The Press Box - Emergency ‘Deadpool 2’ Debate | The Big Picture (Ep. 470)

Episode Date: May 18, 2018

The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey and Andrew Gruttadaro digest the latest blockbuster superhero movie, ‘Deadpool 2,’ by unpacking what worked and what didn’t among the numerous meta jokes and pop culture references. They discuss the long-anticipated arrival of Josh Brolin’s "Cable," why Deadpool is so popular, and where the character and the franchise goes from here. SPOILER ALERT: This episode contains serious spoilers for the movie. Be warned! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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MUBI.com slash big picture. That's mooby.com slash big picture for your extended free trial. I was talking earlier this week about how I think that the trick of Deadpool, the reason that Deadpool is an effective character and that this franchise has become so successful is because

it really makes 12-year-olds feel smart. I'm Sean Fantasy, editor-in-chief of the ringer and a self-referential bastard, and this is the big picture, a conversation show with some of the most meta, fourth wall-busting Editors on the internet. Joining me today is the Colossus to my Wade Wilson,

a pillar of virtue and common sense. It's Ringer editor Andrew Greda Darao. Andrew, thank you for joining me. Hey, thanks. That was such a nice thing for you to say. Yes, you're very welcome. I'm saying things to you into a microphone, which is what this podcast is,

and the reason we're being so ridiculous is because we are talking about the most important comic book and the history of time that is being released today. It's Deadpool 2. We're going to be spoiling this fine film, so if you are allergic to such things, I suggest you fast forward all the way to the end of the podcast to hear the last 30 seconds. So you can hear the theme song, which is lovely by the band Discovery.

And if you've decided to stick around, here we go, into the world of Deadpool 2. Andrew, you just told me you saw Deadpool 2 for a second time in one week. Why did you do this and what did you think of it? So I didn't go for a second time because I was like, I love this movie and I want to see it as much as possible. I went because I barely remembered anything from the first time, which I didn't. It's kind of my review. There's a lot going on. Yeah, let's talk about some of the things that are going on.

Where does the movie, like, it kind of starts very similarly to Avengers Infinity War, which is like right in the effing middle of the story. And I think that that's kind of the point is it's meant to just like shotgun you into all of the references and violence and speed and Ryan Reynolds of it all, right? Yeah, it straight up starts with Deadpool saying, fuck Wolverine. And there's Logan murdered

on a tree. It's like the first image you see. Yes. Can you explain to me how these two are in conversation with each other? Sure. I don't want to do too much

Marvel canonical history, but well there's one version of it which is that they are both Fox properties and owned by the studio. And the other version is that Deadpool is kind of a tangential X-Men figure. He's a part of X-Force, which is a sort of an offshoot group of super mutants who play a little bit rougher and are willing to murder people in a way that maybe the X-Men

or not. But X-Men and Deadpool do have kind of a historical tete-a-tete. You know, they tend to riff against one another in the various comic book stories. And so I think Logan's death in the movie Logan last year is meant to symbolize sort of a victory for knowing comic book heads for Deadpool. I guess that's funny. I think that there's a lot of stuff in the movie that is very funny, and there's also a lot of stuff that I guess is funny because I got the reference. And so I was wondering for somebody like you, if you don't get these references,

does this movie just seem like very dumb or very obtuse? I think obtuse is probably the right word. You know, as someone who writes for a pop culture website, yes. Let me be referential about what I do. I am now indoctrinated in this world and I see all these movies

so the references still hit when they make fun of of Superman being obsessed with his mother I'm like oh yeah I remember that but if you're coming into this a little cold it probably makes no sense like the funniest joke is probably the fact that Frozen sounds like Jensel

had that occurred to you before no which I thought that like the smartest thing that movie did. I thought so too. I was wondering if that was like a known meme, if they were somehow riffing on something that already existed in the world. But it actually blew my mind.

