I’ve always distrusted superhero movies, mainly because they are so arbitrary.  Superpowers are like magic; the power is always present but the ways in which they are, or can be, used are as enigmatic as a scriptwriter’s imagination.  Superman, for example, cannot catch two rockets headed in different directions, but after Lois Lane drowns in dirt he gets so mad he can fly around the world so fast that the planet reverses course and time retrogrades and she is saved.  Preposterous!  But I digress.

Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), is a bully with a conscience, who contracts cancer.  To survive he undergoes a tortuous process which draws forth his mutant power and becomes self-healing, almost immortal.  Then he spends his time searching for the arch villain (?!) who gave him his power — and turned him from a handsome guy into an ugly one.  He kills more than forty people before the climactic battle, when he saves his hot girlfriend (Morena Baccarin).  This is a superhero movie?

Deadpool is a superhero movie for a new age.  He’s a guy with no limits: he says what he thinks, he kills who gets in his way, and he deadpans many quips along the way.  It’s as if James Bond turned into the Incredible Hulk and tossed away his license to kill because it just wasn’t necessary anymore.  The movie plays like a video game, what with hordes of unidentified assailants ready to be eliminated, bullet by bullet, as Deadpool twists and twirls his way through them like a lethal red-suited ballet dancer.  All accompanied by lots of bloodletting and profanity and sadism and eclectic popular music choices.

Tim Miller’s film has been hugely successful and is a sure thing to spawn sequels.  And while I don’t necessarily think it a bad thing to have a superhero who is decidedly different from the others in the Marvel universe, I don’t find anything about Deadpool super heroic.  Sure, he fights to save super sexy Morena Baccarin, but who wouldn’t?  What has he done to have the X-Men (it should be X-People) want him to join them?  He’s a super smart-ass who enjoys killing people.  Not my idea of a superhero.  ☆ ☆.  28 March 2016.