Review: Why Deadpool will never be allowed into the Avengers mansion.

I recently posted about the surfeit of superhero movies. Spielberg compared them to the Western, which was a cinema staple for many years, but nowadays is rarely made (Tarantino homages not withstanding).

Now, I'm not saying that superhero movies are going to disappear from our screens anytime soon. But if you follow the analogy, you realise that Westerns used up their pure form very quickly, and almost immediately moved on to deconstructions and subversions. Deadpool is one such subversion. And it's awesome.

Making a movie about Deadpool, it was unlikely to be your standard Marvel fare. This is the merc with a mouth, an insane anti-hero who's better known for lame jokes and slapstick than pithy catchphrases and Saturday morning cartoons; a man with a face like a day old pizza driven insane by the very healing factor that keeps him alive; a character who knows he's in a comic book (or film) even if those around him have no idea who he's talking to when he breaks the fourth wall. This is a long way from the Avengers.

The thing most viewers were worried about is 'how far is Marvel willing to go to protect it's franchise'. It already saw a melt-down with AntMan when they got into a fight with Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish about whether to produce a fun movie making fun of the cliches of the genre, or a traditional (i.e. boring) interpretation of the hero as just one more addition to the Marvel canon. Fortunately, that was Marvel Studios, this is Fox. Since Fox has the rights to all the characters, Marvel has very little control here. With AntMan, the problem was how to be irreverent without breaking any of the canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Deadpool, you can be assured that we are a long way from the MCU. Right from the opening credits, the jokes flow fast and irreverent (the film is produced by 'asshats' and directed by 'an overpaid tool'). It also prepares us for to keep our eyes open for the jokes – the film expects us to work a bit here, some of the lines won't be telegraphed and the levels of meta can sometimes pile so high that you're left wondering whether any lines are meant to be taken seriously, or if we're just watching a bunch of actors messing around and pretending they're in a film.

Fox even has a little fun with the Marvel backcatalog. Ryan Reynolds agrees to be turned into Deadpool as long as they don't make him wear an animated green suit (Green Lantern), he says he doesn't want to meet the X-Men because he gets too confused about whether Professor X is Patrick Stewart or James McAvoy (Days of Future Past), gets threatened with having his mouth sewn up (Wolverine: Origins), and comments on the number of times the X Men Academy gets blown up (every X-Men movie ever).

All in all, its a romp of a movie, with an unstoppable number of post-modern jokes and references to other films. It even manages to fit in the promised love story, even if it's not your standard G rated version – seriously, don't take kids to see this movie – and does so with a suprisingly mature touch and feel that gives weight to the story without in any way diverging from irreverence or silliness that makes the film work.

In the end, its just like Deadpool himself – childishness and stupidity masking a heart of gold. It's nice to see a movie that admits that its genre is ridiculous but wears that ridiculousless like a cape. Hopefully, it won't be the last.