Yeah, that bit is good. What do you make of Deadpool as a character? So my impression of Deadpool as a character is heavily affected by Deadpool as a marketing tool. Interesting. Just for the last, what is it, three to four years, the way that they market this character is extremely aggressive

and I don't it's not I don't know that I would call it funny it's probably funny to some people it's probably funny to people who read Deadpool as a comic book character kind of just you know the Bob Ross trailer

Deadpool getting into a phone booth and being unable to put on his costume it's all aggressive in your face and I think it really affects the way that I perceive him when I go in to see the movie. I'm already kind of like against him because I don't like the commercials. Yeah, I think there's something microcosmic

about the way that they promote him as a character too. Like it kind of indicates that everything that you're going to be getting in this movie is a riff on something else. It's purposefully very, very silly. Like, it's just a really silly character, maybe even more silly than the way the comic book character was presented, because somehow when you show, like, the extreme nature of some of the things that they do, you can't help but just be like, this is a joke. There's no stakes here. There's no stakes to the story. Him trying to get changed into his red leather costume in the phone booth is the highest possible, like, nose thumbing at Superman. And so it kind of like removes some of the high level thinking in the story and in the character. Is it fair to call you a comic bookhead? I should be careful here.

I worked in a comic book store as a teenager. It was one of my first jobs. That's pretty legit. Yeah, but I think I experienced it maybe a little differently than say some of our colleagues like David Shoemaker, or Jason Concepcion, or even Andy Greenwald, who I think were voracious consumers of the titles. I was very aware of them in a kind of a cataloging way

When I was a preteen, my favorite magazine was called Wizard, and Wizard was sort of like the, it was sort of the entertainment weekly of the comic book world. And I was very aware of everything that was happening, even though I wasn't always invested in a lot of titles at any given time, things would sort of catch my interest, and then they'd go. So it's funny to see these characters. We're starting to reach a logical endpoint of what can and can't be adapted

and what can and can't be a movie. But it is funny to see them work really. really hard on Deadpool because he was such a, he already was such a self-referential figure in the world of comics. You know, the concept of breaking the fourth wall was a pretty big deal, as I recall in the 90s. Is he the first one to do it? Probably not. I mean, I'm sure that in the Stanley Jack Kirby days, they took risks and there are a lot of psychedelic comic books in the Marvel canon. There's a lot of stuff that happened over the years that you'd look back and be like, these guys aren't a lot of drugs. But there was something very like, sticky,

and Gen X and, like, reality bites Pulp Fiction about Deadpool. And so it's funny to see him rendered now in this way where we already feel like we know everything all the time. He is kind of the perfect superhero for this moment. Yeah. That said, like, it doesn't always mean that the movie is good. This is such a mixed bag of a series. I've, like, legitimately laughed out loud maybe five or six times,

which never happens because I'm a robot who sees up doing the movies a year. But there are other times where I was just like, this is incredibly violent and stupid and I'm getting nothing out of it. I mean, as somebody who's not a comic book head, so to speak, do you enjoy watching the movies? No. In the simplest terms, not really. I think I mostly feel nothing watching the Deadpool movies. Oh, my God.

That actually is the perfect metaphor. Like, I feel nothing. I really don't. it's almost just because, like, I know, I know the joke already, if that makes sense. Like, I understand what they're doing, and it's not, like, pushing anything in my eyes. Yeah, it's an interesting choice that they've made with these movies to sort of, like, and the second one is even more aggressively self-referential than the first. You know, I think that it's actually a pretty impressive trick of screenwriting to make something like this.

move, even though once you get to the end of the movie, you realize that, like, nothing really happened. And it is like, I wrote about this in a piece on the site today, but we are only like three or four weeks removed from this vague kind of phony existential terror over who did or did not die in Avengers Infinity War. And in this movie, like, Deadpool is just like dying multiple times. He just takes like 30 bullets. Time travel is a factor here.

and so like they'll just like go back in time and change stuff that happened which is something that we I think spent a lot of time like digging through the machinations of how things might work in Infinity War like we took it very seriously maybe that's stupid in hindsight three weeks ago to have been taking that stuff so seriously

but in this movie they're kind of like guess what fucker like we're going back in time and it's it kind of like I feel like I'm being picked on a little bit as a viewer I don't know do you feel that way too or when you're watching the movie they're just manipulating you and kind of making funny at the same time?

