Blame it on the Bat. For a brief period, Deadpool seemed like the most subversive player on the cinematic superhero circuit, deflating the genre¡¯s pretensions with a barrage of self-referential humor and fourth wall-breaking asides. But after last year¡¯s ¡°The Lego Batman Movie,¡± he¡¯s starting to look rather tame: a potty-mouthed prankster who ultimately plays it safe, respecting comic-book conventions rather than trying to blow them into a heap of interlocking plastic pieces.
That¡¯s not to say he isn¡¯t a heck of a lot of fun. ¡°Deadpool 2¡± is the perfect antidote to the Wagnerian pomp of ¡°Avengers: Infinity War.¡± In a serendipitous bit of casting, it even features the same actor as its antagonist. Fresh from playing Thanos, the thinking man¡¯s megalomaniac, Josh Brolin dons the guise of Cable, a time-traveling super-soldier with various bionic enhancements that make him look like a prototype Terminator ¡ª or, as Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) puts it, a ¡°grumpy old f¡ª¡ª- with a ¡®Winter Soldier¡¯ arm.¡±
He arrives from the future intending to kill a portly teenager with pyrokinetic powers, Firefist (Julian Dennison), before he grows up to become far more dangerous. Having just rescued the boy from a creepy mutant ¡°reform school¡± while working with the regular X-Men, Deadpool decides to protect him, even if it means getting riddled with bullets and ripped in half (hey, that¡¯s what accelerated healing powers are for).
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