“Welcome to the war”
The upcoming ‘Deadpool’ won’t be the first time that Ryan Reynolds has played Wade Wilson and his alter ego, Deadpool. We first saw Reynolds as Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. After X-Men : The Last Stand, 20th Century Fox wanted a series of ‘Origin’ films for the X-Men. Following ‘Wolverine,’ there would be one about Magneto. Wolverine was meant to be a new beginning for the X-Men films, which has fallen in quality with the terrible ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ (why is the third film of a super-hero trilogy always terrible?!?!). However, ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ made ‘The Last Stand’ look like ‘X-Men 2.’
The peak of the film happens during the opening credits, when we are given the essentials of Wolverine’s/Logan’s life since birth. We see him growing up with his half-brother Victor Creed/Sabretooh and fighting in the big wars of American history: the Civil War, the two world wars, Vietnam. It’s a glimpse of events in Logan’s life that would have been far more interesting to focus on than what we were given in the rest of the film. Even the collection of mutants that William Stryker puts together, called Team X, seems promising. It’s here we get to see a wise-cracking and sarcastic Wade Wilson, but not for long. Wolverine leaves the group and we return to his life six years later. Logan’s in love…
“Do you know why the moon is so lonely?”
Cue love dialogue that rivals ‘Attack of the Clones’ for cringe-worthiness. The love story takes all of the heat out of a semi-promising beginning. Instead of seeing Wolverine slicing people into pieces in scintillating action set-pieces, what we get is googly-eyes Logan slobbering all over Silverfox. Of course, she is murdered, probably by Creed. Stryker persuades Logan to undergo surgery that will bond adamantium to his skeleton so Logan can have vengeance against Creed. Yes, you read that right. How did Logan come to have adamantium bonded to his skeleton? For love…hmmm, that sounds familiar…didn’t Anakin Skywalker turn to the Dark Side for love? After the boring love story, this unnecessary plot twist to explain Logan’s steel claws derails the film.
Nothing could help the film from that point on. It’s hard to empathise with Logan’s quest for vengeance because there was no tangible chemistry between him and Kayla. I hoped that he would explode in an orgy of violence, but instead he stumbles from X-Men cameo to X-Men cameo, from the Blob to Gambit, in an attempt to find Victor Creed. It’s mind-numbing. I always felt that the X-Men trilogy suffered from the lack of Gambit, but here he adds nothing to the plot, or is even half-entertaining as a character. He just inexplicably turns up during action scenes to save the day and fails to be funny.
“See, the only difference between a winner and a loser is character”
Deadpool turns up as essentially the “end of game boss.” Wade Wilson is given the ability of multiple mutants after being part of Stryker’s experiments. The character, who gave us some smiles at the start of the film, even has his mouth stitched up. That’s right, they stitched up the mouth of the ‘merc with the mouth!’ Deadpool is renowned for his sarcastic talk! It’s one of the great examples of Hollywood taking a character from another source and stripping them down of everything that made them a great character in the first place. It’s a microcosm of what is wrong with the film as a whole: they missed the point with the character of Wolverine. He’s an ass-kicking, laconic son of a bitch! Instead of action, we get lots of talk from Logan. And let’s not even mention the ridiculous reason why Wolverine forgets all of his past…
It’s a chronic bore with an dull plot, tepid acting, boring characters, an obvious twist, and absurd action scenes (people seem to pop up out of nowhere all the time! Poor direction? Yes). It seemed like an attempt to adjust the Batman reboot to the origin of Wolverine (brooding, grim, depressing), when instead it should have been a rip-roaring tale, where Wolverine tore people limb from limb in a bloody quest for vengeance. Unimaginable as it may be, this was worse than The Last Stand (a promise never kept). It’s comfortably the worst X-Men film yet, and proves yet again that most prequels are doomed to failure…
VERDICT: 2/10: After one of the best opening credits montage I’ve seen, the film plunges the depths of banality very quickly. An utterly terrible film that mishandles the main character as much as it mishandles the plot, script, direction, and everything else!
Hammy Reviews 
I hated this film when I originally saw it at the cinema in 2009 and waited til last year before I decided to give it another go…I actually found myself enjoying it on some level but it’s certainly a bit of a mess!
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I only chose to watch it the once! But maybe I was a little too harsh in my criticism. A second viewing may be necessary!
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It probably won’t improve drastically on second view but now you know what to expect and going in with lower expectations might make it slightly enjoyable….that’s what I found anyway!
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