And even with Vanessa and NTW sidelined, Deadpool 2 can, amazingly, claim at least as much diversity as last month’s Avengers: Infinity War: Three female characters, one black and one openly gay, out of a smaller cast than that of an all-star assembly so white that it includes three of the four big Hollywood Chrises. Of course, you actually need mutant-level luck to look like an athletic badass during endless CG-assisted action scenes.īeetz is an underplaying delight, a perfect counterpoint to Reynolds’ motormouth routine. But the movie refashions her as a kind of parody of action hero physicality. The character has been around for decades in the comic books, and she’s not even the first luck-powered character in the X-Men orbit that would be Longshot, who is technically not a mutant but a refugee from another dimension (the movie somehow misses the opportunity to point this out, though Deadpool expresses extensive skepticism over whether luck counts as a power).

The movie also introduces Domino (Zazie Beetz), a wonderful addition to Deadpool’s sloppily assembled X-Force, whose powers are based on supernatural good luck. He still interacts with third-tier X-Men Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and while she’s openly gay and girlfriended in this one (and still in possession of perfect eye rolls and bird flips), she doesn’t really have an expanded role. Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, is still shacking up with his beloved Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), but plot mechanics keep them apart for most of the movie, relegating her to the usual hero-motivator girlfriend role. Or if he does, it joins the rest of the world as stupid bullshit that he also kinda loves.ĭoes the movie love it, too? Kind of, though what initially looks like a more gender-balanced superhero cast is less lady-centric than it appears. He goofs on just about everyone he meets, sometimes cutting and sometimes with mock affection, but it’s key to the Deadpool character that he doesn’t think inclusivity or gender-neutrality is stupid bullshit. With pride, he announces that this new group will be called X-Force, pleased with the coinage because it is “forward-thinking and gender-neutral.” The joke, amongst many jokes in this relentlessly jokey movie, is that Deadpool isn’t really joking. A bit past the midway point of Deadpool 2, the endlessly regenerating wiseassed semi-superhero of the title (played, as ever, by Ryan Reynolds) ruminates on what to call his new superteam, a ragtaggier spin-off of the X-Men, who refuses to tolerate Deadpool’s more murderous inclinations and can barely tolerate his endless jibes.

Deadpool kickass comic