**This is a critical review of Marvel’s Deadpool. Spoilers should be expected as well as inappropriate language that was taken as direct quotes from the movie.**
I’ve been a Marvel superhero fan for as long as I can remember. When I was little, I enjoyed Iron Man just as much as Belle and Captain America just as much as Rapunzel. I distinctly remember movie nights with my family being a mish-mash of Disney movies (Cars, The Incredibles, and Beauty and the Beast) and kick-butt action movies (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Spider Man of course). But recent Marvel movies have taken a turn. Instead of the (almost) innocent superheroes saving the day and getting the girl, sex scenes, torture, and intense gore now flash across the movie screen and alter what we see as “normal” in a superhero universe while subconsciously numbing us to horrors that happen everyday in our reality.
Marvel has been advertising Deadpool for two years. Advertisements geared towards an adult audience have hinted towards the crass and violent nature of the comic book adaptation about to hit the big screen. An R rating and videos from Ryan Reynolds, the star of the movie, urging parents to leave the little ones at home made it pretty clear that this movie would be quite different from its super predecessors. But even with all of the warnings, I was still slightly shocked by what I saw on the screen.
The first difference I saw between previous Marvel movies and Deadpool was the approach to death, violence, and torture. The movie opens up in the middle of a big fight scene, and the viewer is immediately confronted with realistic images of people getting shot in the head as their brains splatter the asphalt, humans being speared through the stomach, and bodies being flattened by speeding cars. The gore and intensity of the scene caused me, a girl who grew up with superheroes, to turn her head away. Now don’t get me wrong, superhero movies before Deadpool were not peaceful. Explosions and speeding bullets are almost a given with any action movie, but Hollywood has perfected the art of making death and violence seem almost as if it’s background noise to the main plot unfolding. Deadpool puts death and violence front and center.
One scene that particularly caught my attention was a torture scene explaining how Deadpool comes into his mutation allowing him super human powers. The context of his origin story is that in order to avoid dying from cancer, Deadpool signs up for black market scientific experimentation promising to cure him. In order to cure him, his torturers inject him with a serum and then subject his body to “extreme stress” causing the mutant gene in him to become active and kick-starting his superpowers. Several methods of “extreme stress” (aka torture) take place. Wade Wilson (Deadpool) is subjected to intense beatings, degradation, high pressure hosing, ice baths, electrocution, and prolonged suffocation (just to name a few). All of these acts are horrific and barbaric and if they would have been depicted in any non-fiction media outlet, they would have garnered outrage and sympathy. But that’s not the point of this movie. While the evil and “sadistic fucks” are painted as psychotic and wicked, the intensity and weight of acts they commit are dulled by several methods. Wade Wilson’s slapstick humor as well as the cheery background music (The Chordettes “Mr. Sandman”) playing in the background causes a scene that should be seen as horrific and nauseating to become funny and simply a means to an end, torture leading to Wade Wilson becoming Deadpool.
Why? Why have a torture scene if you’re just going to downplay its seriousness and terrifying nature? The pain and fear shown on Wilson’s face is completely overlooked due to the sarcastic comments that directly follow. I understand that Deadpool is supposed to be a comedic character, and I understand that they needed to involve scenes of torture in order to accurately depict Deadpool’s origin story, but the way they went about mixing the two seems to me to be harming the audience more than anything else. The relaxed approach to torture (“No it’s okay! He got super powers out of it!”) and the “humorous” way in which it was downplayed serves only to desensitize the public to the real and horrendous torture that actually exists in our world. Those being tortured in our reality are not making snappy comebacks and they certainly do not have cheery music playing in the background. By showing this strange mix of humor and torture, Marvel and Fox only serve to assist in the trend of media downplaying real issues that plague our world today. The methods of torture that are seen in the movie become normal, just another passing scene.
This is very harmful to our society. Once we become desensitized to horror and torture, it no longer becomes an issue that needs to be adamantly fought against. It is only a subject that is glossed over and almost glorified in superhero movies. The reality of these actions and that they are committed everyday is lost, and we become blind to those who need our help and action.
Broken Society 