A review of the totally epic new Deadpool & Wolverine, a movie I definitely saw. Sick, of course! Deadpool made some witty observations and talked about his penis or something and then Hugh Jackman returned as Wolverine and did the thing—you know, that thing. With the claws! When Deadpool broke the fourth wall, it was like he knows this is all just a movie. It was crazy! Totally ... tubular (wait, that's the Ninja Turtles). Either way it totally pwned. That is why it hurts me so deeply as a trusted serious movie critic to warn all of you that Ryan Reynolds is the Antichrist and he will be the death of movies.
Ryan Reynolds, that bag of silly putty formed in the shape of every boy band member combined. Reynolds, whom I first knew as the poor man's Chevy Chase in B-grade R-rated college sex comedies, has steadily proven himself as durable and resilient as the adamantium that one or both of those superheroes might possibly be made of (I forget). He was in the worst Blade movie, and still he survived. He was in a shitty Amityville Horror remake, and still he persisted. He played Deadpool already in an awful Wolverine prequel film, and yet he rises. He was the goddamn Green Lantern in one of the worst superhero movies ever made (Green Lantern), and he's making soccer franchise owner money.
Everywhere Reynolds has gone he has left destruction and madness and smug, arch, superficial meta-commentary in his wake with nothing slowing him down. People can't even get a pilot shot in Hollywood anymore, but Reynolds has a blank check to star in miscellaneous Netflix action movies alongside The Rock on a yearly basis. It's part of their budget plan.
And why? Ryan Reynolds is like the Black Eyed Peas (the band) of Hollywood: extremely popular and successful but not liked by any actual human being you've ever met. And just like Will.I.Am (music's Antichrist), he has reshaped whole swaths of popular culture in his self-satisfied, excessively hair-gelled image.
Every Ryan Reynolds performance is the same, even if the movies change. This isn't inherently a bad thing. Many great actors do variations on a narrow theme; that's what movie stardom comes with. But Reynolds's deal—ever the lovable dipshit man-child with the sleazy confidence-man affect and the witty barbs of a guy who really wants you to like how unseriously he's taking all of this—wasn't good the first time. Reynolds thinks he's a Bill Murray type despite possessing none of Murray's charm or relatability; his is the unearned confidence of turn-of-the-'90s Chevy Chase, the self-congratulatory sense of humor of a lacrosse guy who got lost on his way to an Abercrombie shoot and ended up at a Second City improv class.
But what is it that makes Reynolds evil, rather than just terrible? Well, beyond that he is apparently bomb-proof, it's what his particular ascent reveals about the state of movies. I'm not going to go on a Scorsese screed—I don't care about superhero movies, let them exist. What I'm talking about is the actual way movies are made now: in a factory setting, where a bunch of execs throw darts at a big intellectual property wall and spin a wheel to determine whether it'll be a prequel, a sequel, a remake, a reboot, or loosely affiliated story following a secondary character. A movie machine that conceives of a story as 14 plotlines and characters being self-referential and glib for two hours and 30 minutes (why are these the movies that need to be long?).
This kind of Hollywood is a private equity dream, strip-mining culture and studio libraries for every nickel they can yield, and this Hollywood loves Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds is bankable, Reynolds is familiar, but most importantly Reynolds has no shame. There isn't a piece of shit so stinky that Reynolds wouldn't preen and "So, that happened" his way through, as long as there's a Brinks truck backed up to his front door. Half of Reynolds's filmography sounds made up, like money laundering scams posing as movies. The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard? The Adam Project? Ghosted? Is this how El Chapo was able to hide from the law for so long?
And don't even get me started on Free Guy, the most cynical possible attempt to break into the video game market like he's a damn venture fund manager. At least Ashton Kutcher had the decency to stop making movies before turning into an evil corporate shill. Don't think for one second Reynolds isn't paid half a bill to show up at some tech conference to do his deadpan boy humor and smile for the executives who'll soon own us all.
And somehow he always seems to know how to do the most annoying thing. Taylor Swift is at Chiefs games? Not without Ryan Reynolds, she isn't. In the mood for a little sports reality TV? Watch Ryan Reynolds buy a soccer team with It's Always Sunny's Rob McElhenney. John Krasinski sets out to make the most annoying movie possible? Ryan's got you, playa. The Rock has to make a movie for Netflix to write off and cheat its taxes? Ryan Reynolds is all about that. Michael Bay wants to prove he can make something even worse than those last couple Transformers movies? Ryan to the rescue.
He is always there, with that face. That ain't-I-a-stinker face. The face of a man who read entirely too many issues of Mad magazine in his childhood. A face that has turned movies into an algorithm, comedy into a stat sheet. A face that represents corporate interests and the coming conglomeration of all art into one big content vortex. A face that will be in big movie after big movie after big movie, until the whole industry falls apart and we'll be back to telling stories around a campfire. Make no mistake, this is not hyperbole: Ryan Reynolds will be the death of the movie industry. And then he will be vice president in the Mark Wahlberg administration.
