There was some early-production drama surrounding Deadpool 2 when director Tim Miller, who helmed the original Deadpool, was let go from the project after reportedly butting heads with Ryan Reynolds over the direction the sequel should take. Whose to say what a Miller-directed Deadpool 2 would have looked like, but the movie we got seems to prove without a doubt that nobody knows what makes this character work better than the guy who's playing him.
Under Reynolds' guiding hand, Deadpool 2 takes what could have been a joke that got old after just one film and expands upon it in delightful and surprising ways. Yes, this is still an R-rated superhero film that throws severed limbs and dirty jokes at its audience with equal aplomb. But it also improves upon the formula set by the first one in a number of subtle but important ways. The original film had a "let's throw every joke and gag into the movie and see what sticks" vibe, but Deadpool 2 feels more like a precision instrument, with Reynolds and the rest of the Deadpool team (returning screenwriters Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick, as well as new director David Leitch) finding a near perfect balance between comedy and action. They were also smart to avoid going too big with the sequel. Deadpool 1 was such a massive hit that the filmmakers surely had the ability to do anything they wanted this time around, but instead of trying to compete with the scale of Avengers: Infinity War, Reynolds and company have kept Deadpool 2 small, using it to tell a personal story with low stakes that allows the movie to have the same do-it-yourself, passion-project feel that the original did. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but the film is genuinely moving at the end. It's true: A Deadpool movie made me a little misty-eyed!
The film picks up shortly after the first one with Deadpool traveling the world, slicing down bad guys in horrific fashion, leaving only body parts and corny jokes in his wake. Then … things happen I probably shouldn't tell you about. It's actually surprising how little of Deadpool 2's plot has been given away in the marketing. Here's what I think I can safely reveal: Spiraling a bit after some personal setbacks, Deadpool, still trying and failing miserably to be a member of the X-Men, ends up saving a petulant pre-teen mutant from a vaguely evil orphanage. That same mutant ends up being targeted by Cable (Josh Brolin), a half-cybernetic soldier from the future who has a "kill baby Hitler" sort of plan. Trying to find meaning in his life, Deadpool vows to keep protecting the kid and ends up battling Cable through a number of impressive action sequences, including one set inside a high-tech prison for super-powered inmates. (Leitch previously directed Atomic Blonde and, as the Deadpool 2 opening credits remind everyone, was one of the guys who killed John Wick's dog. So the dude knows his way around an action scene.)
Over the course of the film, Deadpool teams up with allies both new and old. Colossus (Stefan Kapicic), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and clueless Taxi driver Dopinder (Karan Soni) all return from the first film, while new additions include the uniquely-powered Domino (Zazie Beetz) and a handful of other oddball mutants that Deadpool tries (with hilarious results) to group up into an X-Men competitor called X-Force. It's Cable who gets the most screen time though, and while Brolin is fine, one of the movie's few disappointments is that he never amounts to being anything more than a grey-haired sourpuss with a big gun. Deadpool earns some good laughs at his expense (the "Cable is a racist" recurring joke is one of the movie's best bits), but, at times, Cable feels more like a prop than a character. Brolin actually gives a better, more-fully-realized performance as the computer-generated Thanos in Infinity War. And, comic nerds, you can forget about Cable's convoluted backstory being addressed in the film. It's quickly hand-waved away with a joke mocking it's inherent ludicrousness.
Still, Deadpool 2 zips along thanks to Reynolds' winning performance and a number of genuinely surprising plot swerves. Sprinkled throughout are clever meta references to the current state of the superhero genre at large. There are jokes about Wolverine stealing Deadpool's foul-mouthed M.O. for the R-rated Logan and about how FOX still seems reluctant to let Deadpool fully mix with the X-Men universe at large. I laughed at almost all of them, as the joke success rate really does seem to be much higher this time around. The Deadpool-grows-a-baby-hand scene from the first film gets its own mini-sequel that escalates the concept of regeneration to ridiculous effect and had the crowd I saw it with howling. If that's still not enough for you, there's also a fun mystery villain who FOX has kept hidden but plays a big part in the movie's third act. And even after the movie ends Deadpool 2 offers up a series of end-credits stingers that I think I'm ready to declare the best ever. They start out just sort of casually delightful before growing more and more gut-busting. By the last one, I was trying to catch my breath from laughing so hard, and I expect every fan of these films and comic-book movies as a whole will be doubled-over, doing the same.
The future of Deadpool is a little undecided, what with FOX looking to sell off its movie division and Disney currently lined up to buy it. But as long as superhero films are dominating the cinematic landscape, we're going to need Deadpool to keep taking the piss out of them. With Reynolds under the mask, nobody does it better.
