Hey blog, it's Neil. This week, I'm supposed to write about something that I think the media does well. I don't think that they do much well, to be honest. This is the media we're talking about here, known for doing things that sensationalize and humiliate. And yet, if I had to find anything that they do well, I guess it giving something that deserves it a chance every once in a while. Do studio heads count as a subcategory of "the media"? They sure act like it- we always hear stories of them doing controversial things that keep people from seeing the movies that the American people want to see in favor of the international markets. This is why sequels keep getting pumped out- movie-going Americans may be sick of colorful-costumed white-man superheroes, but plenty of international markets, particularly China, still flock to them, and create both licensing deals and alternate versions of movies for these markets. Some movies, such as the 2013 R-rated college comedy "21 And Over", even have their entire premises altered for Chinese releases. While the American version is about an Asian-American college student who celebrates his 21st birthday the night before a medical school interview, the Chinese version is apparently about a young Chinese man who briefly goes to an American college, is temporarily corrupted by hedonistic Western society, and goes back to China a better person. It's amazing how editing and dubbing can make a movie appear entirely different when released in another country. This is usually done for image reasons. If a non-Asian person were seen engaging in wild partying in a Hollywood movie in China, they wouldn't care and would probably enjoy it. Because of the high regard superheroes are held in in China, the new super-anti-hero soft science fiction action black comedy Deadpool, an highly irreverent, over-the-top, and adult-oriented parody of superhero movies, has even been banned from China, despite plenty of similar violent movies already being allowed and often made in China as well. Deadpool is particularly what I wanted to talk about.
Co-created by comic writer Fabian Nicieza and comic artist Rob Liefeld, Deadpool was initially a side character in the Marvel Comics series The New Mutants and became something of a comedic partner to the antihero Cable. He was a parody of the DC Comics villain Deathstroke, with all of the same abilities and then some- near-immortal regenerative abilities, skill with guns and swords, processing information at thirty times the rate of the average human (once believed to be able to use up to thirty percent of their brains at a time before the ten percent brain myth was disproved), and various others. Their personalities are greatly different, however. While Deathstroke is usually cruel, cold, and calculating rarely involved in humor, Deadpool is almost always talking, completely filterless, and acts like a mixture of a hyperactive child and cartoon character given too much weaponry. His origin takes a potentially tragic story and turns it on its head by allowing it to happen to someone with his personality. As a pun on the real name of Deathstroke, Slade Wilson, Deadpool's real name is Wade Wilson. He was a man diagnosed with terminal cancer who volunteered for the Weapon X program in order to be cured of it, but the things they injected him with there, rather than cure it, simply froze it, giving him immortality allowing him to regenerate limbs from essentially any injury, but also giving him always-wrinkly skin. Being experimented on also drove him insane, giving him the ability to break the fourth wall and be aware of his status as a fictional comic book character, talk to the reader, and reference past issues in a way that no other characters can understand. Other mental issues he has had have included having him constantly talk with two other yellow and white thought boxes meant to represent the rest of his brain, though I don't think that these are meant to be his conscience and anti-conscience, because they both, at different times, try to convince Deadpool to do or not do the bad and/or dumb things he really wants to do. Deadpool thinks he's a superhero and often tries to be friends with other superheroes but is prevented by his own psychotic nature from being a true superhero admired by the in-universe public or respected by his idols.
A botched attempt at getting him into a movie happened in 2009. Ryan Reynolds played him as a supporting character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but he didn't have Deadpool's iconic costume and, at the movie's climax, appeared as a bald man with his mouth sewn shut (as a response to an earlier line said by the founder of Weapon X, William Stryker, "If you didn't have that mouth of yours, Wilson, you'd be the perfect soldier."), with the powers of other mutants, such as laser vision, teleportation, and swords coming out of his hands like Wolverine's claws, "pooled" into him. While the real Deadpool does have a remote for teleportation in the comics, it's not an actual power of his, and the rest of the powers are just ridiculous. No one thought that Deadpool could manage his own solo film, especially if it were as an R-rated, hyper-violent, and highly crass superhero movie. Sometimes, however, the studio takes a risk and pulls through. After noticing his popularity in video games such as the 2010 installment of Marvel vs. Capcom and the 2013 Deadpool video game, along with his appearances on various internet memes, people could tell that it was time for Deadpool to have his movie. Ryan Reynolds wanted to play the character again, but actually do him justice, and seems to have delivered. I guess that the media deserves props for taking a chance on Deadpool, and I think that their risk will pay off. Thank you for reading, and see you next week.
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