Let's talk about superheroes. Men, women, and deformed creatures in colourful costumes have been a core part of our popular culture since the 1930s, and throughout time they've adapted accordingly. It makes sense that Superman was the most popular superhero of his day - an era between, during, and immediately following a war would, of course, appreciate a strong-jawed hero to represent American patriotism at its finest. Likewise, it's no surprise that Batman dyed his hair black and began drawing skulls in his diary around the 1970s and 80s, when America was going through one of its more troublesome phases. The 90s were the last gasp of comic book nerd originality, whereas the 2000s saw these heroes burst into the mainstream with a string of high-budget Hollywood renditions - again, it's no coincidence that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man topped the box office less than a year after the September 11th attacks, when the world was in more dire need of superheroes than ever.
But where are we now? Having established gargantuan "cinematic universes", where electing to not follow the convolutions in a multi-billion-dollar "timeline" is seen as more subversive than reading the comics in the first place, the dual threat of Marvel and DC have overloaded our senses with superheroes of every calibre. The divisions seem clear; in Marvel, we have the standard A-list Avengers lot in Iron Man, Hulk, Capt. America, Thor, et al, and the equally star-studded X-Men, whose films continue to straddle the awkward line between individual personality and numbingly tedious special effects; whereas in DC we have the darker, grittier sorts of Batman, Superman, and the soon-to-be Suicide Squad, whose attempts to construct drama of Shakespearean grandeur are somewhat undermined by the bulges in their spandex.
Then we have the niche sorts, the outliers. Last summer we had Ant-Man, the film that shot itself in the foot by replacing a director with genuine talent - Edgar Wright - with a numbingly tedious one - Peyton Reed - and whose subversions were dwarfed by an adherence to the almost authoritarian formula of "the origin story". And now we have Deadpool, a film that could almost be Ant-Man's X-rated cousin, and a film whose attempts to be "different" (sorry, I'll stop with the scare quotes) are crippled by a similar sense of timidity in its narrative.
Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, a motor-mouthed mercenary who makes his living intimidating bad guys for money. One day he meets stripper Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), a sort of wish-fulfilment, fetishised reflection of himself, and the two fall in love - though their happiness is impeded by the discovery of cancerous growths throughout his body. Wilson volunteers for an experimental treatment, but he's betrayed by a one-dimensional British villain. He acquires superpowers that make him invincible, but he loses his chiselled good-looks in the process, instead becoming a scabby mess.
But never one to resign himself to his (not entirely terrible) fate, Wilson dons a stretchy red suit and calls himself Deadpool, and starts murdering goons in pursuit of revenge against his nemesis. Along the way, he tries to crack a joke every three seconds, his material stretching from fart jokes to fourth-wall breaking digs against X-Men to more fart jokes. It comes across as being in the room with a cocaine-addled 15 year old trying to be edgy - the emphasis, really, on "trying". Most of its humour derives from ironically pointing at tropes in superhero narratives, then doing them anyway, as if thinking of an alternative was just too hard.
Nevertheless, I have to admit - somewhat guiltily, I might add - that some of its scenes come quite close to hitting the mark. There's a nice montage after Wilson meets his amour that covers a year in their relationship, that's a bit like the kitchen table scene in Citizen Kane but with more penetrative anal sex. Ryan Reynolds has always been an actor without a clear purpose, but he gives a good, committed performance, his enthusiasm for the material growing to infectious levels at times. And while I could have done without some of the offensive-for-the-sake-of-offensive jokes, others really are quite funny - particularly those that satirise Reynolds' star image - and suggest that there is a tangible niche in a film that makes fun of the ubiquitous superhero narrative.
But then again, it never goes far enough. Deadpool repeatedly makes fun of boy-meets-girl romances, but it's played almost entirely straight here, its standard journey and resolution, where the Damsel in Distress is rescued from the Evil Villain by the Hero with Character Development, shining through its plethora of dick jokes. Deadpool calls himself an anti-hero, but he follows a boilerplate superhero's journey - which is maybe the point, his word-vomit personality masking a neurotic instability. Yet it's all too reigned in, as if the bigwigs at Marvel were afraid that, if the audience listened too hard, they wouldn't go and see Thor 4 or Iron Man 5: This Time There's a Robot Dog!
If you're happy to have your brain cells beaten into a pulpy mess, then by all means go and see Deadpool. Indeed, you'll probably laugh, remember a few good lines to share with your friends. But don't expect anything more, and don't think about it too hard - otherwise, you might start to wonder if this was all a bit of a wasted opportunity.
★★½
