So, imagine my excitement when I heard that there was going to be yet another X-Men movie. When I first posted the trailer here, I was all giddy and excited. More to the point though, I was pumped about Ryan Reynolds playing one of my favorite comic book characters of all time!!! Ryan Reynolds is one of my favorite actors, and he seemed to fit the young Deadpool perfectly - pretty boy with a sarcastic, dark humor. I liked where that was going. Throw in Hugh Jackman reprising his role as Wolverine, and it seemed like a can't-lose proposition.
Enter, then, the movie itself. I'll admit that I went in with mixed expectations; I mean, come on, the movie was clocking in with a whopping 37% on the tomatometer. Anyway, enough preface, let's jump into this one.
First, the good. And this is a mighty short list.
- Ryan Reynolds is a complete badass - at least he is for the whole 15 mintues he's on screen as Deadpool.
- Hugh Jackman can act. This movie would have been a complete bust if it weren't for his great acting talent. He really gets into the Wolverine part, and he plays it with passion that really shows.
- Several members of the supporting cast were also very good in their roles. Of note, Leiv Schreiber plays a great Sabretooth, and Danny Huston was a passable Stryker.
The best moment in the entire movie right here!
And that about covers it. The first 15-20 minutes or so was completely sweet. The beginning was everything I expected from the movie, plus Deadpool brought to amusing and badass life by Mr. Reynolds. Then the movie went downhill, sharply. The action disappeared, and the movie slowed to a crawl as we explored Wolverine's life with his wife, leared where the name came from, watched Hugh Jackman cutting down some trees, were exposed to his bare chest as often as possible, and just plain stopped caring. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm all for dropping action for character development, but the writing in this movie is sloppy and riddled with cliche, and not even Jackman's passionate portrayal of his character could mop up this mess. We are introduced to Gambit, who is awesome for about 10 seconds, there are a couple of clashes between Wolverine and Sabretooth, a couple of people die, and all along, Stryker is plotting away. What his ultimate intention is is anybody's guess (though if you're paying attention you guessed correctly far too soon).
Anyway, during this entire time, we're missing half the point of my seeing this movie: Deadpool. He just isn't here, and I was thoroughly disappointed, but the biggest let-down was still in store.
I'd like to preface my next remarks by saying that I now understand all the people who hated the third X-Men movie for not sticking to the story line. Though I'll make an exception here in that what they did in Origins was on a far different level. In The Last Stand, they f-ed up the plot line, but stayed relatively true to the characters (well, the important ones at least). Here, they just messed everything up, including main characters. End preface.
Enter the end of the movie, the climactic battle - the movie has finally started to pick itself up again (after several utterly lame "plot twists") and I am excited to see Deadpool again. And here is where the movie fails in the most epic way possible. Stop reading now if you would rather subject yourself to the heaping doses of FAIL first hand.
We are introduced to the mutant killer (formerly Deadpool - he no longer deserves that name at this point in the movie). Here is bald Ryan Reynolds, bare-chested (why is everybody bare-chested in this movie all the time?????) and hideous in an experimented-on way. Not to mention they, uh, "stitched" his mouth closed, depriving us of the most defining thing about the Deadpool character. As if that wasn't enough, the movie barely gives us enough time to digest this before, in a further act of WTF, he sprouts sword blades from his knuckles, Wolvy-style.
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Ummm, the movie completely lost me at this point. There's about 5 minutes of this thing beating the ever-loving crap out of our protagonist, then they climb up the exhaust pipe (for lack of a better term) for the nuclear reactor and epic battle ensues up there. We are introduced to the experiment's newest ability, Nightcrawler teleporting. More fighting. Just as it looks like mutant aberration is going to win, Sabretooth joines the battle and the mutant killer beats the snot out of both of them at the same time, employing much teleporting tactics. In the final straw, mutant-thingy teleports away and unleashes a volley of Cyclops-laser.
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Is there no saving this movie? Anyway, Wolvy ends up decapitating the thing, losing his memory, not recognizing his wife's dead body, walking away, and thus the movie is (finally) over. I and the group of friends I came with wander angrily out of the theater, wondering why we wasted our money on such a terrible movie.
After the credits, the mutant killer's body attaches it's head again. Who cares.
My personal opinions about their borking up Deadpool aside, the movie was just bad. The story was cliched, the action was all-too brief, the character development was shallow (especially considering the time they alotted for it), the plot twists were predictable and stale.
When I see a movie for which I can say that not even Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds can save it, there is something very wrong with that movie. Unfortunately, between the story being lame, the characters being one dimensional, and Deadpool being butchered, there's just not much left to appreciate about the latest X-Men outing.
Score: 2.5/10.0
It is nice to see that it being a terrible movie didn't stop it from making bank to the tune of $87.0M. I expect that the numbers won't look even remotely that good next weekend.
The next day, I watched The Nines to make myself feel better. It worked wonders. On the upside, Star Trek comes out on Friday, and the Tomatometer is giving it a truly whopping 100% thusfar. Now there's a movie I can't wait to see.
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