shelidonMarch 5, 20161 Comment on the Deadpool Lottery

Those of you who’s been following me around from before the BIM era already know this: I’ve been a Deadpool fan for ages, way before the movie announcement. And have I ever been wrong about something? I mean when it’s important. I mean… ok, ok, there was that thing, I know, but we’re not talking about that, are we? We’re talking about comics, here, and I have never ever been wrong every time I told you something was worth your while. Just remember this guy. Or this thing.

Anyway, it pains me to tell you that I was right this time as well.

I know, I know, it pains you too.

But trust me, Deadpool is everything you expected it to be. From the wonderful intro titles, which credit the director as something like “a guy who’s been paid too much”.
Yes it’s foul-mouthed and yes, it has tits and asses and sex scenes dripping down from the very beginning to the very end.
And yes, yes, it most definitely is not a movie to take your average superheroes fan 10-years-old child, although he might turn out to be alright after that.
It’s Deadpool, right down to the bone, including interactions with public and with the camera. Including disorientating effects, blood and gore, racist jokes, absurdities. It’s Deadpool including wit, craft and genious on behalf of the writing team (really the real superheroes here). Although there’s really nothing to say about the story (guy looses face and gets superpowers, leaves girl, girl gets kidnapped, guy kicks asses, happy ending), I really do have to spend some words on the way the story was put together. Expecially because I know it won’t get much credit elsewhere, since this is a superhero movie and a silly superhero movie. Well, the work writers did was amazing. Back and forth, from Wade Wilson to Deadpool, from before and after, in a swing that you don’t see everyday and sure as hell you don’t see in an Origin movie. And yes, this is an origin movie, though you’ll find yourself wandering out of the movie theatre wondering what the heck is it that you just witnessed. And this is right, it’s the very same feeling you get from reading comics.
Some of my favourite sequences?
Aside from the Calendar Girl one I’ll mention later, you just have to remember the birth of his costume. Yes, the first Spiderman movie tried something like that, but fell very far from where this sequence is landing, even managing to be consistent with the whole idea of having a red costume so you don’t have to wash it when you bleed. I’ll have to remember that.

Some of the best reviews of this movie are here and here. Or you can keep reading mine, in case your mouse broke down.

– Characters –

When you watch Deadpool as a Marvel comics reader, your main question about characters will probably be “who the heck is this guy?”. It’s a very wrong question, because it’s true: characters from this movie are a work of fiction, and any resemblance with real characters (meaning from the real world and from the comic books world alike) is to be regarded as a coincidence. Sounds about right, in a movie where the main character knows to be in a movie, just as much as his comics counterpart knows to be in a comic book. I’m a little rusted, so I won’t be able to tell you the exact background of each character you see. But I’ll sure as hell give you everything I have on them.

1. Ajax (or should I say Francis?)
I’ve been reading a lot of ill things about Ajax, Ed Skrein‘s villain, expecially in Italy. Only because he’s been dubbed as someone straight out from Hanna & Barbera, it doesn’t mean I disliked him. There are of course no Ajaxes in Marvel’s comic books: that would be way too dumb even for them. Oh, no, wait, there is. And his real name is Francis. Francis Fanny (no kidding) was the enforcerer at the Workshop, Doctor Killebrew’s laboratory, where the made Weapon Xs (plural, yes). He is responsible for Deadpool’s birth, even in comics, although the process involved some heart-removing procedure which wasn’t possibly going to fit in a movie. He’s not as good-looking as Ed, in comics, and we are indeed very grateful for the change. Expecially when shirtless.

2. Angel Dust
In comics, Angel Dust is nothing like Gina Carano. She’s a Morlock of little interest, your average runaway young mutant, with adrenaline-powered boost resembling super-strenght.
Her fight with Colossus (more on that later) is one of the funniest and most clever scenes of the movie. Probably the first time I see epicted something I would expect to happen each and every time a gal with prosperous curves fights bare-handed while dressed in a tight spandex suite. Gina’s acting is clever and natural, you can very much forget she’s acting (leave alone the fact that she’s acting againts a digitally-created character). And of course angel dust is the friendly name for Clenbuterol, used to cure breathing disorders, so it really makes sense to see her working with Francis’ hyporbaric chamber. Very well done.