Well, I think that's kind of the reason that I don't feel much is because I understand that the stakes can be reversed at any second and they are basically giving a middle finger to everyone. I do agree that that's a pretty good way to make a movie. It's probably, it makes things definitely easier for them that they can just be like, we're doing whatever we want, and all we have to do is mention that we're going to do whatever we want. Yeah, that's called.

called nihilism, right? So, yeah. Nialism is definitely one of the major aspects of the character, and they kind of try to grapple with it by introducing in this movie, this young kid character, Russell, who is also known as Firefist, I guess, which is just a terrible superhero in the Marvel comics.

And Russell's played by a young actor named Julian Denison, who people might recognize from Hunt for the Wilder People, very funny New Zealand actor. And this kid represents like that classic Shane Black McGuffin kid character who like represents innocence lost and becomes like an emotional tether point for Deadpool. Children give us a way to be better. That's what I learned watching this movie.

Yeah. I mean, that stuff is just like such bullshit. And you had said this to me, but you saw the film before I did and you were kind of like, I don't know, they try to present these emotional stakes that I just don't care about. And watching the movie I felt similarly. Like all the stuff that they used to try to get us to care about the narrative momentum of the story, I was like, actually, maybe just do more jokes. Yeah.

My question is, do we, did we need to be convinced to care more? I don't think so. I mean, you tell me, you didn't care that much in the first place. So were you like, okay, maybe they'll raise the stakes by showing me some emotional transparency? I don't know. I mean, like, Deadpool, the first one, I enjoyed it, whatever, you know, I enjoyed it as much as I can enjoy a super. superhero movie, I guess. And the fact of life now as someone who consumes culture is kind of just like, you're

going to see these movies. Yeah. That is... So for them to... I don't know where this desire or this like urge that they have to up the stakes or kind of convince us to care more, I don't know where that's coming from. I think people are going to see the movie no matter what. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting. Ryan Reynolds in the movie and also in relationship to the Deadpool franchise is pretty fascinating, right? He's claimed to be a huge fan of the series, and I believe it. I mean, you can tell. I think these movies in their way are doing what a Deadpool movie always should have done, not just because they're incredibly successful, and it sounds like this movie's going to make upwards of $500 million. But because he's trying to be loyal after essentially disgracing himself by appearing as a different version of Deadpool in the movie X-Men Origins Wolverine, which is referenced in this movie in a fun and interesting way, which we'll talk about later.

But, you know, I think because he is so related to it, but he has this history as kind of a Hollywood movie star. And the ticks of Hollywood movies are introduce a love story, show us what happened to your family in the past, invest in a relationship with a young person. All these small, tiny storytelling tricks that movies use to get you really invested when the strings swell at the end of the movie and then can they put a tear in your eye? It is doing all that stuff, and it's doing it in a way that isn't as smart as maybe some of the joke writing. So I don't know. I didn't love any of that. Like the whole, there's an entire plot line about like Eddie Marsan plays an evil headmaster at a rehabilitation school for mutants. Right.

And this child is seeking revenge on this kid, but Deadpool is trying to make sure that the kid doesn't kill an innocent person, even though the person he wants to kill isn't innocent. and Deadpool is killing like hundreds of people in this movie. So it's so convoluted and illogical that I did kind of feel like I was being taunted at times. There were points where I was like, why doesn't Deadpool just kill that guy? Yeah, exactly. He's got 10,000 bodies on him. Yeah, like his soul is gone. Yeah, it's interesting.

So as not a comic person, I think one of the fun things about this movie and all of these movies, and I think that there was a little bit of exhaustion with this with Infinity War, But in this movie, because it's a different studio, because they have the rights to different characters, it does kind of, like, people just crop up in the movie that maybe we didn't know we're coming. You know, so we knew that Zazzy Beats would be here as Domino and we knew that Josh Brolin would be here as Cable.

