Deadpool 2 (2018)

We really are delicate vessels, aren’t we? Elastic and resilient right up until we’re not. If the Deadpool franchise takes anything seriously, it’s this — we’re all of us, even the most super-powered among us, ultimately just bags of meat.

Deadpool 2, like the first movie in the franchise, seems to delight in every spray of crimson, every vivisection and dismemberment. But there’s an honesty to all this violence you don’t find in most other superhero movies, at least in the Marvel world. Whether it’s the Avengers beating the crap out of foes (or each other) or Karl Urban’s character mowing down creatures with assault rifles in Thor: Ragnorak, it’s all mostly bloodless stuff. 

But however much I like those other movies, isn’t there something patently dishonest about what we’re seeing and how it’s manipulating us?

The Deadpool franchise doesn’t pull any punches — pardon the pun — when it comes to violence. Whatever you think of its jokes or Ryan Reynolds in general, at least it’s honest about what violence does to the body and the way a person can become desensitized to it. You’d have a messed up sense of humor, too, if your superpower was coming back to life, no matter how battered your body was. 

Despite their R ratings, these movies really aren’t so different from anything else stamped with the Marvel logo. The main difference is how it pulls back the curtain on its action, on our love of super-powered chaos and carnage, and forces us to ask, “Am I sure I should be cheering for this?”