Only two films in, and Deadpool has succumbed to everything that it set out to parody. Maybe you love Deadpool for different reasons, but I always thought the main justification for his existence was to poke fun at the superhero genre. Superhero landings — they’re so impractical! McAvoy or Stewart? These timelines are so confusing!

In my review of Deadpool, I wished it had made a stronger comment on the superhero genre. “Deadpool — yeah, that’s a franchise!” How can you mock that sort of superhero franchisability when you indulge in it yourself? Oh well, I thought, maybe they’ll use the safe success of Deadpool as a springboard and do something daring with the sequel. Sadly, nope. Spoilers for both films follow.

The first issue I have with Deadpool 2 is that it takes itself way too seriously. It tries to shock us by killing off Vanessa, prompting us to emotionally re-invest in Deadpool. But what we’re all thinking is: Why did the first Deadpool spend so much time on their relationship and Deadpool’s insecurities then climax with them finally getting together if they were just going to kill her in the first five minutes of the next one? Of course, Deadpool never really deals with Vanessa’s death, it’s just used as a device to put Deadpool in the mood to accept a new family. Did I say family? I meant superhero team — don’t forget, there’s a whole X-Force franchise on the horizon.

I guess you could spin Deadpool’s arc — getting his heart in the right place — as his way of dealing with Vanessa’s death. You could do that, except when has Vanessa given a shit about Deadpool’s morality? At the end of the first Deadpool, she’s furious with him for not finding her sooner, not because he didn’t spare Ajax’s life or because of his anti-heroic ethical stance.

My favourite sequence in Deadpool 2 is the one in which the first X-Force squad leaps from the plane, only for each of them to die in a number of hilarious ways. I fell into it hook, line, and sinker — I rolled my eyes and thought, here we go, we have some bullshit characters we don’t care about and they’re going to be the new team and I’m going to be expected to — oh, they’re all dead! That is how you play off your audience’s expectations and subvert tropes. Also, throwing Brad Pitt’s face into the mix is always fun.

But by the end of the film, this subversion loses all of its bite, because the rest of the film is literally about a bunch of superheroes teaming up to save the day just like in every other superhero film ever. And yeah, I care a little about Colossus at that point, maybe a little about Negasonic Teenage Warhead, but certainly not her girlfriend, and not even Domino.

Yes, not even Domino! I’ve seem heaps of praise thrown at her, and for what? Sure, her power is fun, unique, and cinematic, but I don’t know the first thing about her as a character. To me, she’s the equivalent of the mutant Blink. Don’t remember who Blink is? Exactly. For the record, it’s her:

Image credit: 20th Century Fox

She’s in X-Men: Days of Future Past. She looks great and her power to create portals is awesome, especially when used in conjunction with other mutant powers. And that’s it. I don’t really care about her, but she’s a lot of fun. That’s how I feel about Domino.

Anyway, there’s another reason I brought up Days of Future Past. Picture a film about a time traveller who goes back in time to prevent a mutant from killing a scientist who conducts abominable experiments on mutants, because that first act of killing sets them on a dark path that leads to a calamity in the future. If only they could be stopped before they got that first taste of murder… Yeah, well, I can’t be the first person to make this comparison, but if you can’t decide whether I’m describing the plot of Days of Future Past or Deadpool 2, that’s the point.

Deadpool seems to get a free pass on ripping off other (better) superhero films, because many are still under the illusion that it’s a parody. Well, it isn’t. At the end, Deadpool makes the necessary heroic sacrifice. He walks away a member of his team. The boy lives and doesn’t turn into a monster. A moment I loved in the first Deadpool was how he blew Ajax’s head off during Colossus’s emotional speech on what it takes to be a hero. The music swells, and for a moment he appears to reconsider, and bang. Part way through Deadpool 2 it becomes obvious we’re not seeing a superhero parody — we’re watching a Marvel film through and through, and it hits us with zero surprises from there.

Worst of all, Deadpool has become your run-of-the-mill superhero fare (with blood and swearing, I guess) but with the added annoyance of being able to shrug off all of its shortcomings. Cable only has two time-jumps in total? Maybe that is lazy writing. But if Deadpool winks at the camera and acknowledges the fact that the writing is lazy, we laugh and go along with it.

In the end, there’s plenty to enjoy in Deadpool 2. There’s fun action, Ryan Reynolds is once again superb as Deadpool, there’s some terrible CGI (Juggernaut might be the worst-looking thing since the infamous “burly brawl” in The Matrix: Reloaded), there are jokes that land, and others that don’t (dubstep hasn’t been a thing for years, Deadpool). But I went in wanting a smart take-down of a genre that has saturated blockbusters for the last decade. Instead, I just saw yet another one, and I thought Deadpool was supposed to be better than that.

Header image credit: 20th Century Fox

Thanks for reading! A quick Magoo’s Reviews update: I haven’t been blogging much this year because I’m coming to the end of my PhD and I’ve been busy writing my thesis. Hopefully I can write more reviews once all that’s out of the way!