Much as I don't want to blather on about the terribly dull and only-entertaining-to-medical-professionals matter of my rapidly failing health, it's been a big part of making what should have been an excellent weekend partially shitty and on balance I'd go with decent at best. Migraines are absolute shithouse. Quite a lot of people will tell you they have migraines when they don't. In fact those people are the shittiest of all people because they have no concept of the full misery they're talking about. It sucks that you have a headache, I feel for you. Now try adding nausea, temporary blindness, visual distortions, vertigo and the type of searing pain that the Spanish Inquisition only wish they had access to. For 8 hours. Followed by more visual shenanigans and headaches for about 48 hours afterwards, assuming you get your meds in time. It's literally the worst thing I've ever had to endure, but feel free to bogard that for sympathy you charlatans. Anyway, I've had two in the last ten days so I'm beginning to think my pancreas has been having words with my tender brain meats and now they've decided to join forces to make life just that touch more awkward. Kudos, organs. Alongside a full weekend of stuff, frankly I'm absolutely knackered today and trying to squint past the weird light effects in my field of vision at a screen is proving a touch aggravating to say the very least, but we shall persevere as best we can, because that's just how we roll.
Deadpool 2 then, eschewing the usual clever segues, finally arrived among the same clever viral marketing we got from the first one; this time we got Flashdance and Celine Dion who seems surprisingly game for a laugh. Following in the wake of the Infinity War hype train (which left people a bit cold and indifferent) we were all just basically wondering whether this was a one trick pony or not. Some reviews made exactly that accusation in fact and I was beginning to wonder if we'd already had the one good Deadpool movie we deserved and that maybe we were pushing our luck. Yeah, turns out not.
Granted, there is more of the same; we get the obligatory fourth wall breaks, salty roasts and grossly inappropriate humour but it never feels repetitious. I'll be honest, the first 15 minutes had me worried they might even try and be a bit more serious with the sequel; despite the cartoonish violence going on from the off, there's a really sombre, grim tone to things especially with that WTF moment making you think that the studio interfered and made them do things properly right up until the spoof James Bond opening credits sequence (with afore mentioned Celine Dion track) and suddenly you realise that things haven't changed as much as you'd thought.
Nothing is sacred: everything and everyone is in the firing line from the familiar and entirely justified continued pops at Green Lantern and Deadpool version 1, to both Marvel and DC universes, the back catalogues of the main cast, to their own lazy writing. There are some really nice cheeky cameos that I won't spoil, including a genuine blink-and-you'll-miss-it Vanisher and an unrecognisable redneck. One of the best bits in the movie is X-Force themselves making their memorable cinematic debut (replete with Rob Liefeld foot gag that raised a smirk) and I absolutely think it was the only possible way to do them justice. OK, Shatterstar isn't ginger, so the purists will probably be out in their droves in the same way they were when they found out Domino isn't Caucasian but they can swivel because he's a douchebag anyway and she's awesome. Josh Brolin owns Cable throughout, despite being way too short as Deadpool cheerfully points out and even a fully CGI surprise big bad (no spoilers, aren't I good to you?) works really well and makes his last appearance seem like nothing but a poorly conceived, cast, scripted and acted nightmare. All your returning favourites are back: Colossus is still a preachy do-gooder, Negasonic is still sassy, Dopinder is trying to find his true calling as a contract killer (OK maybe not everything is as you remember it) and although you could argue for a little more character arch from some of them, we're really just here for Deadpool to do violence and rip the piss out of everything.
There's too much here to go through every highlight, but the emergency coke bit, X-Force recruitment and parachute drop and shirt-cocking scene had me in absolute pieces. I don't know whether I'm still just emotionally wrecked from Infinity War, but even when Ryan Reynolds is clowning around at the end during [redacted for spoilers]'s death scene, there are so many feels knocking around, some of them must have fallen into my eyes or something. It's fair to say Deadpool 2 isn't just a re-working of the first but it knows it's audience and it knows it's limits. The action is spot on, Deadpool spends the entire time putting everything and everyone on blast for the shits and giggles, but still has time to learn a moral lesson; it's like a super-violent, ultra-surreal Saturday morning cartoon for adults who refused to grow up but are still salty about the amount of adulting we have to do and how much it costs. Make sure you hang around for the aftercredits too. What self-respecting audience goes to any sort of Marvel movie and leaves when the credits roll? Good luck with that, you're an idiot.
No comments:
Post a Comment