************************This review contains mild spoilers****************************
In Deadpool 2, the usually wisecracking, sardonic mercenary is at a crossroads in his life after experiencing sudden tragedy. Looking for purpose, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) briefly attempts to join the team of superhero mutants the X-Men. While on his first mission he meets Russell (Julian Dennison), an angry teenage mutant with the self given nickname Firefist who lives at an orphanage. After the mission goes wrong and the pair end up in a super prison for mutants, Firefist becomes the target of a mysterious, time-travelling mutant named Cable (Josh Brolin). After first abandoning the boy, Deadpool decides that in order to discover his purpose in life, he’ll need to save Firefist. He soon recruits others to help him find and protect Russell.
While Deadpool 2 was a step back in many ways comedically, in terms of its story, what we’re presented with here is a step forward for the franchise. As summarized by the titular hero in the beginning of the movie, Deadpool 2 is about family and the purpose and motivation our loved ones give us to carry on. After losing the family he had been building with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), Wade finds another purpose for his life through Firefist. With assistance from his passed on lover, he realizes that the selflessness contained within love is key for his being able to fill the void created by Vanessa’s death. For Firefist, the union saves him from a life of mindless killing. After having been orphaned and abused, the young boy’s rejection of love occurred not due to any loss of affection but because of a lifelong absence of it. Finding that there were actually adults that genuinely cared for his well-being was a pivotal revelation and an example that being able to receive love is just as important being able to give it. For Cable, by the end of the movie, he finds that loving the family he left behind in the future that he left in order to save means having to remain in the present day to make a better world for them to live in. Through Cable’s choice, we are presented with another key component of love for family; sacrifice.
While I liked the improved story in Deadpool 2, overall the movie drug along slowly and aimlessly until the start of the third act. This problem was more pronounced due to the humor in this sequel not being as good as the first movie. I’m unsure if this was due to the novelty of the self aware, third wall breaking “merc with a mouth’s” novelty having worn off or if the quality of the joke writing simply lacked this time around. Comedy sequels are notoriously difficult to execute well and the comedy present in the first movie did not hold up well to the test of time for many viewers. This conundrum is a bit ironic considering some of the little criticism the breakthrough original Deadpool received in some quarters was the charge of it having a paper-thin, milquetoast story in the service of stuffing in shocking, sophomoric jokes to pacify its audience. Was the trade-off worth it? While I did recognize the simplicity of the first movie’s story, this is a comedic franchise so the humor present must be paramount. The depth of the story simply wasn’t enough to take precedent over what should have been a movie that revolved around its comedy.
The action in the movie was kicked up a notch both in volume and in R-rated gore. The cinematography and choreography of the sequences call to mind director David Leitch’s previous work on John Wick. This improvement in quality of the action scenes helps the movie overall while not quite reaching the same high of its predecessor’s freeway scene. The acting in the movie is serviceable but no performances are awe-inspiring or earth shattering sans for Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead, who continues to be a scene-stealing, criminally underused character.
While Deadpool 2 improved its story and overall action set pieces from the first movie in the franchise, I did expect to laugh out loud more than I did, particularly through the first two-thirds of the movie. While the movie does start off slowly and almost directionless for most of it, Deadpool 2 benefits and begins to soar once the additional characters like Domino (Zazie Beetz), Bedlam (Terry Crews), and Peter (Rob Delaney) appear onscreen. It’s also at this point that the movie’s humor seemed to increase in quality and the story began to cement itself and become more clear. This may be a good sign for the coming X-Force team spinoff movie we’ll be receiving soon. All in all, while Deadpool 2 takes a couple steps forward in some aspects, the movie itself is missing much of the charm and dynamism of it’s predecessor. It’s an average, serviceable movie that most will be apt to forget and never revisit soon after leaving theaters. The fact that its strongest moments are when Deadpool is part of an ensemble may be a signal that the planned detour to having the character as leader of a team than sole focus may be the shakeup he needs to remain fresh.
Image: 20th Century Fox
