Shitty Marvel steps up its game. Well, okay, I know that not everyone feels that way about the Marvel movies outside of the Avengers-related properties, but as far as I have been concerned, there is the MCU and then there's everything else. Fantastic Four movies all suck, no matter how much I go in wanting to like them because of the actors. I thought the first X-men movie was pretty good, but it has not aged well at all (I compare Wolverine's spin move on the Statue of Liberty's crown to just about any action sequence from the MCU, and laugh). The second one got deeper into the mythology and the tiresome prejudice theme, which only gets more and more absurd the more you examine it, and the third one was just crap, that felt like a couple of good ideas that were half formed and then stitched together in hopes of making money. I didn't care much for the reboots/prequels, and the less said about the Wolverine movies, the better. I don't really see the appeal of Wolverine anyway. He carries himself like this tough-guy badass, and people seem to treat him like that, except he's basically unkillable, so, no. A guy who snarls rudely at everyone, calls people names and dives into fights is cool because of the risks he's taking. When his bones can't break, and the rest of his flesh grows right back...that's not really brave, that's playing a video game with a god code on.

But now there's "Deadpool." I had some trepidation when the trailers came out showing him arguing with Colossus and naming the X-men, knowing that meant "Deadpool" was part of the lesser Marvel universe, but this movie really rectified it. For Senator Kelly's number one fan, this film goes a long way to justifying the whole X-men franchise. Compared to the other Marvel universe, I'd rank "Deadpool" alongside "Ant-Man." It's the same sort of origin story of a criminal given superpowers and a red suit, some excellent action and self-aware humor, while trying to own the more ridiculous aspects of something that was apparently cool in a niche market when Stan Lee thought it up in the 60s, but is trying to play to post-ironic mainstream audiences fifty years later.

Don't take the kids, BTW. "Deadpool" is full of filthy language, near and background nudity, numerous sexual references and depicted acts (this is the first comic book movie I have ever seen [including Kick Ass and all that supposedly edgy Alan Moore stuff] show the protagonist get sodomized), and full-on violence. The eponymous protagonist is just as indestructible as Wolverine, but the movie uses that as an excuse to let him play with his opponents, and show off. He might be just as much of a bully, but he doesn't pretend to be anything else. The humanizing aspect of his character is his affection for his love interest, and post-empowerment, his fear of her rejection and concern for her safety, but she isn't your typical superhero love interest either. She's nearly as funny, and almost as depraved, and has no girlpower moments shoehorned in to inflate her badass credentials. In fact, a line in at least one trailer I've seen, where she cracks to the villain about not being a victim and which is all too typical of the Lois Lane/Rachel Dawes/Mary Jane Parker/Pepper Potts school of spunky love interests, doesn't seem to have made the final cut. Because a powerless person who mouths off like that to a character in "Deadpool" is very likely to lose her tongue at a minimum.

Aside from the sight gags and humor derived from over-the-top sex and violence, we get a number of good fourth-wall-breaking jokes, including Deadpool occasionally talking to the audience (and having a character react to his audience-commentary, only to have Deadpool retort "I'm talking to them!" ) and poking fun at the X-men franchise and the career of Ryan Reynolds (who plays Deadpool, in case you didn't know). There seem to be references to all Reynolds' previous stints in comic book movies, such as an allusion to the Blade films, Deadpool begging not to have a green costume or be animated, and a glimpse of an action figure that appears to be based on his last attempt at playing the same character, in "X-men Origins: Wolverine". The opening credits alone were worth the price of admission, although the post-credit sequence was less gratifying, but pretty much in line with what you'd come to expect after watching the whole movie.

Reynolds does a good job as Deadpool, Ed Skrein, the original Daario Naheris actor from "Game of Thrones", is a suitably unpleasant antagonist (Ajax, for whatever that's worth to source material fans), despite being the worst of four actors to play Frank Martin in the Transporter films, while Morena Baccarin nearly steals the show as Deadpool's pre-mutation girlfriend. Gina Carano is the villain's main thug, and has even less to say than her previous movies, but has one pretty good line while going toe-to-toe with Colossus. The only X-men to appear are Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, representing the conventional mutant heroic point of view, as they try to make Deadpool fall in line with the X-men's agenda. The story is pretty basic, although somewhat non-linear. Deadpool is seeking revenge on the scientist/mercenary whose program turned him into a mutant, first ambushing a weapon-smuggling convoy his nemesis is escorting, then after returning home to regroup, pursues the next stage of his vengeance at the enemy base of operations, with two big fight scenes bookending the film, with several flashbacks to Deadpool's prior life as a mercenary named Wade Wilson, who fell for a prostitute before a terminal diagnosis drove him to one of those secret superpower/psuedo-science programs that promised to cure him and make him a hero. It's not really a complex story, keeping the plot simple as the real appeal is generated in the action and the humor. In different senses of the words, it is probably at once the most adult and the most juvenile superhero movie to hit theaters thus far. It might not be the superhero movie all the nerds and pundits want, but it's the one we deserve.

Rating: 8 out of 10 X-men the studio could afford.