Once Upon a Deadpool (2018)

Once Upon a Deadpool arrives as a curious artifact: the mercenary's second outing, scrubbed to a PG-13 and dressed in a bedtime-story frame in which Fred Savage is held captive and made to listen. The studio, presumably, wanted a holiday-season dollar from the teenagers it had previously locked out. The result plays like a deleted-scenes reel with a hostage negotiation taped to either end. Ryan Reynolds remains game, and the new material has a loose, improvisational charm, but the seams show.

On the social consciousness ledger, the film is more textured than its reputation suggests, though never insistent. Zazie Beetz's Domino and Julian Dennison's Firefist are race-swapped from the page, and the supporting cast is comfortably multiethnic without anyone stopping to announce it. Brianna Hildebrand's Negasonic Teenage Warhead has a girlfriend, Yukio, presented with a shrug and zero hand-wringing, and the hero's own pansexual leanings get a passing nod. None of this is argued. It is simply there, which is a rarer achievement than the industry's press releases would have us believe.

Where the film declines to go is just as telling. Race relations go unexamined. The climate is not mentioned. Nobody dismantles late capitalism, celebrates a range of body types, or explores neurodivergence. History is left alone. The moral, such as it is, concerns family and not giving up on the people who annoy you, delivered with a wink so the audience never feels scolded. The whole enterprise is allergic to sermonizing, which leaves it with a peculiar distinction: a superhero picture that includes marginalized characters and then refuses to make a lesson of them. The hostage framing device is the only lecture on offer. It is a short one.