Deadpool 2

Following Deadpool was a tough act. A huge part of what the 2016 movie offered was its shocking nature. It was an X-Men film that broke every rule, released at the height of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s success (no, it wasn’t part of it, but regular audiences weren’t researching such details), containing astonishing violence and wildly inappropriate jokes. A sequel wasn’t going to be able to rely on any of this, given its audience were going in expecting it all.

The solution was not one outlandish comedy sequels have tended to use in the past. It tried harder. It worked harder at its plot, its characters, and its pacing, creating a more nuanced setting in which it could fuck around like a nine-year-old who’d learned a bunch of new curse words. Relationships felt more meaningful, the emotional tone felt more earned. And yet it was still immensely stupid, violent, and gasp-inducing.

Still, it couldn’t ever have the same impact as the original. To do that, it’d have to do something completely radical, like, I dunno, break through the walls of reality to enter the MCU, dragging some of Marvel’s most respected characters into its vortex of immature nonsense. — John Walker