Several box office records. An amazing rating on IMDb. Another equally amazing one on Rotten Tomatoes. Most of the comments posted on the net, including the criticism from my colleague Mikel, coincide in praising the risky bet from Fox. And the expectations grew disproportionately with each minute that one got closer to see ‘deadpool‘ (id, Tim Miller, 2016) to obviously lead to the inevitable question: “is it so good?”
The answer, in one word: YES. Which ryan reynolds —main instigator of the project—, Tim Miller and Fox have achieved with this film rated “R” in the United States, it is the beast and adult equivalent of what Marvel achieved shortly before with ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ (‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, James Gunn, 2014), that is, that a second-rate character kicks the ass, in this case, the production company’s first-rate heroes who are the mutants sponsored by Bryan Singer. ‘Deadpool’ is available on Disney+.
‘Massacre’, the comic
Created by Fabian Nicieza and Rob! a year before the terrible cartoonist moved in next to Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri and jim valentino to that new home that was Image, the publishing future of Masacre, beyond the four volumes that its regular series has published up to now —with almost three hundred issues between all of them— has always been subject to the little confidence that Marvel has had in the character and, in recent times, to the infinite cosmos of miniseries that the publisher has put into circulation.
Own joe kellyprobably the writer who best knew how to understand the mercenary with a mouth and who, throughout approximately thirty issues, developed what everyone agrees is the most solid stage of the character —something to which the drawing of Ed McGuinness—, he expressed himself like this when he referred to Marvel’s lack of commitment to the talkative and foul-mouthed mutant:
With Deadpool we could do whatever we wanted because everyone expected the show to be canceled every five seconds, so no one was paying attention to it and we could get away with it.
With the breaking of the fourth wall as the most identifiable characteristic provided by the screenwriter —a quality that has continued to be exploited in almost all of the titles that have been starring Wade Wilson—, the current editorial excess towards the character by La Casa de las Ideas has caused, or at least this is how this editor perceives it , an extreme impoverishment of an antihero who would deserve something more than the mediocrity that usually roams freely through the pages starring him.
So much so, that of all that I have been able to read with him swarming through the cartoons —and it has not been little, I can assure you—, I would only stay with ‘Wade Wilson’s War’a hilarious miniseries drawn with enormous alacrity by Jason Pearson; that oneThe version with a marked noir mood that was ‘Pulp’ and, at least in what it has been up to now, the adventure that is crossing its destiny with the wall-crawler.
‘Deadpool’, a joke and bullshit every ten seconds
After having had to contemplate horrified the wrong direction it took, not just its inclusion in the film, but everything that concerned that forgettable production that was ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ (‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, Gavin Hood, 2009), since knowing how easy it would have been for his participation in the tape not to be limited to the bullshit which finally was, there was a great desire to see if Fox would have them well placed to approach Massacre as it had to be done.
And he has had them. Wow if she has had them. so much that he has ended up building a tremendously atypical vehicle that challenges the viewer not to miss a single detail of what is happening on the screen from the opening credits on pain of not noticing any of the hundreds of jokes and visual or verbalized references that, as I say, already begin in that long minute on which the parade of “names” that make up the main artistic team of the production.
To the rhythm of the eighties ‘Angel of the Morning’ and without a single proper name appearing in the superimposed letters —all the credits are resolved with jokes about the members of the film— what follows is the spectacular set piece that we had already seen in those first minutes that helped Miller and Reynolds to convince Fox of the viability and the great potential that the project contained.
Starting the tape with a sequence that constantly breaks with flashbacks intended to introduce the main characters —the English villain, the gorgeous morena baccarin and the two mutants who “are the only inhabitants of the X-Men mansion”—, is nothing more than one of the peculiarities of a film that swims against the current and that, in doing so, positions itself as the most original that has been projected with the seal Marvel on the big screen (until then).
Politically incorrect to inconceivable extremes for what we could see in a film produced by Marvel Studios — especially since they are under the protection of Disney— the wild and unbridled humor that is put into the mouth of the verbiage that the protagonist wastes is one that covers all the possible range of atrocities that one can imaginefrom tacos to mansalva to explicit violence going through what is in between.
And what remains are countless sexual jokes —the scene that follows the meeting between Wade and Vanessa and the year they spend is priceless, as Michael Douglas would say, “fucking like lions”—, two thousand references to popular culture —impossible to begin to account for all of them but pay attention to those that refer to the Marvel movies— and a narrative flow that, By allowing the viewer little rest, he ends up making the footage very short.
Undoubted added value to the experience that is already ‘Deadpool’, this brevity does not prevent you from fully enjoying some well-described and developed characters —what they do with Colossus is priceless— and, above all, a protagonist who in the hands of Ryan Reynolds is a constant reason for amazement and admiration; there is no doubt, without him the tape would not have been the same.
Being essential to be able to properly assess the great work of the interpreter to see the film in its original version —I don’t even want to think about the damage that the dubbing will have done with many of the puns that truffle the tape— that, to top it off, the projection end with a tribute to ‘All in a day’ (‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, John Hughes, 1986) is the finishing touch that was missing to make ‘Deadpool’ a film like no other in the world of superheroes in cinema. Pure genius.
In Espinof: