Once Upon a Deadpool
Movie Rating:
3.5
If Deadpool is known for two things, they’re his metatextuality and the fact that he’s definitely not for young kids or those with delicate sensibilities. With this week’s release of Once Upon a Deadpool, the naughty superhero is limited (for the first time) by a PG-13 MPAA rating, so he instead amps up the meta references and calls on other pop culture touchstones to keep up appearances.
Make no mistake, Once Upon a Deadpool is merely Deadpool 2 edited down to a family-friendly rating, and then framed by an extended homage to The Princess Bride. The core of the film is just the previous movie. In fact, IMDb doesn’t even recognize them as separate entities. We once again get to follow Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) as he makes fun of X-Men, fights with Cable (Josh Brolin), tries to save Firefist (Julian Dennison), and unsuccessfully forms his own supergroup, called X-Force. Nearly all of the jokes and gags are still included in Once Upon a Deadpool, just with fewer swears. Surprisingly, a lot of the porn references and double entendres are still present, complete with Wade’s big winks to the camera. Who knew so much of Deadpool 2 was fine for kids?
Given that Deadpool can’t ever hesitate to have fun with a gag, the newly added scenes have a a field day highlighting what can and cannot be done within the new, lower age rating. The character lists how many of each cuss word are allowed and carries what looks like a remote car key that bleeps out any superfluous swears. Even though Fred Savage (played by Fred Savage) is being held against his will, he gets into the swing of riffing on censorship too.
A few other newly added details sprinkled throughout the film are fun to discover. And, as always, there are multiple post-credit sequences, including an extended nod to the late Stan Lee, which begs you to stay in your seats until the ushers kick you out of the theater.
I’m not sure how necessary Once Upon a Deadpool is for this world, and it certainly has nothing to do with the holiday season, but it isn’t doing any harm either. As a fan of Mr. Pool, I am always happy to spend a little more time in his world, and this helps me do just that.
Pedram
Love the reference in the title.
I saw this in the theatre and bought the UHD, but I’m not gonna pay again to see the same movie for just a few added gags.
Maybe this is for that lady who wanted to bring her son to the first Deadpool but it was to naught, and started a petition for them to make it PG13.
Timcharger
Also liked the pun in the review’s title.
Humiliations galore. Have fun storming the castle! Can’t wait to watch this. Combining chocolate & peanut butter; best thing ever. Every comic book movie should have a re-release version with Deadpool retelling the story to Fred Savage.
🙂
Timcharger
I’d watch Infinity War again with Fred Savage interrupting Deadpool’s retelling.
Ryan Hawkins
Heh, back in the old days we kids used to be able to see the R-rated films simply via TV, with all the naughty stuff cut out. I bet you can now get away with more profanity, sexuality and violence on a prime network show than you can in a PG-13 film. And I won’t bother getting into the Internet… The only difference now is that the studios are charging you for a “Child” ticket. For them to add on top of that the allure of new and potentially rewarding material – I love ‘Princess Bride’ – is simply unfair. At the very least the studio should have put this version out prior to the UHD/Blu-ray and then package it altogether into a single release.
Deaditelord
I loved Deadpool and Deadpool 2, but I really hope this bombs horribly. It’s already bad enough that practically every movie now is watered-down to PG-13. However, my concern is that if this neutered Deadpool does well that:
A. Deadpool 3 and future entries will be PG-13
B. Studios become even more reluctant to produce R rated content.
Not everything needs to be sanitized for children. I want movies to occasionally have swearing, violence and nudity. Even comic book movies.
Timcharger
The goal of “sanitizing for children” may be false. And it had such a short release window, with immediate blu-ray release the following month. So I’m thinking the goal is for another reason. Sanitizing for Chinese censors. Sanitizing for the Chinese yuan. Hey, how else will we get some trade imbalance dollars back?
https://screenrant.com/once-upon-deadpool-china-release-confirmed/