But, like, I don't know, there are a lot of other characters who just appear, or they indicate that they will appear. There's a very brief cameo by the X-Men. I thought that was great, by the way. That was very well done. Did you have fun, like, spotting that stuff, too, not just the jokes, but the actual appearances of figures?

Or are you like, this is in my world and I don't care? I mean, I enjoyed the X-Men one just because I liked the joke that they can't get anyone else to agree to be in these movies. The rest, I don't really mean too much to me. The Juggernaut who shows up in this movie, to me, he's mostly, I only know of him because there was like this really funny YouTube video where someone dubbed his voice from an old X-Men cartoon? Yeah. Into what?

What was the voice? What was the voice dub? He was just like a crude guy who he like swore and was a real misogynist. It was like one of those videos that was really funny to me when I was 16 years old.

Yeah, it's the Juggernaq bitch. Yeah, I agree. I mean, the Juggernaut thing is fun for comic book fans. I don't think we're giving anything away by saying that Juggernaut is in this movie. but it is very B-team, you know? Oh, yeah.

The whole movie has the kind of feel of B-team. And I found myself like curious, and we'll talk about this a little bit later on the back half of the show, like where they will take this stuff, especially given some of the machinations of the Fox Disney merger and the fact that all of these characters

could potentially be together, even though it felt like all of them were together in a movie three weeks ago, there's like even more to put together. But yeah, I guess like it's a movie that kind of like takes Easter eggs and like puts them in its hand and then like smashes them on the ground you know sure and is I guess is Deadpool the context that Deadpool exists in in terms of the movies is it is it the same that he he

splashed onto the scene when it was the comics is that is that like what is so exciting to fans I guess so I mean I think that's a smart way of positioning it right we've got we've had we had seven or eight years of consistent comic book movies and then we needed a character to come in to comment on these characters, this, you know, explosion of IP, as Chris would say. And he effectively does that. And I'm not sure that getting into like a second and third and fourth film, it's going to consistently deliver the same like chill of,

oh my God, he just referenced a movie in the DC universe. It feels so provocative the first time around. And then the second time, it's like, okay, well, that's what you do. Like the second reference to Batman Batman, Dawn of Justice in this movie, I was like, wow, like now he's just like picking on them. I never had empathy for these movies before. Yeah, yeah.

I guess I'm a little curious, like is the next step for him to just exist within the actual universe of the rest of them? Yeah, I think that that is eventually where they're going to take this. I think basically Avengers did a nice job of integrating Spider-Man in this way, where like Spider-Man had not been in the mix, and then all of a sudden he showed up in, I believe, Civil War. And we were just like, oh, shit, right.

Spider-Man fits right in here. But he gets to comment on things that are happening at the same time. Deadpool is like Spider-Man, but an asshole in twice his age. And so I think that there's something, there's the potential to make him work in the universe. I don't know. I have some long-term concerns. I'm probably sounding a little bit more negative about this movie than I actually am because I think because I have that commitment to characters,

I enjoyed it certainly more than somebody like you would. I wrote also about a guy who was in my screening last night who would wooed every time there was like a reference to something. He was like the clock counter for every time we got a pop cultural reference. And like that guy in nine out of ten movies would be my least favorite person in society. but for some reason in this movie it was like very helpful. It is a good theater-going experience. Like the people who go see this movie

kind of help your enjoyment of it, I think. Yeah, do you think that's important for these movies in general? I thought about that a bit with Infinity War too. Like in the moment when Captain America kind of appears in the shadows, people like stood up and cheered. I was like, really? Yeah, I don't care for that as much. That sort of takes me out of those movies.

But here it's kind of like the, the tone is this is kind of like almost a roast. So like let's have the audience scream at the screen and you kind of get into it. I love that. The idea of a roast is maybe going to be essential to the back half of this show when we talk about what really didn't work. But first, let's take a break to hear a word from our sponsor. I'll tell you what's really hard to do is finding great talent to hire for your business. And there's a great way to do it.

