Logging

Film: Deadpool and Wolverine

Will Ryan Reynolds cause the decline of Western civilization or is he merely the worst movie star of his generation? I can't decide. 

The movie's insufferable. I'm foolish to do so, but I can't help but make a connection with the nihilism in this "entertainment" and the chaos in the world brought on by our fecklessness as a world power.

A few points:

1) For all the insane gratuitous violence none of it matters because all the characters can regenerate themselves. Who cares about any of the fights when no one can actually be injured? I feel this bears some resemblance to how Americans view the wars in Gaza and Ukraine - that the very real violence is somehow just a stage before regeneration of those societies.

2) Deadpool very badly wants to be part of a "team" and to serve a cause greater than himself. The only problem: Marvel Studios can't come up with a cause! The cause is to prevent some squiggly lines on a screen from not going blank. They call this timelines. So apparently, Deadpool is preventing his timeline from being erased. This has about as much emotional impact as erasing a line on a piece of paper to the audience. Thankfully for Marvel, the audience for this film doesn't care. They just care about the gay sex jokes. I get it. I'm old and frumpy. But later on in the film, we're supposed to get even more worried about the bad girl erasing "all the timelines." So a lot more squiggly lines. Oh no! So Marvel here is either cultivating or aping young Americans desire for accomplishment and heroism. Audiences want to be heroes by serving a cause greater than themselves - but see - the cause no longer matters. The cause can be squiggly lines. Or Palestine. Or fill-in-the-blank.

The world of Deadpool is this: disgusting levels of violence but no one actually dies or even get hurt, flirtation with no actual sex or love, and not a single genuine human interaction. Its a long insult comedy routine disguised as a movie. Give me Andrew Dice Clay any day.