I enjoyed Deadpool this weekend. Laughed out loud many times, clapped and cheered at the Stan Lee cameo (like 1/3rd of the other people in the theater), and definitely got my $12 worth! Lotsa fun.
But I couldn't help thinking that this movie crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed.
Ever since Ferris Bueller's epic example, the trope of breaking the 4th wall and confiding in the audience has been well trodden, and has even found a few innovative and clever uses.
Deadpool, of course, uses this to the extreme. In fact, at one point he shares a thought with the audience, and then stops to analyze that thought further with the audience... and then comments on the double-commentary with a witty line about "breaking the 4th wall. Twice! That's like, sixteen walls!"
But this is exactly where my problem comes in.
I had the distinct feeling that the writers, director, producers, and Deadpool himself were sitting in the back row of the theater watching us laugh at them laughing at themselves.
It kept popping me out of the movie and into a weird meta-space. I kept feeling like I was watching Mystery Science Theater 3000... a group of people making a movie commenting on themselves making a movie.
It got so self-aware and self-referential - and it was so goddamn funny - that the next 25 movies that Hollywood vomits out will be pale carbon-copies trying to see if they can break the 32nd wall, or something.
Did I just witness the demise of the movie theater movie?
Is all the original and interesting content being made by Netflix now?
Did Deadpool register as the denouement of something to anyone else?
I haven't seen the movie, but Deadpool the comic character pretty much exists to critique superhero comics. There's the fourth wall breaking, usually about the medium or the comics industry. His violence is presented as wacky slapstick, and you accept it that way because comics, and then something emphases how unfunny violence really is. He gets different, mutually contradictory, traumatic backstories every other writer, and all of them are true. And so on. That's what he's there for. I don't think it says much beyond that's what they had to work with.
Absolutely. But take that essential principle of the comic, do that, and then double-down on doing it again to movies. And you wind up with something so meta that you are not sure if you are actually having a real experience, or just unknowingly participating in some incomprehensibly layered and self-referential art project. When you see the movie, you will LOVE the opening credits, BTW.
Deadpool is the vomit. There's never going to be a comic book movie that's considered "bad" again, for two reasons: 1. The film-making process has been hollowed out and sabermetricized to the point where every comic book film will be considered competent, at the very least. 2. The so-called "nerd" culture has captured the popular writing scene and large swaths of critical writing. Those wonderfully grumpy film critics of old have been largely pushed out of the conversation. Anyone who dares to write about these films with anything short of glowing praise faces a deluge of web harassment.the next 25 movies that Hollywood vomits out will be pale carbon-copies
Oh really? It's just a phase. Comic book movies are to us what Westerns were to our parents.
Nah, there are a bunch of places showing independent films and, hell, yr in Seattle, the Seattle Asian American Film Festival is this weekend. It's more a factor of marketing than anything else, I think. There are a ton of great and interesting films/media being put out without a ton of financial backing behind them or having the allure to the masses that something like a superhero movie will have. Different strokes.Is all the original and interesting content being made by Netflix now?
Question: Do these things need widespread distribution? Is there a reason to create more focused (or maybe unfocused) pieces of film that don't appeal to the audience of say, Deadpool, or other big name films and then try to market them to as many people as possible? Does the onus of discovery fall on the creator or the consumer.Distribution is still the essential problem, though.
I don't have an exact answer to that, but I have found that some of the movies that I've enjoyed the most or have resonated with me the most I've discovered either by chance or word of mouth.Does the onus of discovery fall on the creator or the consumer.
I guess it is an issue of Discovery and Accessibility. Sure, a film may play at one time on one day in one theater in one part of town. The likelihood of me getting there to see it, casually, as an exploration, is so vanishingly small as to effectively be zero. I have dear friends who make movies professionally. And I have been unable to see some of their work. In this era of media ubiquity, distribution is still a problem.
No, I'm just saying that self-referential stuff has been around for 50 years and the world hasn't ended. Your example of "Ever since Ferris Bueller" is at least 20 years past patient zero, and that's only the patient zero I know of. John Gardner made much about the modern history of metafiction, but the practice dates back to the Canterbury Tales at least, and Gilgamesh at most. It's entirely possible that Deadpool is just a successful Howard the Duck.