Deadpool Review - The Superhero Genre Is In Trouble

We open with Deadpool giving us an extended recreation of the "leaked" test footage that got the project green-lit in the first place. It's unashamedly thrilling and deleriously self-aware. Heck, the opening credits alone are going to end up one of the highlights of the year. And for one, sweet moment the film single-handedly extends the life of the genre by ten years; Mr Pool pauses the movie, passes comment on the extreme violence and says to the camera "Surprise, this is a different kind of superhero story."

What happens next? Why, we flashback to the start of the story and get what we've been givenin every superhero movie since (but not including) that original X-Men - anorigin story.

Yup, half an hour into Deadpool he stops the fun so we can get a detailed account of where he came. And while itmay be set up in a funny way thatfeature lots of sex, swearing and jabs at Reynolds' previous superhero outings, it is still an A-B-C origin story. Wade Wilson is a guy (a tw*t of a guy, but still) who faces some form of adversity (in this case cancer, one very PC Spanish joke aside very caring handled) and tries to deal with that. His attempt to deal with it goes wrong, he's betrayed and he goes out to seek revenge on those who wronged him. Wait, isn't this exactly what we've been worn down by over the past sixteen years?

And here's the kicker - despite those thirty minutes of delirious set-up, the film plays it completely straight. There's jokes and gags, sure, but at no point is there an attempt at subversion. Wade goes through sh*t and then becomes a hero. That's it. He is a few broken bones and a collection of f*cks away from Peter Parker. It's a second act lull at first, but then the entire third act reshapes around a familiar damsel in distress plot with those fourth wall jokes now only intermittently dispersed and you realise that the film isn't novel at all, but retreading old ground with a perceptive potty mouth.

I commented to Dan before seeing to film that we'd not actually been given all much from the marketing; there were glimpses of a generic origin, a couple of action sequences and copious fourth wall beats, but that was it. Sadly, for all the talking up of this being "a different kind of superhero story", that's all it is; there may be no Rhino or Doomsday, but I would say the trailers give away too much insofar as the film doesn't have much to give away.

What happened with Deadpool? Click next for the final part of the review.