The Fourth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 13

2016’s Deadpool is technically Ryan Reynolds’ second big screen outing as the eponymous antihero. The less said about the first incarnation in 2009’s  X-Men Origins: Wolverine the better. It was not well-received. Which is a shame because on the evidence of the 2016 movie and its 2018 sequel, Reynolds was born to play Deadpool.

Fortunately, as well as being a pretty decent action film in it’s own right,  Deadpool is a fourth-wall breaking, self-parodying comic tour de force that has absolutely no problem in deriding the surplus of comic-book movies that have been a Hollywood staple in recent…erm…decades.

Never afraid to bite the had that feeds it (were it not for all those superhero movies there arguably would not be a  Deadpool movie) it makes short work of the potentially problematic issue of Reynolds having been both the previously hated version of Wade Wilson and this new, much better version. And it deals with any other plot holes and inconsistencies in an equally irreverent manner.

Indeed for a movie that is so self-sabotaging at times, it is amazing that the plot works on any level, but, although arguably the narrative itself is the film’s weakest element, it holds up pretty well in comparison to many of its contemporaries and you do still find yourself caring about the outcome.

Deadpool is definitely one of the better comic-book movies of recent times, although it is also unashamedly and rather gruesomely violent throughout so it definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

Score for Christmasishness

As with so many movies that make my festive inventory, this one really has no basis being considered a Christmas movie at all. A small part of the film is set around Christmas and it is vaguely relevant to the narrative. And the main character does have a tendency, throughout the film to explicitly state that it is Christmas, even though there is no visual evidence to support this and another character actually debunks this later on. So it isn’t a Christmas film at all, but it Deadpool says that it is then who am I to disagree?