Right from the opening
credits of "Deadpool," it's clear this is not your typical Marvel
superhero movie. Instead of the cast and crew members' names, the actors are
credited as the standard issue roles they play. So, we get a "British
villain," "moody teen" and "gratuitous cameo." There's
even a joke in there about star Ryan Reynolds' failed "Green
Lantern." The last credit tells us all of this is "Directed by an
overpaid tool." That would be Tim Miller, who's created a Deadpool origin
story that's all at once a twisted, self-aware, laugh-a-minute, graphically
violent superhero action romance comedy. It's an impressive reboot of a
character people didn't really seem interested in revisiting following his meh
debut in the blah "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" in 2009.
In fact, Reynolds' own
history as Deadpool is addressed directly and early in the film. In one of the
first of many fourth-wall breaks, Deadpool rhetorically asks who he has to
thank for his own movie. "It rhymes with Polverine," he says. That
line got a huge laugh at the screening I attended last week. Of course it did.
The theater was full of critics and fans who were keenly aware of the fact this
film was made to right the wrongs of the "Wolverine" movie-- and make
tons of money along the way. A sequel is already in the works. After the screening,
I received a text from a friend asking my thoughts on the movie. "Hilarious," I replied. But
then, that "rhymes with Polverine" line popped into my mind and I
texted again.
It got me thinking,
"Is Deadpool too meta for its own good?" The reaction at the
screening that night would tell you the answer is no. Of course, a theater full
of Marvel fans would laugh uproariously when Deadpool asks which Professor X
("McAvoy or Stewart?") is in residence at the X-Men's home base. When
Deadpool figures that Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead are the only two
X-Men to help him because the studio couldn't afford anyone else, it's good for
another laugh. Audiences love it when they're part of an inside joke. The risk
with a meta script, however, is when it becomes so self-referential that it
takes you out of the story and prevents you from becoming emotionally invested
in the outcome. It's one thing when you realize you're watching a movie, it's
another when the characters in the movie are aware of it too. For a meta comedy
classic like "Blazing Saddles" it doesn't really matter. When the
final battle scene literally breaks the fourth wall and spills onto the set of
another movie and Harvey Korman's Hedley Lamarr goes to the Chinese Theater to
check out how the movie he's currently in ends, the film's point about race has
already been made.
One of the most meta TV
shows ever, "Community," perfected the balance of being meta without
sacrificing story or character development. Dan Harmon's fictional Greendale
was populated by fleshed-out characters with real stakes who, every once in
awhile, acknowledged "bottle episodes" and alternate timelines. When
Deadpool commits a fourth-wall break inside a fourth-wall break and proudly
notes, "That's 16 walls!" you laugh, even if it seems like overkill.
That's who Deadpool is. But when another character suggests Deadpool -- in his
most desperate hour -- talk to a mysterious person who just walked in because
"he may advance the plot," it's hard not to be taken out of the story.
But what is that story? If you buy into the surface level origin story -- that
Wade Wilson went to extreme lengths to cure his cancer just to be with his
girlfriend Vanessa -- then, yes. It's hard to argue that all the fan service
and wink-winks don't get in the way of
that. But "Deadpool" isn't "The Notebook."
It's an introduction to
a unique character we haven't onscreen before: an antihero that's part Batman,
part Joker and, yes, part Wolverine. But as good that movie sounds, it's
Deadpool's self-awareness that turns the film into something better-- a
superhero movie freed from the genre's conventions, unapologetically violent,
crude and, ultimately, unexpected.