3. Negasonic Teenage Warhead
She’s Grant Morrison’s Ellie Phimister. And she’s definitely not. Ellie was one of the worst possible characters created by one the worst things that ever happened to… ok, ok, I’ll not start again with my Morrison-killing spree, just let me take my medicines. Anyway, NTW was one of Emma Frost’s pupils (her name obviously coming from Monster Magnet), she was a fragile Genoshan psychic who died in Cassandra Nova’s attack, later revived by Selene’s Transmode Virus during the Necrosha’s storyline. In the movie, she’s portrayed by one Brianna Hildebrand, more goth than emo, she has Cannonball’s powers and lots of Jubilee’s attitude and looks. More than a new character, she’s like a mash-up of everything Young X-men writers have been getting wrong with teenage superhearoes in the last decades. And just as it happens with meatballs, you can take lots of wrong things, mince them and take out something really nice. She possibly can’t turn out to be your favourite character, unless you have something for young girls who produce controlled telekinetic detonations, but her pairing with Colossus (more on that later) surely works.

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4. Colossus
Our favourite Russian mutant gets a treatment lots of people didn’t like, but in my not-so-humble opinion I think he turned out to be a character he couldn’t possibly aspire to be chen surrounded by all those Wolverine-Cyclops-Beast testosterone. And since he’s a character mosly based on testosteron, writers worked in the only way they could possibly work: they stripped him of any masculinity, so the X-men are really the good guys, in the naivest possible way. He doesn’t approve killing, he doesn’t approve sex, he can find something positive to say about everything (including the fact that the occasional bombing of your school helps you to build personality). He’s so sweet you would hug him if you could reach him. Or punch him really really hard where you can reach him.

5. Vanessa
No objections, even if she’s really not the Vanessa we are accustomed to. In comics she’s Copycat, former X-Force, with shape-shifting powers. Here, she’s a civilian but everything else pretty much stays the same: she’s a prostitute and still her hook-up with Deadpool is very well-written. Their Calendar Girl sequence is one of the most romantic I have ever seen (ok, maybe romantic is not the right word but you get my drift) and a very clever way to show time passing by.
Also, it is the sequence where mothers dragged their children out of the movie theatre, teaching them that it’s ok to blow people’s head of but it’s not ok to see a girl naked. Wow. They’ll turn out to be amazing young adults, I’m sure.
Anyway, I hope this Vanessa gets her happy ending as well (and a chimichanga stand of her own). She’s played by Morena Baccarin (Gotham‘s doctor Leslie Thompkins, The Flash‘s Gideon or at least her voice, and of course Inara Serra in Firefly): she’s good-looking in the right way, and she does a decent job at it, though I was expecting a little more.

6. The merc with a mouth
Ok, here we are. Do you remember Wolverine Origins? Yeah, I know, you’ve been trying to forget that and so have I. Still, you must remember that this movie is not only the movie we’ve been waiting for per se, but also Ryan Reynolds‘ road to redemption because he was Wade Wilson also in that horrible 2009 thing in which he turned out with stitched mouth. The only silly thing he did back then was accepting that role. Here, he’s perfect. As if he spent the last decade reading Deadpool comics to make up for his past mistakes. He has perfect body language, which really is everything when you spend half the movie squeezed in spandex (and I quote literally). He has great mimic. And is really really good in the few dramatic sequences he has to pull off, which obviously wasn’t easy. His stunts are the perfect mix of fight and dance, his shooting style is perfect. And you might think it’s not that important but I say it damn right is, in an action movie.

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– Soundtrack –

We know it by now: you can’t make a silly movie without a silly soundtrack. Still, this movie does a reverse job if compared to Guardians of the Galaxy. There you had Blue Swede and David Bowie, and Jackson 5, and the Pina Colada Song. Here, soundtrack is really really what you would expect from a badass superhero movie. Only, it gets mostly used the other way around. And so, you have a romantic pop song (Juice Newton’s Angel of the Morning) in the opening tracks where a guy screams out a cigarette lighter and heads are swirling around unattached, and the final confrontation song is named after a book with rabbits. Most of the tracks are big-beat electronic music by Dutch musician Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL, and they would perfectly fit in something way darker than this. Then you have rap (Dark Man X‘s song X Gon’ Give it to ya and Teamheadkick‘s title track), Salt-n-Pepa Shoop, and George Michael too because why not. My personal favourite is the rabbits one.

Sorry about your mouse, anyway.