REVIEW: Deadpool’s jaw-dropping action scenes cannot compensate for its corny humor and predictable plot.
By Brandon Byrne, Staff Writer
Marvel Studios is beginning to take a new direction in its filmmaking with the creation of the extremely gory and raunchy movie, Deadpool. Deadpool tells the story of a man named Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) who has just been diagnosed with a terminal stage of cancer. Desperate for a cure, Wilson accepts treatment from a mysterious man who takes him to a facility that will supposedly cure his cancer. In actuality, the facility alters subjects’ DNA, turning them into mutants with amazing abilities, who are sold as slaves to the highest bidder. When he is made a hideous mutant by a scientist named Francis (Ed Skrein), Wilson vows to escape and force Francis to turn him back to his previous state in order to return to his fiance. The beginning of the movie is very interesting because it combines love, origin, and revenge into a unique start, but the rest of the plot goes downhill from here.
The only highlights of Deadpool were the action scenes and the initial plot. Deadpool hit the ground running with spectacular action scenes full of acrobatic maneuvers that dazzle the eye. Each scene is composed of a massive conflagration of gunfire and martial art maneuvers that are quite the sight to behold. It has many grotesque scenes with very graphic gore. There are limbs severed, heads blown to mulch, and a scene where Deadpool even severs his own hand. However, all the action scenes are laced with Deadpool’s crude jokes and sexual innuendos, which detracted from the movie.
Deadpool’s attempted comedic aspect came off as obvious and basic. A vast majority of Deadpool’s humor relied on hackneyed sex jokes and profanity. It felt like I was listening to a thirteen-year-old boy who thought that any reference to sex was funny, so it got very dull very quickly. However, there is the occasional exception. Deadpool did make some funny situational remarks, and some of them involved him breaking the fourth wall. For example, he would acknowledge that he is in a movie, which created situations for good jokes that mocked Marvel Studios or those who made the movie. In spite of the few funny remarks, there are too few to call Deadpool a funny movie.
Deadpool had a very predictable plot, which was another major issue. Initially the plot was intriguing because the story would switch back and forth between the past and the present in which Deadpool was chasing Francis. This is a very interesting way of telling this story because the movie starts out very quickly, and one only understands the movie by slowly piecing together the origin story. Nevertheless, by the time the origin story is over, the viewer immediately knows how the story will conclude which makes the rest of the movie very boring.
Deadpool seems to be the beginning of a new genre of Marvel movies that includes an anti-hero with a lot of profanity. It may have been a good idea originally, but it was not well executed. It had a lot of sexual humor that was very straightforward and transparent, and therefore not funny. On the other hand, the creative action scenes were very enjoyable. Each one was a blur of movement that featured Deadpool jumping around taking down one guy after another that was beautifully orchestrated. Sadly though, it wasn’t enough to to compensate for the movie’s predictability of plot. It hit the ground running with an alluring beginning, but it didn’t stay that way for long. Between Deadpool’s basic humor and plot, it is certainly a third rate film.