Herein lie SPOILERS!!!

I had seen this poster for Deadpool and thought ‘That looks a cheeky and irreverent superhero movie! I must investigate…’

I then watched a trailer to realise to my absolute horror that the man under the mask was played by of all people Ryan Reynolds. I instantly dismissed the movie because of this fact (well wouldn’t you?!). I then started to see the other posters for the movie and how clever they were. The art of the movie poster is at an all time low but this film had countless brilliant designs. Someone at the studio had actually used their brain (oh my). They had even designed posters that lambasted the generic and bland movie posters that we’re all used to seeing today-

I love the idea of some sappy couple seeing the above artwork and deciding to give this romcom a whirl.

I then saw a review on TV in which the reviewer said that he laughed constantly throughout the film. The lead character was meant to be extremely potty-mouthed. In fact he was described as a sort of Roger’s Profanisaurus on two legs. That pretty much sold me to this movie.

But when I started watching the film I quickly started to think ‘What the fuck am I doing here?!’ This is a movie written specifically for the demographic who read comic books, live on the internet, never leave their bedrooms and possibly have Asperger’s Syndrome. Its also about as full-on dirty as an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

The character of Deadpool has not just one wisecrack for every action in the movie but ten. And hes going to use them all! This becomes tiresome really, really quickly. Especially as every wisecrack is aimed the geeky demographic this film exploits so fully. Other elements of the film are also aimed at this same group of viewers. The kind of people who think that its great for a film to play ‘Shoop’ by Salt N Pepa as if its both cool and funny. The kind of people who think that the opening credits are really funny because they don’t show the actors names but the character types instead (for example ‘moody teenager’, ‘gratuitous cameo’). The kind of people who think that the fact that Deadpool is a big fan of tragic 80s pop group Wham! is brilliant beyond belief. The kind of people I fucking hate.

Deadpool seems to overdo everything that it thinks is zany and quirky. Why break the fourth wall once when you can do it time and time again? Except this isn’t fine. If you’re gonna do this in a movie then do it once, do it quickly and then get back to the film in question. The same goes for being self-referential. Yes we know this is a movie, that it has Ryan Reynolds in it who has been in People magazine and that its based on Marvel comics. Now please don’t have Deadpool mention this to us time and time again. Oops, too late.

Strip away the clever marketing and all of the other gimmicks and you have a very conventional movie that relies on a tried and tested formula- hero (even though he says he isn’t one) seeks revenge on his aggressor. We learn through flashbacks what happened to him. There is a final showdown between him and his aggressor. He wins and even gets his girl back even though he is disfigured.

I feel like I’m focussing on only the negative points of this movie. I found that I could sit through it even though some sequences were buttockclenchingly irritating. The love story between Wade and his gal was touching especially as they were both outsiders (this gives hope to the nerds in the audience -they might actually find love themselves beyond a box of Kleenex.) And the fight scenes, when they weren’t being irritating (the numbers on the bullets idea wore thin real fast) were very entertaining.

Deadpool isn’t as brilliant or innovative as it thinks it is. But the studio couldn’t give two hoots about this. Deadpool is breaking all box office records know to man, there are sequels to be made and endless cross-over possibilities with other Marvel superhero movies to be milked for all they’re worth. Of course there will be fanboys who will hate what I’ve just written. But I don’t care.

Its great that this hoodie wearing demographic will now have something to quote other than Bazinga. Its also great that clever marketing and the art of the movie poster seems to have been resurrected again. But don’t tell me that Deadpool is the last word in movie innovation. Thats a joke too far.