Deadpool 2 takes everything that made the first movie work so well and adds a little bit more spice to it.
When the first Deadpool movie made it to the screens in 2016, it was quite unlike other superhero movies that had been popping up.
Its lead character was not exactly a superhero, he made crass jokes, killed indiscriminately and gruesomely, and made fun of all other superhero movies and their cliches. It was a breath of fresh air with its self-aware brashness.
Deadpool 2 is just as hilarious, unapologetically vulgar and expertly balances the movie’s more comedic leanings with a poignant plot that surprisingly doesn’t drag down the general attitude of the movie or its hero.
Where the first Deadpool was criticised for having a paper-thin plot, Deadpool 2 overcomes that by giving the Merc with a Mouth a more engaging personal stake to battle while also keeping him whole as the smart-talking, violent and vulgar ‘super-hero’.
There’s not much to say about Deadpool 2 without running the risk of ruining its few surprises, but it wildly doubles down on all that made the first movie so much fun with its outrageous fourth-wall breaking, self-referential and expletive-filled humour, and gruesome violence.
Even though Deadpool’s superpower is his indestructibility (and a smart mouth), he finds out in this sequel that he isn’t as immune to losing as he thinks and this leads him down a gloomy path that feels refreshing and at the same time out of place for a Deadpool movie.
His new-found attitude forces him down a path where he assembles his own superhero team to save a new superpowered kid from being killed by a soldier from the future.
This future soldier is Cable (Josh Brolin) who many might forget just played purple intergalactic despot, Thanos, in Avengers: Infinity War but Deadpool, of course, calls him out on this in a tongue-in-cheek manner; and this is one of the things that make him such an irresistible charmer.
Brolin is still the capable adversary here as he hunts down Deadpool and his new misfit friend who isn’t exactly an easy character to root for.
Deadpool is more angry and sadder in this one than you remember but the jokes never fail to slip from his mouth as he torches other comic-book movie rivals in DC and Marvel (there’s a “Martha” joke to look forward to).
This doesn’t mean that all the jokes stick; in fact, just like criticism of the first movie, some of the jokes are numbing after a while but Deadpool’s non-toxic narcissism give it the needed fuel to just pass.
Deadpool 2 also throws up some pretty gross displays of violence that also eventually lead to one of the funniest yet disturbing gags you’ll ever see; it does not know where to stop.
Despite these, the most surprising feature of Deadpool 2 is that it possesses a sentimentality that humbles a narcissist like its hero and deepens his arc in a way one might not expect to be as meaningful as it turns out.
The movie features an array of secondary characters that are mostly pigs fattened up for slaughter while the lucky ones get a decent action setpiece or two.
A longtime X-Men villain also makes a surprising appearance as the bar keeps shifting between who is good and who is truly bad.
In the end, Deadpool 2 is undeniably hilarious, borderline gross and yet so mindlessly entertaining in its own way.
And despite what the Merc with a Mouth insists on a couple of times in the movie, Deadpool 2 is not a family movie.
-Pulse Ng