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Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash 33. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash 33. ZipRecruiter.com slash 33. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Hello, there's a new show coming to Adult Swim called Joe Parrott talks with you. It's a quiet show about Joe and his friends and the things in his life, like breakfast foods, rocks, weddings, being woken up by thunder, grilled chicken, pumpkins, fall drives, and more. Now here's a personal request from Joe. Please watch.

Joe Para talks with you Sunday nights at midnight on adult swim. And we're back breaking walls being meta. Andrew Gradadarro is here talking Deadpool 2. Andrew, we're going to talk about what worked and what didn't work in the movie. We spoke a little bit about what didn't work in the first half. There are some things that are pretty great in it. At least I thought so. I'm going to talk about some of them right now.

One of them is the much anticipated arrival of the figure Cable. Cable is played by Josh Brole. who is one of the, I think one of the patron saints of the ringer, if only because he's Chris Ryan's favorite actor. You know, I'll explain to you a little bit about what cable means in the same way that I did with Deadpool. But what did you make just of the introduction of that character into this world? I enjoyed him. I also, you know, Brolin, it's shocking to me that he went two for two. Yeah.

Between Infinity War and Deadpool? What are the odds of that? The fact that he made Thanos work is incredible to me. And the fact that he made this guy, this like, you know, they call him an old guy with a winter soldier arm. And that's exactly what he is. And he's this, like, dude who has no emotions other than anger and, you know, like, deep, deep, I don't even know what the word is. He's just, he's vengeful and he's got this eye. But he sells it.

And the way that he and Ryan Reynolds play off each other, I thought was awful. Yeah, it is really effective. So Cable is essentially a time-traveling soldier who was introduced into the X-Men universe around the same time as Deadpool. Early 90s quickly became a fan favor character in a similar way to Deadpool, but they are sort of polar opposites dispositionally. Cable is very gruff, very badass. He has very cool weapons. He's not a wellspring of personality necessarily. Brolin though, similarly to Thanos,

who I think with a different actor you would have just been like, this character is stupid, manages to sell it. And half of the selling it is just like him looking very sad but violent, you know? Yeah, it's a very particular choice for both of those characters. And I thought that it worked. I would have been curious to see what it would have looked like

if there was just a cable movie that was more like Sicario instead of a Deadpool movie that had cable in it. I'm into that idea. Let's do it. It's possible that happens. I love just Josh Brolin just chugging a Budweiser in a mirror. That was great stuff. Looking angry.

Randomly murdering Alan Tudick, who is that movie for like three seconds. Only to steal his six-pack in his truck. Yeah. There are a lot of, holy shit, was it that guy moments? We'll get to another one in a few minutes. I did like cable. And I think there's actually a lot of opportunity there. And it's inevitable to me that this movie is leading to.

towards an X-Force movie, which I think is also another part of this movie that worked really well. X-Force, as I mentioned, is this alternative group, this additional group in the X-Men universe. And there is a little bit of a like getting the gang together sequence, which I think you and I both like as general things in movies. Oh, the best. And this one's pretty good. Like, let's talk about it. Yeah. I mean, just in general, the audition process is pretty well done.

It's like, it's a very snappy sequence. they get off some really good jokes about Invisible Man or whoever his name is. The Vanisher, I believe. The Vanisher. There's also a really good joke when T.J. Miller makes fun of Canada. And Ryan Reynolds, a Canadian, gets upset at him. That was my single favorite of one of the movie. I thought that was legitimately funny.

Yeah. And then when they transitioned to actually doing the mission. Oh, by the way, Pennywise is in this? What? Pennywise. Who's Pettys? He's the acid vomiting guy. Oh, Bill Scarsguard?

Yes. Oh, wow. Good drop. Man, they really loaded up the sort of like X-Force tryouts with a lot of fun characters. So like you've got Pennywise. You've got Zazzy Beats, as I mentioned, from Atlanta, who's wonderful as Domino. You've got Terry Cruz, who weirdly underutilized, I think. And they introduced Shatterstar, which is like a sort of a fairly well-known X-Force character.

