"Doing The Right Thing Is Messy. You Want To Fight For What's Right, Sometimes You Have To Fight Dirty..."
With Avengers: Infinity War concurring global box office domination for the past four weeks or so, it seems only fair that another highly anticipated superhero sequel should try and chip at the financial willingness of a 21st century, comic-hungry audience, and whilst that sequel this week is of course Deadpool 2, it comes at no surprise that Marvel, and more unsurprisingly, Disney, feel the need to make even more eye-watering sums of cash with yet another hot release. I mean come on, it almost feels like yet another Star Wars should be coming out soon, right? Right? Swapping mass universal destruction and gut wrenching superhero genocide for the 15 rated oeuvre in which 2016's Deadpool graced its' successful presence, Deadpool 2 swaps original director, Tim Miller, for Atomic Blonde and unaccredited John Wick director, David Leitch, as it attempts to build on the meta-referencing, fourth-wall breaking shenanigans of its' predecessor and proving the joke of R-rated comic book carnage isn't as one note as one might expect. With the original Deadpool described in my own review as "not amazing, but enjoyable nonetheless" and a movie which "goes in one ear and carves its' way out the other in the most violent and adolescent way possible", it's ironic how such sentiments echo the feeling of its' sequel, a movie which takes the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 approach of playing to its' predecessors strengths and attempting to expand upon them to successful degrees, and whilst Vol.2 never was going to match the success of its' respective predecessor, Deadpool 2 does manage to complete such a task and whilst Leitch's movie still isn't on the same level of excellence as other Marvel alternatives, it's still a expletive laden ride.
With Ryan Reynolds (Life) returning as the invincible and titular figure of Wade Wilson, the added inclusion of 2018's man of the year, Josh Brolin, as the time travelling, futuristic cyborg killer, Nathan Summers/Cable, is undeniably one of the more pressing reasons for the sequel's existence, but with Brolin's superbly crafted digital performance of Thanos in Infinity War setting a new bar for superhero villains, it's surprising how little character development Brolin's Cable is afforded in the movie's extended two hour runtime, resulting in his character somewhat lacking in memorability even when Brolin is as cool and imposing as ever. With an added level of sentiment within a Looper inspired narrative, particularly aided by the inclusion of Hunt for the Wilderpeople's, Julian Dennison, the tonal shifts between shock value comedy and gut punching loss does not work well at all, with the early death of an important character not entirely suiting the film's overly silly sensibility, but with at least eighty percent of the quickfire puns and sharp, slick in-house references resulting in effective laughs, Deadpool 2 feeds the paying audience exactly what they want without ever stopping slow enough to fall out of the carnival-esque state the movie straps you into, and with solid enough action and comedy set pieces, a quickfire editing pace and a combination of brilliantly designed pre and post credit sequences, Deadpool 2 is flashier, more experimental and much more rewarding that its' first incarnation, but too a movie which begs the question how much longer the joke can be stretched out before it begins to feel slightly tiresome. I'm sure the box office will have the final answer on that one.
