Encore?

Deadpool 2 (2018) is sort of the answer to “What do you do for an encore?” Deadpool itself was a kind of new thing when it came out, all goofy and meta. So, where do you go from there?

Well first, they kill off the love of his life before the credits. So instead of being written by “The Real Heroes Here”, the writing credits go to “The Real Villains Here.” Then Deadpool commits suicide. You know what they say about suicide: What do you do for an encore? It’s a pretty good suicide, but it doesn’t take - he heals too well, even if it means growing a new body. Colossus takes him to the X-Mansion where again, the only X-Men he meets are Collosus and Teen-age Negasonic Warhead (because all the other X-Men are hiding from him). They offer to take him on as a Trainee, with the first mission to calm down an encounter between a young mutant and the authorities.

The young mutant is Julian Dennison as Firefist, and chubby adolescent who can hurl fire and is being treated in the Icebox, a sort of anti-Xavier School. He is rounded up and re-imprisoned, but Deadpool thinks they are abusing him in the institution and decides to break him out.

This requires a new team of heroes that he decides to call X-Force, in a fit of unoriginality. He holds tryouts and picks up quite a group, including Domino (Zazie Beets), who is just very lucky, and Rob Delaney as Peter. Peter doesn’t have powers, he just thought it sounded fun and a good way to meet people.

I haven’t mentioned Cable (Josh Brolin), the cyborg from the future whose family was killed by the older Firefist. Guess what his agenda is.

Even though this movie shares a lot with the previous (including running gags), it has a bit darker tone, due to the death of his love, and later —SPOILER— the death of Peter and pretty much the entire X-Force. But it also has plenty of laughs and thrills, plus real feelings and a happy ending - believe it or not.

This may even be a better movie than the last - more focused, better plot, no origin story. But it didn’t feel as fresh as the first one, which really seemed to be breaking new ground. Be interesting to see where they take this next - maybe just integrate Mr. Pool into the overall MCU. That should be interesting.