And then your boy Rob Delaney. Yes. Which I thought was also pretty funny as Peter, who's just a regular dude who tried out to be a superhero and gets integrated into this mission. I got to admit I was nervous about Peter when he first showed up in one of the Deadpool trailers. It just seemed like a joke that didn't have too many legs. Yeah. Well, that's actually one of the smart parts about this section of the movie, which is like, it doesn't really take too long and it quickly dispenses with almost every single one of these characters. They just kind of kill everybody.

And you pointed out to me the one probably most notable Easter egg in the movie early on which is who the Vanisher is played by and who is that? Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt for like one second. It's insane.

It's a fun choice. Let's very briefly break down what this is. We saw like a version of this with Matt Damon and Thor Ragnarok where an extraordinarily famous person showed up for a very short period of time in a franchise movie.

Did you notice there was Brad Pitt immediately? Well, it was like, it was one of those things where it was like, was that Brad Pitt? Just his face flashes on so quick that you almost, and just the fact that he's such a famous person, your mind starts like telling yourself

that it wasn't Brad Pitt. Yeah, I think in a different kind of movie, it would have taken me completely out of the story, but in fact, like, Deadpool is working to take you out of the story at all times, so it felt totally appropriate. And there's a reason that it's Brad Pitt, right? What's the reason?

I think he was briefly mentioned as someone who might play cable. Yes, yes. I thought you were going to say something a little bit more metaphorical, which is like Brad Pitt has been disappearing before our eyes for years or something like that. No. No, he was tabbed as a possible cable. And I think he would have been a pretty good cable in the Aldo Inglorious Bastards vein. You know? Sure, yeah, yeah.

He's done the kind of gruff, buzz cut, flop, haircut look before. He's not as big looking as Josh Bowling is. No, and actually one of the best jokes in Deadpool 2 is that Cable is 511, which is smaller than in the comic books. So if it were Brad Pitt, it was probably about 5'9, it would have been even smaller. Right. I like the Brad Pitt drop. I really liked the whole X-Force sequence. I think the movie gets substantially better when it turns towards building X-Force, and then it goes towards the end of the movie.

I completely agree. I think it actually shares that with the first Deadpool, which is just a lot of origin and backstory and conversation in bars with T.J. Miller. And then suddenly it's one of the rare action movies that is significantly better when there's action. And specifically comic book movies. I think we talk a lot about how comic book movies have kind of these fun involving characters, and then they get to fight sequences and people just check out because it's just CGI hitting each other. And these movies, because there's so much to unpack it.

about what the fight means. There's so much reference to it. It tends to work a little bit better. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would. I think especially the final fight sequence is pretty well done in the way that they flash between Domino

and Her Quest and then Deadpool and cable working together and then Colossus and the Juggernaut. It's a pretty quick and well-executed sequence. Yeah, let me just say one quick thing about Colossus. So Cyclops, who is the leader of the X-Men, has this reputation as being the most boring X-Man, right? People are just like, Cyclops sucks. That's an ongoing meme among people who care about this stuff.

I have a take that Colossus sucks, and somehow these movies have figured out how to make him useful. And these movies also deserve a lot of credit for that. Like making him the counterpoint, the RIF partner for Wade Wilson, for Deadpool, has weirdly been a very effective story. And also to be sort of the muscle who comes through and gets weighed out of trouble every time. This is the second time that's kind of happened. Yeah. Very brief hat tip to figuring out how to use Colossus, even though he's so B-Team. And even when we saw him in the first Deadpool movie, we kind of felt like, oh, they couldn't get James McAvoy to do this.

So they got a CGI chrome armored figure. Sure. Who was Colossus before these movies? Because I absolutely never knew him. he's essentially a Russian immigrant mutant who has developed the ability to create this armor. We don't actually see the version the sort of human version of him in any of these movies.

In certain parts of the storytelling, I believe he's able to shift from armor to human form. Interesting. He's strictly armor in these movies. He's okay. He's like the 11th most important X-Man. Not really a major figure. What else worked for you, if anything? And if not anything, we can kind of move on to what didn't work. Um, yeah, Zazy is really good.

