film. The fact is it was written to be the way it is, and nothing prevented it from being written otherwise (it is fiction after all). That it was written this way means a decision was made (either explicitly, to implicitly in that the writers never considered the possibility of writing a female character in with a meaningful role). Hollywood doesn't get a pass from me on this front, especially in the context of an entertainment industry that routinely depreciates, and underplays, the value of women.

For what it's worth, the Bechdel-Wallace test is an extremely low bar for any media to surpass.

Thanks for that insight, Candi. I'm also in the camp of trying to be cognizant of the tropes used in entertainment.

Edit: I should note that failing to pass the Bechdel-Wallace test doesn't necessarily mean a movie is automatically bad, much in the same way that passing the test automatically makes a movie good.