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[Review] ‘Deadpool 2’: Jokes Don’t Save the Superhero Genre Like They Used to…

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By 2016, when the first film was released, superheroes were already funny, but Deadpool 2 imagines an alternate timeline where the genre is still in desperate need of levity. Unfortunately, that humor comes in the form of profane, self-referential epithets typically traded between 15-year-olds while playing video games online, which means if you’ve actually used bad language in a public setting or are older than 15, the mileage may vary on Wade Wilson’s particular brand of irreverence. Featuring a plot that unfolds half like a riff on Terminator 2 and half on the kind of after-school special Wilson would mercilessly lampoon, Deadpool 2 utilizes the character’s popularity as a MacGuffin for more rapid-fire jokes, but errs too far on the side of that clownishness to stick the landing once director David Leitch pivots to a payoff that’s (slightly) more serious.

Ryan Reynolds returns as Wilson, the wise-cracking assassin who two years later is contemplating kids with longtime girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) and dispatching bad guys a dozen or two at a time. After a brutal attack leaves him despondent and suicidal, he unexpectedly lands in the lap of Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), who attempt to enlist him as an X-Man (“trainee”) in the hopes that he’ll bounce back. Their efforts meet with predictably disastrous results: answering a call for help when a teenager named Russell (Julian Dennison, Hunt For the Wilderpeople) starts setting his orphanage on fire, Deadpool gets himself and the kid thrown in a maximum security prison where their powers, including Wilson’s healing factor, will not work. Wilson is content to finally let himself die, but ends up in even bigger trouble when Cable (Josh Brolin), a soldier from the future, shows up with intentions to kill Russell, and he finds himself tasked with rescuing the kid.

As suggested above, exactly how much you’ll enjoy Deadpool 2 has a lot to do with how much you dug its predecessor, an okay movie that shattered the fourth wall and rifled through pop culture references in a way that, irrespective of its otherwise puerile humor, undercut a moment in the life cycle of superhero movies with gleeful specificity. That, of course, was the character’s purpose on the page as well, but there’s something about film that turns effigies into institutions, and Deadpool is now part of the pop culture firmament he was originally designed to tear down. In which case, his barrage of f-bombs and references to mothers named Martha feel a little too familiar, and just far enough behind the curve of what is being discussed in the cultural conversation that they don’t land with the same merciless cruelty that made the previous film, well, if not better, then somehow more incisive.

Instead of an anti-hero razing the genre to the ground from the inside, Wilson seems like a guy particularly well-versed in what’s trending on Twitter who’s cultivated a series of five-minutes-ago references for deployment while basically doing an R-rated version of what every other hero does. Calling Brolin “Thanos” is a funny little barb, but when Domino asks if it’s derivative for Wilson to call his super-group X-Force, it’s hard to know if she just means of the X-Men, especially since the crossed-arm gesture he’s making feels more like it’s ripped off from Black Panther’s Wakandan salute – a reference somebody on the film surely could have, and should have acknowledged.

As one half of the duo responsible for John Wick, David Leitch has a great sense for creating muscular, straightforward action, but the movie’s own cinematic literacy steals thunder from what should at the very least have been an escalating series of well-choreographed set pieces. The fact that the plot is, effectively, window dressing for joke runs and life lessons doesn’t help alleviate the sense that its two halves are or maybe cannot successfully be sealed with blood; even at his most dreamlike or sincere, Leitch has too much work to overcome with a character who takes nothing seriously, and he fails to navigate that razor’s edge to balance – or amplify – both extremes. The end result is a whole lot of punching that reminds you of other movies where people punched more memorably. (There’s also the matter of the weird prison set, which may not be the exact same one as in Schwarzenegger and Stallone’s Escape Plan, but either too many people on the production team saw that film, or not enough.)

Mind you, if it seems like I’m being too hard on Deadpool 2, I don’t mean to be. It’s not a bad film. It’s just not an especially good one. Certainly what the superhero genre needs right now is less reverence for its mythologies, and its narrative formulas; even if its atmosphere of death feels decidedly impermanent in the long term, Avengers: Infinity War proved that people are ready for a shift away from predictability and eager to be shocked, even if temporarily. But ultimately, the real problem with Deadpool 2 is that it thinks it’s still breaking all of the rules, when it’s really just making fun while following them to the letter.

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[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream

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Tender Beth Hetland Graphic Novel

Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.

“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”

Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.

Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.

Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re  reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.

Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.

Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.

Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.

Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion. 

Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.

‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.

4 out of 5 skulls

Tender graphic novel review

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