Um, the, the, I'm lucky is my, is my superpower, um, is a really funny bit. And the way that they film it is really good. You know, she's falling onto inflatable pandas, um, letting go with a wheel and the wheel, the cars just drive itself. Um, I enjoyed the ongoing cable is racing. Yes. That was very, very well done. There are like three of them, and that's just enough. Yeah, as the white dude who has accused other white dudes of being racist in a joking but not joking way, it's kind of hit home.

Very, very good riffing, like you said earlier, but just between Brolin and Reynolds. They had genuine chemistry. Yeah, the second half of the movie is so much better to me in my mind. Yeah. So then let's talk a little bit more about the first half and maybe what didn't work. We talked a bit about the Eddie Marsan and the home for, you know, rehabilitated mutant stuff. I don't really want to rehash that too much. What do you make of the way that they throw us into this story,

which is Marina Baccaran's character, Vanessa, is killed in the first five minutes, and then that sets Wade off on a quest to kill himself, but then also to sort of rediscover his reason for living. Yeah, it's probably all of the emotional beats between, Wade trying to save this kid and Wade trying to like redeem himself in the eyes of his deceased girlfriend or wife or whatever they don't work for me they they push Deadpool 2 towards being a more traditional superhero story and you know I'm expecting Deadpool 2 to be the antithesis to those movies um do you think it's possible to make a movie like this

with none of that threading to just throw somebody into a joke extravaganza and for it to be a good experience. I mean, I don't know, but I would be really happy to see someone try it, you know? Yeah, you know, I was talking earlier this week

about how I think that the trick of Deadpool, the reason that Deadpool is an effective character and that this franchise has become so successful is because it really makes, you know, 12-year-olds feel smart. It makes them feel like they, know more than the rest of the world. And in a way, it would make 12-year-olds feel even smarter,

which I think is the purpose and the reason that these movies make a lot of money because they pull in a lot of people who shouldn't be getting into the theater because it's R-rated. Yeah. They just say, like, forget the rules. Like, the rules are out the window. If I want to make fun of Superman, I'm going to do it. And for whatever reason, they're still trying to...

This may seem gendered, and I'll try to avoid making it seem gendered. But it seems like they're trying to put stuff in the moment. movie to like keep someone's date involved, you know? And this, we're so far beyond that at this point. Like, it's trying, it actually, this movie actually tries harder to do that than like, you know, uh, the Winter Soldier did. And yeah, I don't know, I agree with you. I don't really know why we need it.

And it's, it's also, I guess like, if they felt that they had to do this, I would at least want them to, you know, go back to this self-referential thing and, and, and, and, you know, poke themselves for doing it. And they don't. They're weirdly selectively meta in this movie, and they kind of like ignore things conveniently. It's a great point. I can't really figure out why that is,

and maybe it is because of what I was mentioning earlier, which is that Ryan Reynolds was sort of born and bred in Hollywood storytelling. And, you know, if he was a hit star in the proposal, then maybe this is the kind of stuff that he feels like he has to do to get a movie across the line. But I don't think anybody walked out of the first Deadpool movie

going like, what I want to see more of is Deadpool and Vanessa. That was... Exactly, yeah. So I'm not sure. Is there anything else that you're just sort of like, I don't know about all this? The baby legs thing didn't work too much for me. That was a choice. That was a choice.

At one point in the film, Deadpool is split in half by the juggernaut. And because Deadpool is sort of an immortal cancer surviving mutant freak, he can regenerate his legs, which I don't really remember being comic book canon either, but he's ripped in half and he starts to regrow his legs, but his legs grow in a similar way to the way that Groot does in Guardians of the Galaxy, which is that he becomes like baby form in the regrowing part. And there's an extended sequence in which half of Deadpool is there and half of a new baby Deadpool is there. Toddler's a deadpool. It's pretty unnerving. And it's a long sequence. It lasts a long time. I think is my issue with it.

I'm not sure that... I actually enjoy the scene when Cable arrives and there's a bit of riffing going on between Domino and T.J. Miller's character and Deadpool and Blind Al. But the whole... I don't know.

