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jackI really liked it. Especially the first half an hour or so is exactly the blend of humour, action, frivolous and serious I like. It manages to make deadpool seem both intimidating and effective, but also whimsical and willing to charge into impossible odds.
Deadpool is notoriously edgy, in good ways and bad depending on his mood and the medium he's portrayed in. His whole schtik is doing bad things to bad people -- he openly admits that's not really ok, but that it also does good by getting bad people out of the way.
There's two problem with "edgy". One is, it normalises kind-of-sympathetic-but-not-really-ok behaviour (like mafia movies, etc). The other is, it often turns out what's a *little* shocking to some people is incredibly horrific to other people. Like, you joke about something you're thinking but it's not really polite to say. If everyone else is in the same place, that's edgy. But it turns out depressingly often that lots of people had a thin veneer of politeness over a steaming stew of unresolved bigotry, and when they breach the walls a little, they tell jokes about graphic violence being done to people who are trans, or who are sex workers, etc, because their main association for that is "I can't say that at work or people will glare at me", whereas the people who are actually personally being threatened, there's not really a grey area of edgy, it just screams past into horribly personal.
You know, like cards against humanity. *Some* of the cards are very well judged forays into the mildly risque, encouraging people to push the boundaries their group are comfortable with. Too many were just "mildly shocking to B, gratuitously personal and hateful to A". You notice, there's lots of jokes about killing people NOT in a stereotype of the game's expected demographic, less so about people who ARE. (They have somewhat improved matters, I hear. And if you take out the horrible cards and replace them with more open-ended less overstated more specific to your friendship group ones it's really quite a great game.)
Here, the film is more progressive than many films in several ways. Vanessa is a sex worker, and that's just portrayed as her job, and she has quite a lot of agency, her actions drive a couple of key scenes. She's not a victim for the protagonist to rescue, nor is she overly sexualised. Deadpool is pretty pansexual. That Deadpool's flatmate is treated as a character. That's really good and one of the reasons I like it!
But there's also a bunch of failed-edgy stuff. Sure, it's not unrealistic than Deadpool would be insultingly bigoted. But it doesn't fit what I want from the character! I didn't want to write out a whole list, but I couldn't stop myself, it was sort of depressing. Jokes that if you lose your home and live on the street with no amenities, you smell bad. Jokes that people shouldn't have sex once they're old. Jokes about abusing children. Jokes about people being trans.
And *actually* kidnapping someone because they're interested in someone you have a crush on (who apparently likes them and not you). How is that better than stalker-pizza-guy??
And a couple of other things which weren't bad but could have been better. A sex worker choosing to mix business and pleasure isn't bad (at least she was shown taking the initiative) but is generally a bad idea, and encourages other people to do the same, which is bad.
And Deadpool flirted a lot with men, but it would have been nice if he was openly bisexual/pansexual and ruled out the idea he was mostly het but liked making flirtatious jokes because it was funny (which would be ok, but a wasted opportunity).
Minor nitpicks
I think the "only budget for two x-men" joke would have been funnier if there had been some extras milling around in the background, but only two *speaking* X-men :)
His face was kind of disturbing, and definitely a big problem for being accepted into society, but it didn't seem so bad people who already knew him couldn't get used to it. I'm not sure i would have enjoyed it if it was more horrific, but it would have made sense for the film.
And it's not surprising *he* didn't think of this, but since Ajax lied about everything else, maybe someone else *could* fix his face.
Deadpool is notoriously edgy, in good ways and bad depending on his mood and the medium he's portrayed in. His whole schtik is doing bad things to bad people -- he openly admits that's not really ok, but that it also does good by getting bad people out of the way.
There's two problem with "edgy". One is, it normalises kind-of-sympathetic-but-not-really-ok behaviour (like mafia movies, etc). The other is, it often turns out what's a *little* shocking to some people is incredibly horrific to other people. Like, you joke about something you're thinking but it's not really polite to say. If everyone else is in the same place, that's edgy. But it turns out depressingly often that lots of people had a thin veneer of politeness over a steaming stew of unresolved bigotry, and when they breach the walls a little, they tell jokes about graphic violence being done to people who are trans, or who are sex workers, etc, because their main association for that is "I can't say that at work or people will glare at me", whereas the people who are actually personally being threatened, there's not really a grey area of edgy, it just screams past into horribly personal.
You know, like cards against humanity. *Some* of the cards are very well judged forays into the mildly risque, encouraging people to push the boundaries their group are comfortable with. Too many were just "mildly shocking to B, gratuitously personal and hateful to A". You notice, there's lots of jokes about killing people NOT in a stereotype of the game's expected demographic, less so about people who ARE. (They have somewhat improved matters, I hear. And if you take out the horrible cards and replace them with more open-ended less overstated more specific to your friendship group ones it's really quite a great game.)
Here, the film is more progressive than many films in several ways. Vanessa is a sex worker, and that's just portrayed as her job, and she has quite a lot of agency, her actions drive a couple of key scenes. She's not a victim for the protagonist to rescue, nor is she overly sexualised. Deadpool is pretty pansexual. That Deadpool's flatmate is treated as a character. That's really good and one of the reasons I like it!
But there's also a bunch of failed-edgy stuff. Sure, it's not unrealistic than Deadpool would be insultingly bigoted. But it doesn't fit what I want from the character! I didn't want to write out a whole list, but I couldn't stop myself, it was sort of depressing. Jokes that if you lose your home and live on the street with no amenities, you smell bad. Jokes that people shouldn't have sex once they're old. Jokes about abusing children. Jokes about people being trans.
And *actually* kidnapping someone because they're interested in someone you have a crush on (who apparently likes them and not you). How is that better than stalker-pizza-guy??
And a couple of other things which weren't bad but could have been better. A sex worker choosing to mix business and pleasure isn't bad (at least she was shown taking the initiative) but is generally a bad idea, and encourages other people to do the same, which is bad.
And Deadpool flirted a lot with men, but it would have been nice if he was openly bisexual/pansexual and ruled out the idea he was mostly het but liked making flirtatious jokes because it was funny (which would be ok, but a wasted opportunity).
Minor nitpicks
I think the "only budget for two x-men" joke would have been funnier if there had been some extras milling around in the background, but only two *speaking* X-men :)
His face was kind of disturbing, and definitely a big problem for being accepted into society, but it didn't seem so bad people who already knew him couldn't get used to it. I'm not sure i would have enjoyed it if it was more horrific, but it would have made sense for the film.
And it's not surprising *he* didn't think of this, but since Ajax lied about everything else, maybe someone else *could* fix his face.