Deadpool 2 is Deadpool, but…bigger. It magnifies everything from the first film, for good or for ill. How you feel about Deadpool 2 is going to depend on if you wanted ANOTHER helping of Deadpool or a BIGGER helping of Deadpool. It’s great if you wanted the latter, but maybe a bit too much if you wanted the former.

Story Time with Wade

The plot this time is a little harder to parse.

Wade makes a living as the best contract killer in the world. Then a target he missed follows him home and ruins his life. Wade tries to end it all, but Colossus finds and reassembles his dismembered corpse. Colossus talks Wade into becoming a member of the X-Men, which goes wrong almost immediately. Wade ends up in a prison for mutants, where he finds a troubled young mutant named Russell. Cable, a mutant soldier from the future, appears and tries to kill Wade’s new charge. Wade decides he must save Russell from both Cable and from Russell’s own dark destiny, while also coping with his own personal problems.

Most of that happens in the first 40 minutes. This film moves FAST, and it’s less an overarching narrative and more a string of vignettes that all end with a punchline. The story feel very fragmented, especially because each fragment has radically different content and tone.

X-Force

One of my absolute favorite aspects of the film is X-Force. On the comics, X-Force is a group of mutants who are less a superhero team and more a squad of paramilitary operatives. They have a a long and storied history as a counterpart to the X-Men. They are introduced in Deadpool 2 as Wade’s plan to free Russell from a prison transport.

Bedlam (Terry Crews) has the power to short out electricity. Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgard) can spit acid. Shatterstar (Lewis Tan) has general superhuman abilities. Vanisher (Brad Pitt, yes, really) can turn invisible. Peter (Rob Delaney) has no powers. Domino (Zazie Beetz) is lucky. These characters (and the actors) are recognizable, exactly the kind of castings you’d expect for a potential franchise.

All but one of them is dead within ten minutes of their introduction.

They die gruesomely to various wind-related accidents. Only Domino walks away. It’s an amazing gag that comes mostly out of left-field, especially given their prominence in the marketing campaign.

That being said, it’s an entire ten minute segment of the film that is mostly just a setup for a punchline.

Women In Refrigerators

Deadpool 2 kills off Vanessa in the first fifteen minutes of the film. One of Wade’s targets follows him home and shoots her. But then Deadpool 2 does something that many stories in the genre don’t. It lets Vanessa continue to be relevant. She appears to Wade in visions throughout the whole film. Her character still remains an active force in the film. And then, in the end, Deadpool 2 resurrects her.

Similarly, Cable’s entire motivation revolves around Future Russell’s murder of Cable’s family wife and daughter. They also get resurrected, but in such a way that they don’t directly impact the narrative at all.

Once again, women are fodder for the character arcs of men. I still hate this trope. I still think it’s lazy and overdone, beyond the moral content. That said, Deadpool 2 handles it better than a lot of its peers, and they do actually undo it. It’s a mark against, but not a huge one.

New Characters

There are three new characters that actually matter.

Cable (Josh Brolin) serves as the straight man to balance out Wade’s behavior. Brolin does a fine job, but the character is a little underwritten here. That may be because they didn’t want to get into Cable’s history too much, given how convoluted it is. Seriously, don’t crack open that Wikipedia page unless you’ve got an afternoon to burn.

Russell AKA Firefist (Julian Dennison) serves as the focus of the film’s conflict. He’s an orphaned kid who got a bad upbringing, and is at great risk of breaking bad. Making sure that doesn’t happen is Wade’s goal for much of the film.

And then we have Domino (Zazie Beetz). She’s easily the most fun of the trio. Domino’s entire shtick is that she has superhuman luck. She’s affable, she’s confident, and I hope we see more of her in the future.

Production Design

Deadpool 2 is a contender for best stunts and fights in a superhero movie. I really mean that. From the electric opening montage featuring Dolly Patton’s 9 to 5 to the huge convoy setpiece in the middle of the film, Deadpool 2 understands how to build an action sequence. The biggest reason why is the cinematography.

It’s not often I go out of my way to talk about the cinematography in these movies, but Deadpool 2 is gorgeously shot. The early sequence where Wade chases a man down on the rain is absolutely beautiful. All the action sequences are superb, but Deadpool 2 put in work in the dramatic scenes as well.

I also still think the costuming in this series is underrated. This franchise has low key had some of the best X-character designs in the entire Fox subsection of Marvel films.

The music doesn’t work quite as well this time around. They really seemed to think they were gonna get more mileage out of the dubstep jokes.

Conclusion

I really, really enjoy Deadpool 2. Honestly, I do. But I can’t rank it super high.

The problem is that it’s not…cohesive. It doesn’t mesh super well. The plot is a little disjointed. It has more home run jokes, but it also has more strike outs. Deadpool 2 gave me more Deadpool, but what I really wanted was better Deadpool.

Accordingly, I’m going to put it right in the middle of the pack in my now-finalized (for real this time) X-Men Rankings.

Unless, of course, New Mutants eventually comes out.

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