Deadpool

Seven years later Ryan Reynolds gets to play Deadpool properly, but X-Men Origins: Wolverine is neither forgotten nor forgiven in this uproarious scabrous assault on cliché, and the fourth wall.

Deadpool begins with a credits sequence insulting all the crew (save the writers), and listing not actors but their tokenistic functions (British Villain, Hot Chick). Riffing on Batman Begins’ chronology we begin with Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) shooting the breeze with cabbie Dopinder (Karan Soni) before a massive motorway bloodbath, and get his origin story in flashbacks between arguments with Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) over said bloodbath. Once mercenary Wade Wilson did bad things to worse people for money, hung out in a merc bar run by Weasel (TJ Miller), and hooked up with equally abrasive hooker Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Then, attempting to beat terminal cancer, he said yes to a recruiter [‘Agent Smith’] (Jed Rees), and ended up being forcibly mutated by sadistic Ajax [Not his real name] (Ed Skrein) and Angel Dust (Gina Carano).

And lo, Deadpool… His mask looks like Spider-Man’s but there’s an R-rated lip under it; quipping about genre clichés, and anything else he might want to rip. There’s an Adult Swim vibe to proceedings, think Robot Chicken and The Venture Brothers: sarcastic questioning of the safety of Professor X’s mansion getting the immortal reply [from now Russian Colossus] “Please… house blowing up builds character,” Stan Lee making his most unlikely cameo ever, and Deadpool mumbling “It’s weird. This house is really big but there only ever seems to be the two of you in it. It’s almost like the studio couldn’t afford another X-Man…” FX’s Archer [Corinth is famous for its leather!] is also present spiritually in a festive sex montage [International Women’s Day – Ouchie!] and the abusive Archer/Woodhouse dynamic between Deadpool and his elderly blind housemate Al (Leslie Uggams).

Alas, the Fourth Wall. [And good riddance…] It never stood a chance against Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza’s creation. Imagine Seths Rogen and Green riffing over the first Wolverine and you’re close to how Deadpool feels. Deadpool’s origin is V’s in V for Vendetta, but such rehashing doesn’t matter because this movie knows the perfect Iron Man film would be all Tony Stark, no Iron Man. Deadpool’s fights are nifty, but the draw is the scatological absurdities director Tim Miller has Reynolds and Miller improvise over Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s script. Superhero landings, female superhero costumes, Hollywood; nothing is off limits [“Looks are everything! Do you think Ryan Reynolds got this far based on his acting technique?”]. Especially Hugh Jackman and the first Wolverine; there’s an inexplicable flight deck in a scrap yard in order to parody its finale.

Guardians of the Galaxy sprinkled absurdity over stale MCU story structure, but Deadpool mocks what little structure it doesn’t discard. Not since Wanted has a comic-book movie swaggered so unpredictably, and it’s to be hoped people respond to this the way they didn’t to Scott Pilgrim. We need more.

5/5

Bitten By A Bug That I Love

I’m not a fan of zombie movies, especially movies with fast-running zombies; which I always consider cheating, they’re creepy enough already. So it’s only fitting that I shuffle aside to let a true zombie afficianado have a rant. Elliot Harris, who will no doubt be found holed up in Highbury with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost come the zombie apocalypse, writes:

I suffer from an affliction. While widely known, it’s not understood. Sufferers are frequently a point of ridicule from the media, strangers and friends alike. What is this affliction, you ask? Simple, I love the idea of zombies. There, I said it! I read books and comics about zombies, I watch TV shows and films about zombies, I play computer games about zombies. I’m not some sort of apocalypse waiting/wanting nut-job. Nor am I some sort of society-hating gun-nut. Actually, I’m pretty sure that I’d fall in the first wave. I can’t run very fast or far. I neither own nor can shoot a gun and I’ve no survival skills. What interests me is one simple question, a question with no real answer: What would happen if zombies were anything other than a work of fiction – what if they were real and how would the society react?

OK, that’s really three questions, but, I believe, that they truly go to the essence of a great zombie story. Zombies can be and have been used as a metaphor for society ills – everything from consumerism to the idolism of celebrities. Deep psychological questions can be posed by an author, a film maker, even a song-writer using this metaphor. That’s not to say that everyone gets it. Some look at zombies as the perfect excuse to make shlock about Real American Heroes™ blasting the faceless, unrelatable villain away without having to consider the impact that the use of a gun or a weapon of any sorts can bring. There’s one major problem though; Hollywood simply won’t make a good Zombie film.

Hollywood doesn’t want to make an honest to goodness zombie film. The essence of a zombie apocalypse is that there is no going back. Society has collapsed. Zombiesm cannot be cured. The police, the army, the government can’t help – they’re gone. Numbers of infected way outweigh those who have managed to survive… and even the use of the word survive is a misnomer. Uninfected is a more appropriate word. Those uninfected left, those very few are like prisoners on death row, with no chance of appeal, no chance of pardon. What’s left is a bleak, far too bleak for Hollywood to ever make a film about. It’s simply unmarketable. People want the good guys to win out. Hollywood pushes it to the limit, having society on the very bring with only a 59th minute, 100+ yard ‘Hail Mary’ of a pass to pull things back from the brink.

That’s to say that Hollywood has never made a zombie film, they have. Plenty in fact, but almost all of them suffer from Hollywood’s ‘don’t worry, the good guys won. Now go buy our merch’ shtick. A look at the zombie films of recent years backs this up: 28 Days Later – the zombies starve to death; Shaun of the Dead – the zombie outbreak is quelled; Warm Bodies – zombies start to regress to humans; World War Z – a vaccine is designed to dissuade zombies from attacking the inoculated. The few exceptions of note are Zack Snyder’s early 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead and Zombieland, which was originally planned as and later remade into a TV series, are far outweighed by the junk pumped out year after year.

Good and original Zombie content that that genuine ask the “what if” question, or that play with zombies as a metaphor rather than gun fodder is sadly a rarity. It’s such a shame, because without those “what if” questions, we’re little more than zombies.