Can something be counted as a spoiler if it literally happens in the opening minutes of the film? No? Not even if it’s huge and sets up practically the whole character arc for the main character of the movie? What do you mean, “that often happens”?
Oh, screw it – let’s just dive right into the fun and action-packed Deadpool 2. And we open this ‘family’ feature in appropriate style – with the wise-cracking man himself, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), having one last cigarette before he decides to take the longest nap on a bed made from oil drums. Very flammable oil drums. And just as he is blown into wonderfully hilarious smithereens, he takes us back six weeks to show us all in his natural Fourth Wall-breaking style how all of this came to pass.
It is then revealed to us that after working as a mercenary for two years, Wilson fails to kill one of his targets on the evening of his anniversary with girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). After the couple agree on trying for a family, the target and his henchmen burst in, fighting Wilson and killing Vanessa. We’re then taken back to the present, where the mutant Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapičić) discovers Wilson’s body parts and insists on returning him to the X-Mansion to recover. As a form of attempted healing, he then joins the X-Men (as a trainee, they’re very quick to point out). His first mission with Colossus and fellow mutant Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) is to de-escalate a standoff between police and a young mutant, Russell Collins, otherwise known as Firefist (Julian Dennison). When Wilson realises that the boy is being abused by the orphanage workers who are in charge of him, he kills one of the staff members and attempts to do the same to others. He is then fired from his trainee position with the X-Men (well, duh!) and is arrested with Collins. The two are stripped of their powers with collars that negate the effects, and are taken to the “Icebox”, a secure facility for dangerous mutants.
Meanwhile, sometime in the future, a cybernetic soldier named Cable (Josh Brolin. Yep, if you’re into the MCU you’re not getting away from this guy any time soon) finds his family murdered and travels back to the present day. He attacks the Icebox with the intention of finding and killing Collins. In the fight that follows, Wilson manages to get himself and Cable away from the prison, but Collins is moved with a lot of the other prisoners in a transfer. Determined to save the boy from Cable, Wilson is prompted to form the X-Force, made up of Domino (Zazie Beetz), Bedlam (Terry Crews), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgård), the Vanisher (an unexpected cameo that I will leave nameless), and Peter (Rob Delaney).
Together, this ragbag team must stop Cable from carrying out his plan, rescue Collins, and form the family that Wilson tells us about. It is, oddly enough (and I will insist on this), indeed as full of love as it is violence. From Wade’s longing to die to be with the woman he loves, to Collins’s insistence that he has no one in the world, to Cable’s desire to avenge his family, every action performed is one made out of love in some fashion. And it is clear that the film was made with the same amount of love, as well as more than a dash of good (but dirty) humour, plenty of sharp and snappy action scenes (the opening fight set to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” is a killer in more senses than one), and jam-packed with real world and pop culture references. If this movie doesn’t prove as popular with audiences as the first did, I won’t know what to tell you – I loved it just as much as the first, and (gasp, shock, horror!) as much as Avengers: Infinity War. Though I must also state that I loved the latter for different reasons to Deadpool 2, even if Josh Brolin’s magnificently rugged face appears in both.
Stay for the mid-credits scene (like I have to tell you guys!), but there is no end credits scene this time around. This has been a Public Service Announcement.
*Exiting bedroom into a hallway, wearing a white shirt and robe, Ferris Bueller-style*
You’re still here? The review’s over. Go home!
by Hannah Deakin
Big Lens Film 