Deadpool and Wolverine is finally hitting theaters soon. The long-awaited team-up has fans foaming at the mouth and the box office ablaze with potentially record-breaking numbers. As such, now seems like as good a time as any to revisit the first two Deadpool movies to see how this franchise got started and how well they hold up.
It’s easy to forget this given both previous films’ success and the current cultural omnipresence of Deadpool and Wolverine, but there was a time when a Deadpool movie seemed like an impossible pipe dream. Various attempts at an adaptation of the beloved fourth-wall breaking anti-hero had been stuck in development hell for a decade before leaked test footage finally got the first film green-lit in 2014. So after all that time, did the final product live up to the hype? Let’s discuss.
Deadpool (2016)
Wade Wilson, played by Ryan Reynolds, is a killer for hire until he falls in love with Vanessa, an escort played by Morena Baccarin, the only person he’s ever met to have as traumatic a backstory as he does. All seems to be going swimmingly for the happy couple until Wade is unexpectedly diagnosed with terminal cancer. Desperate to find a cure and to avoid Vanessa seeing him as a shell of his former self, Wade volunteers for an experimental program run by Ajax, played by Ed Skrein.
But it turns out Ajax, or Francis’, idea of experimentation is to torture Wade in an effort to forcibly awaken his mutant genes and then sell his services to the highest bidder. And though Wade’s cancer is technically cured by the mutation, it leaves him horribly disfigured and unable to face Vanessa. In an effort to fix his face and enact his vengeance, Wade adopts the vigilante persona of Deadpool to track down and kill Francis; coming into the crosshairs of the X-Men. Or rather just Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead since, as Wade points out, the studio couldn’t afford anyone else.
After the bad guys kidnap Vanessa, Deadpool, Colossus, and Negasonic team up to confront them on a legally distinct crashed Helicarrier. During Deadpool’s fight with Francis, he learns that Francis lied about being able to fix his face. At which point, Deadpool shoots him in the head, much to Colossus’ disappointment. Deadpool and Vanessa then finally reunite and fall in love all over again as “Careless Whisper” plays us off. And then Deadpool shows up dressed like Ferris Bueller in the post-credits to tease Cable for the sequel because of course he does.
It’s honestly kind of astounding how well the first Deadpool still works as a standalone movie. The intercutting of origin flashbacks with the present day revenge storyline helps keep the pace up and obviously, the film is extremely funny. Even after all these years, I still die laughing at stuff like Deadpool’s timeline crack or Colossus saying that the X-Mansion blowing up “builds character.” And that humor works so well thanks to the combination of Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s brilliant screenplay and Ryan Reynolds’ expert improv skills and generally pitch-perfect performance as the titular anti-hero.
On top of that, the action sequences are outstanding; working within the limitations of the film’s lower budget and taking advantage of the R-rating to produce stellar and appropriately gory fight scenes. The “Twelve Bullets” sequence alone is just incredible filmmaking. But more importantly, the film has a shockingly strong emotional core. The relationship between Wade and Vanessa feels authentic and sweet and you’re genuinely rooting for them throughout the whole movie, helping to ground the wacky humor and bloody action in a deeper, more human story.
Deadpool was an unparalleled success when it first released. It received a surprising amount of wins and nominations during awards season, even becoming the first comic book movie to be nominated for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) at the Golden Globes. On a budget of only $58 million, it made over $782 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing X-Men movie and highest-grossing R-rated film at the time. The film also opened the floodgates for other R-rated comic book movies such as Logan or The Suicide Squad. And of course, that success meant a sequel was inevitable.
Deadpool 2 (2018)
Wade Wilson’s mercenary career is going better than ever and so is his relationship with Vanessa. The two are even planning to start a family together. Until the former henchmen of Wade’s targets break into their apartment looking for revenge, killing Vanessa. Consumed by grief and an unattainable desire for death, Wade ends up being recruited by Colossus as an X-Men trainee, alongside the returning Negasonic and her girlfriend Yukio.
The team’s first mission quickly goes sideways when Wade realizes the mutant child Russell, whom they were sent to apprehend, is being abused by the facility they were supposed to send him back to. As a result, both Wade and Russell are sent to a maximum security prison before they are inadvertently broken out by the time-traveling Cable, whose come back to kill Russell before he starts the murder-driven dictatorship that kills his wife and daughter.
Wanting to give the kid a proper chance, Wade forms a crack team of mutants called X-Force to rescue Russell from a prison convoy before Cable gets to him. Unfortunately, every X-Force member besides Deadpool himself and the luck-powered Domino is horrifically killed in a skydiving accident before they can do anything. And while they prevent Cable from killing Russell, they only do so because Russell escapes with the Juggernaut to kill his former headmaster; the event that sets off his eventual dictatorship.
Realizing he can’t take down the Juggernaut by himself, Cable agrees to help Deadpool and give Russell a chance before killing him; so the two of them and Domino set off to rescue Russell and the other mutant kids being held by the abusive headmaster. With the help of Colossus, Negasonic, and Yukio, the team is eventually able to defeat Juggernaut and save the kids, but not before Deadpool sacrifices himself; using a mutant inhibitor collar to deactivate his healing factor and letting Russell kill him instead of the headmaster.
However, realizing that Deadpool deserves a chance to live too, Cable uses his final time travel charge to go back and keep Wade alive long enough for them to get the collar off, with the pair forming a found family with Domino, Russell, and also the cab driver Dopinder from the first movie who’s just been hanging out this whole time. Until the post-credits where Negasonic and Yukio fix Cable’s time travel device, allowing Deadpool to go back and undo every major character death in the film, kill the bastardized version of himself from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, kill Ryan Reynolds before he makes Green Lantern, and in the extended cut, kill baby Hitler.
It’s weird to call a big comic book sequel like Deadpool 2 underrated, especially considering it was still very well received and actually made more money than the first one, but that word is still the first thing that comes to mind because I love this movie and think it’s better than the first, but it’s not really talked about in the same way the first one is. Maybe it released too close to Avengers: Infinity War? Maybe it didn’t have enough novelty factor? Regardless of the reason, I think more people should talk about Deadpool 2 because it’s fantastic.
It manages to be even funnier than the first, with stuff like the X-Force deaths and the brilliant post-credits being particular highlights; and the action scenes really up the ante in terms of creative and exciting set-pieces, such as Deadpool’s opening kill tour set to “9 to 5,” all of Domino’s lucky streaks, or the Colossus vs. Juggernaut fight.
But much like the first film, it’s the emotional core that helps make Deadpool 2 feel truly special. Wade’s struggles with grief and death, the way so many of the characters struggle with trauma from being abused, the found family angle, it all works remarkably well and feels shockingly authentic and thoughtful for a movie where a disfigured Ryan Reynolds has to regrow his own genitalia.
In Conclusion
The first two Deadpool movies are quite honestly amongst the best comic book films ever made. They translate the fourth-wall breaking fast-paced wit and surprisingly powerful emotionality of the comics to the screen about as perfectly as you could ask for. The supporting cast is great in both, the action is always excellent, the themes are powerful, they’re genuinely hilarious, and Ryan Reynolds was born to play Deadpool.
Will this upward trend continue with Deadpool and Wolverine? I think so. The trailers look great, director Shawn Levy along with returning writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (and Ryan Reynolds himself) certainly have strong track records, and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine looks to be a perfect addition to the established dynamic. But either way, the first two films are still immensely satisfying-to-watch game-changers for the superhero genre and absolutely still hold up.
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