Everything Deadpool Should Be

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2019)

Deadpool might be the most original and innovative comic book movie yet. Not innovative in terms of the story or most of the characters, but in the execution and the title character, Deadpool. Now, I was not very familiar with Deadpool before this film. I first learned of the character's existence when playing the video game, Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Ever since, I've seen the character hyped-up like mad in the geek community, which surprised me considering I didn't even know of the character until recently at that time.
The first attempted to bring this character to the big screen was in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which did not go over well to say the least. They didn't seem to get the character at all. I didn't even know much about Deadpool then, but I knew enough to know they dropped the ball in portraying him. This film feels very much like an apology for that train wreck.
Well, apology accepted! Deadpool was an extremely fun and exciting film. On the surface it seems like another superhero/revenge movie like The Punisher, Dirty Harry, Deathwish, and so on, but that's not the case.
It sounds incredibly formulaic on paper but it all comes down to execution, which this film does right. It doesn't take itself that seriously. This film is as much a comedy as it is a superhero/revenge flick. In fact, it's more of a comedy. I think it's great how this film can poke fun at all the clichÃ©s of these kinds of films and, at the same time, embrace them. This movie reminds me of the anime One Punch Man in that regard, and it works for many of the same reasons.
This time around, the studio truly nailed what the character, Deadpool, is from the costume to his dark sense of humor. There is no doubt we're going to much more of Deadpool in movies in the future which I'm fine with. It's great that Marvel isn't the only studio that is taking more obscure characters and making them mainstream. I might have to read some Deadpool comics now.
The production values are great as well. The action is top notch, the violence is on point, the effects are great, and it's competently shot. They even got two X-Men in the film which I did not see coming. But they turned out to be welcome additions that brought some good humor and action scenes. These X-Men look more comic book-esc than the X-Men in any of the X-Men movies thus far. In fact, this might be 20th Century Fox's first comic book film that is the closest to being a comic book yet. The closest being the first two (official) Fantastic Four movies.
The film has a couple minor issues for me. There's quite a lot of raunchy humor in the film which I didn't care for. While I know it's a part of Deadpool's character, I'm not the biggest fan of that type of humor. I think it's the lowest form of humor, second only to fart humor. But, fortunately, there were plenty of other jokes to offset it. Most of the other jokes hit, particularly the fourth wall jokes.
Overall, Deadpool is definitely the film the character deserved. The film is not for everyone. If you're squeamish or don't like raunchy humor this is probably not for you. If you know what you're getting into you should enjoy yourself.