mike-3842

Rather than tell you whether I liked this movie or not, I'll try to tell you what to expect, and you can make up your own mind if you want to see it.

Story-wise it's really not that interesting: Punk gets super-powers but because of how he acquired them he holds a huge grudge against the person responsible for giving them to him. Revenge ensues.

This is the introduction of a new Super-character, Deadpool, from the Marvel Universe. There's plenty of action, much of it gratuitous and with ridiculously violent and cruel one sided slaughter scenes of people with no super powers.

The most entertaining action of course is when adversaries are evenly matched, and whilst there is plenty of this too, the villains are ultimately hopelessly outgunned and that puts a cap on the potential for a nail-biting climax.

The dialogue: Deadpool wise-cracks his way through the 108 minutes. Sometimes he's genuinely funny, but mostly he talks fast to keep things from slowing down. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments, and equally there were others that were just embarrassing in their vulgarity.

What makes this film different is that Deadpool knows he's in a movie and takes time out to joke with the audience. It's an interesting move for such a high budget film and generally it worked out pretty well.

The target audience is undoubtedly male, from 16 to 25. Teens are going to love it but there's probably not enough story there for everyone else and it's just too violent for anyone under 16.

This is a movie of our time, violent with a wayward moral compass. Heros are out of style and instead we are treated to a dose of narcissism. This doesn't mean the film is unwatchable, but don't expect to leave the cinema uplifted and inspired.

I understand the first episode cost just 40 thousand dollars. If you read the other reviews you can get an idea of how well the set and atmosphere were recreated.

But you want to know the full truth and not just the sugar coated version, so here is the rest:

I felt the story needed more energy and whilst it attempted to reproduce the moral tales of the 60s the lesson came across as superficial (I rolled my eyes at the end). You could also detect the absence of consulting scientists in the vetting of the script. There's some action outside the space ship that seems to have no bearing on the story. It was not tied in well, or at all actually, and just seemed to be an excuse to use the special effects.

The actors should be admired stepping into such big shoes. In some cases it didn't really work. The voices are what I noticed most. The original Spock spoke an octave lower than his modern day surrogate. There was also an obvious age difference in Kirk and McCoy which was hard to ignore.

If this was an original Star Trek episode it would have been a weaker one. Currently on Youtube about 3% of voters are giving it the thumbs down which is quite high I think for such a noble effort and it reflects the small but significant misjudgments and deficiencies which permeate the episode. I am sure these niggles will be ironed out in future as the team becomes more experienced and more free to experiment with new ideas and do it their own way. The first ever episode of Star Trek was equally awkward and look where that led :)