Spoilers ahead for Deadpool 2.
With an R rating and a gleefully subversive attitude, Deadpool gave audiences a wild, violent, and raunchy good time that boasted everything from a flurry of severed limbs to a holiday-themed sex montage.
Now, its sequel tackles something often dodged by superhero movies: queer representation.
Deadpool 2 includes a lesbian couple, the potential blossoming of a pansexual romance, and a thinly veiled condemnation of gay conversion therapy. However, this outrageous sequel does so with an uncharacteristic timidity.
Though superhero movies have been flying into theaters for decades, it was only last year that one dared to have an LGBTQA+ character in a lead role. One single line in Power Rangers about Trini's "girlfriend troubles" was groundbreaking enough to score the film fawning headlines across the web.
Before that, queer audiences had to look into the subtext of superhero movies for any sign of representation. For instance, there's the scene in X-Men 2, where Bobby "Iceman" Drake comes out to his parents about being a mutant.
Deadpool 2 has its own anxious teen serving as a symbol for queer youth and their fight against with bigoted condemnation. Flame-throwing Russell "Firefist" Collins (Julian Dennison) lashes out in violence because of the torture suffered at the hands of Essex House's mutant-hating headmaster (Eddie Marsan). While electrocuting Russell with a cattle prod, this vicious zealot hisses, "Blessed are the wicked who are healed by my hand."
The headmaster's religious pronouncement alludes to real-life "pray away the gay" conversion therapy, while the electrocution relates to electro-shock therapy, which has been employed in violent attempts to curb homosexual urges.
Essentially, Russell's story creates an "It Gets Better" allegory in which he escapes homophobic persecution and finds a chosen family who accepts him as he is. However, while Russell is metaphorically queer, it's another in Deadpool's crew who is literally so.
When Deadpool reunites with the side-eye-slinging Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), he's introduced to her chipper, pink-haired girlfriend Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna). Just like that, Deadpool 2 brings two queer women into its ensemble.
Yet it only gives lip service to lesbian representation here. Sure, dialogue tells us these two are dating. But the visuals of their romance are notably chaste. While Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) kisses, gropes and fondles his love interest(s) in this sequel, these girlfriends don't share a single kiss or any onscreen handholding, even in their moments alone.
It's almost as if they're gay in name only, and the sole acknowledgment of their romance and sexual orientation could easily be cut from the film. (It's happened before in Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther.)
More frustrating is the ambiguity of Deadpool's sexuality in this sequel. Following the first film, some fans urged future Deadpool movies to reflect the character's pansexuality, which is canon in the comics. At first blush, Deadpool 2 seems to deliver with a subplot about its Merc with a Mouth hitting on the shiny beefcake Colossus (Stefan Kapicic).
After a tender moment in Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Deadpool moves his hand from down a hug to grope this X-Man's ass. Twice. Later, Deadpool rolls up outside the mansion and holds up a boom box that blasts Peter Gabriel music, an allusion that paints him as Say Anything's romantic lead, Lloyd Dobler, and Colossus as the object of his affections.
It's so ambiguous you could have it either way. And that's pretty damn strange, as Deadpool is not a character known for subtlety.
In the big climactic battle, Colossus cradles an impaled Deadpool in his arms, invoking imagery of knights rescuing smitten princesses as swelling music plays. Finally, in the film's resolution, Vanessa acknowledges her lover's attraction to this towering hunk. As they say their farewells on the brink of heaven, Deadpool asks that she not "fuck Elvis" while waiting for him. In response, Vanessa replies, "Don't fuck Colossus."
Fans hoping for a pansexual Deadpool could see all this as proof that he is in Deadpool 2. Meanwhile, fans who feel threatened by queer representation could easily write off each instance as just a kooky joke.
Those fans could argue that Deadpool grabs Colossus's butt because he's fucking with him, not because he wants to fuck him. That the boombox and the rescue imagery are just silly references that mean nothing. That Vanessa was totally kidding and in no way thinks Deadpool will actually attempt to seduce that metal mountain of a man. That's why he responds with, "Really?" He's not asking if she's serious about her request. He's asking – in surprise – why she'd say that.
Honestly, it's so ambiguous you could have it either way. And that's pretty damn strange, as Deadpool is not a character known for subtlety.
Superhero movie fans around the world want to see themselves reflected in these sensational power fantasies, and so have pushed for diversity that extends beyond the standard straight, white male hero. Some great strides are being made in inclusive representation. The critical and commercial successes of Wonder Woman and Black Panther proved to doubters that the genre can thrive across lines of gender and race.
But queer audiences are still in search of the hero who can lead the charge for them. Deadpool 2 flirts with the idea, but only takes tentative steps forward.
Deadpool 2 doesn't have the balls to make its hero unquestionably out and proudly queer.
Think of that. This is a film series defined by its challenging of the norms of this genre. In a sea of PG-13 offerings, it stands out as hard-R, stuffed with garish violence, graphic sex scenes, and four-letter words. Deadpool movies center on a giddy troublemaker who breaks the fourth wall, skewers the genre's family-friendly self-censorship, and refuses to be constrained by its heteronormative gender roles.
In Deadpool, he embraces his love of unicorns, gay icon Bea Arthur, and pegging. In Deadpool 2's opening credits, he flips the script on a standard James Bond title sequence, by replacing the anonymous curvy women who'd drape themselves over guns. Deadpool does all the cheesecake posing himself.
Yet for all this taboo tackling and joyful subversion, Deadpool 2 doesn't have the balls to make its hero unquestionably out and proudly queer. What happened to maximum effort?
