The Pope’s favorite scene at his personal screening of Deadpool 2.
We speak of “breaking the fourth wall” when a theatrical production acknowledges the audience. Deadpool 2 (2018) gleefully shatters it and dances on its remains. This sequel of Deadpool (2016) follows the continuing life of the eponymous anti-hero, a former criminal subjected to genetic enhancement who now has greatly enhanced healing capabilities and reduced reaction times.
For the storyteller, Deadpool presents a challenge because his enhanced physiology puts him beyond the reach of just about any opponent, and, unlike Superman, his alienated position with respect to greater society leaves him more or less invulnerable to leverage. However, he has a girlfriend, and, as might be expected, she makes an early exit in this movie at the hands of assassins.
This leads to Deadpool’s violent disarticulation of himself while conversing with the audience concerning the vicissitudes of his life. Let it not be said that removing limbs from body from head puts a stop to the monologue, but merely lends it a bit of color not often achieved in other stories.
But this is to emphasize the problems the storytellers face, and so, in response, they introduce two elements to heighten the tension. First, the “authorities” can repress mutant capabilities through a simple collar secured around the neck. Once Deadpool, knocked unconscious, is so secured, he becomes nothing more than a man with Stage 4 cancer. And, once in this condition, the redemption of his life appears in the form of another assassin, a man who breaks into the prison containing Deadpool – and attacks a fourteen year old mutant instead of Deadpool.
With weapons from the future.
I will leave my reader to work out how an assassin is a redemption, or to attend a showing of Deadpool 2. As with the first in this series, the sensitive member of the audience may be offended, even rendered insensible, at some of the crudities issuing forth from the mouth of our protagonist. Or at the suggestion that regrowing limbs has, well, perhaps I shan’t go there.
But, in all the fun and games, there is a certain hollowness. Rescuing one’s girlfriend may seem a heroic and logical maneuver, yet it actually removes any gravitas attendant upon the story to realize that a real loss is not a loss, that the story is infinitely malleable in order to render a happy ending – and that breaks the implicit logic of the story.
In the end, it’s a bit of highly entertaining fluff.