I just... Is there like a dick in that scene? There is. There's a quick... A quick dick. Yeah. That's one of those few moments in the movie where they're really, really proud

of how much they're pushing it. And I'm like, let's just not. Like, we don't have to do this. I will say it brought the house down. So I'm in the minority. Okay. Well, I agree with you that when people are laughing, it's easier to, it's easier to not worry so much about the things that don't work.

Let's talk a little bit about something that I did think worked, which was the end credit sequence. Yes. This is probably the most provocative one of these I've seen in a while. I think we obviously are very used to people just sticking around in a movie theater because they know they're going to tell us something about where the story is going next at the end of a superhero movie.

And it's one of the more fascinating movie-going trends of the last 10 years to me has been, especially in Los Angeles, just to watch people not get out of their seat when the credits start. It's amazing. There was always a mad dash for the parking lot 10 years ago, and it was sort of like leaving a basketball game or something.

And now everybody just knows. They're like, just stay, just in case. And why don't you explain a little bit of what happens in this one? So Cable has this time-traveling device, and I believe the first end credit sequence is Deadpool getting his hands on it after what's her name? Megasonic.

Negasonic? Yes, Negasonic and Yukio. Thank you. You're welcome. They fix it and give it to Deadpool. And the next thing we see is him traveling through movies to clean up storylines, killing himself from the Wolverine movie

and also killing Ryan Reynolds before he takes on Green Lantern. Yeah, that was very funny. I don't know what it's meant to do for the story. It definitely gets a great laugh. It's definitely the final, it's sort of the final act, the consecration of meta to have Deadpool kill himself making a bad choice. I don't know ultimately, like,

if the time travel stuff also means that Vanessa's alive and all the X-Force people are alive, and if it undo everything in the same way that like the time stone is going to undo everything in the next Avengers movie, does that even matter to you? Do you not care? I super hope it doesn't have any actual consequences.

Why do you say that? It just seemed like a good funny button to put on the movie and a good like, it's the movie looking at the audience and being like, yeah, we know. We know that the past sucks, so we're going to shoot both of them in the head. Okay, so then what do you? you think is next for the franchise? It seems like the

way to go, I don't know if they'll do separate movies, but it seems like X-Force is where they're going to go with this. That shot of the four or five of them walking out, walking away from this institution as a fully formed team seems like a setup for a group movie. So you're very obviously of this movie, but you enjoyed the X-Force audition sequence.

Yeah. Let's say, let's take Andrew out of his present-day existence. Let's make Andrew a little bit more meta. He doesn't work for the ringer. He doesn't even cover popular culture. He's just a guy living in a city. Is he, on a Friday night, spending 1650

to go see the X-Force movie? It's really tough. It's tough to say. I would say, I would say when I was in high school, I didn't see any of the X-Men movies. So regular Andrew before he was incepted by Marvel and DC is probably not going to see the movies. Amazing.

Nevertheless, we'll be forcing you to see them and talking about them. Andrew, thank you very much for doing this. I feel like you really broke the fourth wall aggressively together. And we'll see you again soon. Thanks again for listening to this special Deadpool 2 episode of The Big Picture. If you want more Deadpool 2, I have written about the movie. Miles Surrey has written about the movie. Michael Peters has written about the movie.

Rob Barvilla has written about the movie. The entire staff of The Ringer is writing about the movie Deadpool 2. We're covering it wall to wall. So I hope you'll read that on The Ringer.com. Please come back early next week where I'll have a new episode of The Big Picture with literally one of my heroes, the writer-director Paul Schrader, whose new film first reformed, is probably my favorite movie release. this year. Paul is a legend in the film industry, has written Taxi Driver, has made great

films like American Gigolo, and hardcore, and autofocus. First or Formed is really one of the very best things he's ever done, so I hope you'll come back and check out that episode. See you then. Today's show has been brought to you by Mooby. With all the video content available today, why is it still so difficult to find something good to watch? Mooby is a curated online cinema streaming exceptional films from around the globe. Each day they introduce a new jam and you have one month to watch it. Whether it's an acclaimed masterpiece, a cult classic, or a festival fresh darling, there are always 30

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