Rating: 4/5

Three-Word Summary: Mercurial meta anti-hero

Marvel makes major money. But it’s also good to see them taking risks.

They’ve had big success by pumping out blockbuster superhero flicks. But it looks like they’ve also hit it big with a decidedly different sort of hero.

Deadpool is not a superhero. He even admits that in the film. Multiple times.

Deadpool is an anti-hero. He’s edgy. He’s crude. He’s also hilarious. Several of the past hero films have done a nice job with comic relief. Deadpool is his own comic relief.

Thankfully, the studio allowed the film to be R rated and include all of the inappropriate content that any accurate movie about Deadpool would have. Where other superheros are family friendly, he is not.

In addition the dark humor, Deadpool also comes with a healthy helping of meta humor. Meaning that Deadpool realizes that he’s a character in a movie. He talks to the audience. He can see the camera. He makes jokes about other movies.

While film makers have to be carefully about breaking the fourth wall too forcibly, they did a nice job in this case of not allowing the meta character to be a distraction.

Jokes aside, the first Deadpool film was relatively straightforward. The entire plot centers around Deadpool trying to get revenge on the mutant who gave him his superpowers. All the while, trying to win back his girl. So despite it’s anti-hero, the film still has a pretty typical hero story line.

Deadpool was like other Marvel films in this way — the first movie is always an origin story. So we can all look forward to several more Deadpool features coming our way in a few years.