Deadpool 2

Deadpool opened in theatres in 2016 unsaddled by expectations and riding on a high from several fantastic trailers; becoming a massive box office juggernaut filled to bursting with crude, biting, gut-busting humour, meta touches and drenched in the blood of cartoonish ultra-violence it set the stage for the inevitable sequel with very different, that of a studio expecting another commercial hit and possibly trepidatious about the wide appeal of their product.

Directed by Atomic Blonde‘s David Leitch from a script by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Green Lantern‘s Ryan Reynolds, no one needs to worry, as Deadpool 2 blows the gates off the joint, setting its own course for success. Irreverent, gross-out humour, break-neck action sequences, smashing cameos, and with more of an eye towards winking meta nods, the film is its own beast in every sense of the word.

For those who need a refresher course, Deadpool, played as designed by fate by hunky, human cartoon and former Canadian television star Ryan Reynolds, was the story of Wade Wilson, an off-beat superhero blessed with immortality following a series of brutal experiments disguised as treatments for cancer.

Left hideously scarred by the process (can Ryan Reynolds ever actually be hideous?) and presumed dead by his lady love Vanessa (the equally gorgeous Morena Baccarin), Wade set out to get bloody, quippy revenge against the ones responsible for his sad fate, teaming with a hilariously watered-down version of the X-men and eventually reuniting with Vanessa, going off into the sunset together, presumably for their own happy-ever-after, which is where the curtain rises on Deadpool 2.

Following a blood-soaked opening where Deadpool is on the hunt for criminal elements on an international level, the film turns to Wade and Vanessa in the midst of planning the next step in their relationship: expanding their little family. It’s no spoiler to say that life intervenes to delay their plans, and thus begins the bombastic, balls-to-the-wall exercise in outrageous hilarity and over-the-top violence the audience has come to expect from Deadpool even before the requisite Bond pastiche title sequence.

Through complicated circumstances Deadpool is teamed with what are apparently the only X-Men characters available for franchise use, the stodgy, terribly digitally rendered Colossus (played once more by Stefan Kapičić) and the teenage-moody, newly lesbian Negasonic Teenage Warhead (a much more glammed up Brianna Hildebrand) to look into an out-of-control fire-generating mutant Russell Collins (Hunt for the Wilderpeople‘s Julian Dennison) at an orphanage.

Of course, Deadpool doesn’t play well with others and things go sideways pretty quickly, landing Wade and Russell in a mutant-centric prison where they fall into the crosshairs of time-travelling killing machine Cable, played by this summer’s big-bad of choice Josh Brolin, just seen in Marvel’s box-office juggernaut Avengers: Infinity War.

On the run, Deadpool decides to prove that he can be a team player by starting his own team of mutated misfits which he brands X-Force, the break-out star of this little gathering being Domino, the luck-based mutant ass-kicker played with spirit by Atlanta’s stunning Zazie Beetz, her character shining through even though her first engagement her powers exhibit as a montage of terrible tumbling digital artefacts, the effects work in general patchy throughout the film.

Deadpool’s first film considered something of a risk, the canvas is extended here with epic extended battle scenes and what follows is a series of chase sequences and bone-crunching fight scenes, some of them running together and causing the movie to lose a bit of steam, but the train rights itself more than enough to stay entertaining and engaging, generating more laughs per minute than any other comedy film year to date along the way, Reynolds a reliable centre on which to hang a multi-million dollar superhero franchise.

Knowing its place on the edges of the X-Men franchise, Deadpool 2 is more closely tied to that extended universe than the first film, though Deadpool’s outsider status and the higher certification of the film allow him to explore places the other films never could until Logan broke down that barn door, Deadpool proudly marching through and calling his own soundtrack choices in a vulgar crowd-pleaser of broadly splattered blood with some killer shots aimed at a very specific audience in one of the most entertaining mid-credit sequences a superhero film has yet to offer.

Deadpool 2 is now on general release and also screening in IMAX

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