Wow, now that is a response. Did it take you over a month to craft this statement or did you just not see my post from Feb. 29th till yesterday?Its not that its a great piece of comedic/super hero/cinema...
Its because its different. It works. It does things "right".
It also helps if you're a comic book nerd like me.
Much of his appeal is because "The Merc with a Mouth" is not really a superhero, he's actually an antihero.
He jokes incessantly and breaks the fourth wall. He is self-aware. He is a fictional comic book character who KNOWS he is a fictional comic book character. This is so meta its hilarious, and is unlike any other traditional "superhero" character.
He was hugely popular in the comic world right away.
Another reason the Deadpool movies are popular is because the casting of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool is literally "perfect":
The Deadpool character first appeared in comic books in the 1990s
This was his description back then:
"a disfigured Canadian mercenary with superhuman regenerative healing abilities. He is known for his tendency to joke incessantly and break the fourth wall for humorous effect."
In the 2004 comic series Cable & Deadpool, he refers to his own scarred appearance as "Ryan Reynolds crossed with a Shar Pei"
So when Ryan Reynolds was cast as Deadpool 12 years later, comic book fans went apeshit. Ryan is Canadian, and is just as witty and sarcastic in real life as the Deadpool character from the comics. His real life personality was just like Deadpools
Another reason Ryan's casting is perfect, is Ryans's real-life friendship and fake-feud with Hugh Jackman, who plays Wolverine. In the comics, the original story of the Deadpool character actually had ties to Wolverine's history. And Ryan makes references to Wolverine in the first Deadpool movie. Its perfect.
The breaking of the 4th wall and the self-awareness that he is a fictional comic book character allows Deadpool to make pop culture references like in Deadpool 2 where he makes wisecracks about the X-Men movies, such as Deadpool asking Colossus if Professor X is the James McAvoy or the Patrick Stewart version, and in his interaction with Cable (played by Josh Brolin) he makes references to The Goonies (a movie Josh was in), Thanos (which Josh played in the Avengers), and the 'Do you want to build a snowman/Papa can you hear me' reference, where the latter was a song sang by Barbra Streisand, who is married to Josh Brolins dad, James Brolin. Deadpool takes shots at not just other Marvel movies, but DC comics movies, James Bond movies, John Wick movies, etc. There are so many inside jokes and easter eggs... Its stuff like this that many find hilarious and geek out over.
The comic book references are largely what fans are looking forward to in Deadpool 3/aka Deadpool and Wolverine.
Now that all the licenses/rights are own by one entity (Disney), all the previous owners of the different Marvel products (Spiderman, X-men, Avengers, etc) which all had different owners at one time (Sony, 20th Century Fox, etc) are all now in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). For example: many people may not have noticed, or not understood why, the Avengers movies could not refer to certain characters as "mutants". They were instead referred to as "enhanced" e.g. the Maximoff twins (Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver). The MCU previously didn't own the rights to use the word "mutant". So now that all the legal entanglements have been resolved,the Deadpool movies can now reference any X-Men or Avenger character, and vice versa. Also, it seems that Wolverine will be wearing his traditional yellow outfit from the comics, which the X-Men movies went away from.
Again, these are the kinds of things that comic book nerds geek out over.
Everything will finally be "right" in the latest Deadpool movie.
The teaming up of Ryan and Hugh as Deadpool and Wolverine is what fans have been craving for almost 10 years.
Your explanation is very thorough and heartfelt. I hope you enjoy the movie and aren't disappointed. I wish I was that into something, but I am just not. I am not really a geek about anything.
