A video essay about Deadpool, Marvel's XMen franchise, and the themes of dealing with PTSD and reclaiming your mental health. Featuring detours into Spaghetti Westerns, religious manipulation, love stories, and a few too many Tarantino references.



Deadpool, directed by Tim Miller, debuted in 2016 and was pretty well an overnight modern classic. There had been rumblings of a full feature since Ryan Reynolds portrayed a version of Wade in XMen Origins, but it was really after the “leaked” test footage that the idea of a hardR superhero action flick really started to enchant the popular consciousness. If 2012’s Avengers was a John Wayne movie, then Deadpool was a Sergio Leone or a Coen Brothers.

Deadpool was conceived by Rob Liefield as a parody of DC’s Deathstroke, taking aim at the brutal, gritty, and dark antiheroes that were becoming oversaturated in geek culture. However, he was revolutionary in that his appeal was both surface level AND academic as he became more threedimensional. Wade Wilson is to superhero literature what Hunter S Thompson was to Journalism; an insane shot in the arm, a new method of presentation where a garish, freak show exterior is the means to explore incredibly existential, uncomfortable, and deepseated questions about society and the human condition.

And the reason the movie succeeds is by expanding on this. It perfectly zeroes in on two interlinked, indelible aspects of Deadpool’s character: Trauma and Ugliness.



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