Props to “Deadpool” for its bisexual superhero milestone: Our hero (Ryan Reynolds) admits the film’s male villain (Ed Skrein) turns him on even more than his lady love (Morena Baccarin) does.
Then again, this moment comes during the end credits — when an animated Deadpool is, uh, visually demonstrating the effect these two characters have on his libido.
Such is the bargain “Deadpool” makes in giving a beloved, unorthodox comic book character his own movie: Our red-clad hero is a little gay, kinda, but mostly he’s totally straight — so don’t fret, movie execs! Homophobes will still flock to your ultraviolent, big-budget action movie!
Watch the trailer, and you could be mistaken for thinking he’s just another run-of-the-mill comics character: Stuff blows up! Bad guys end up dead! Hero gets the hot chick!
It’s all a missed opportunity for a franchise that could have gone a lot further in distinguishing its wisecracking, fourth-wall-breaking, unicorns-and-rainbows-lovin’ avenger as the iconic hero for a new generation — a demographic that doesn’t care nearly as much as its elders about sexual orientation, and that is starved for a satire of the alpha male superhero movie we’ve all seen a hundred times.
What’s more, both the movie’s director and the comic’s co-creator have explicitly stated that the character is “pansexual” — meaning, as creator Fabian Nicieza put it, sounding rather exasperated to have been asked the question so often, “he can be gay one minute, hetero the next, etc. ALL ARE VALID.”
Reynolds has never been better as Wade Wilson/Deadpool, a murderous mutant who favors “Rent” and “Golden Girls”-themed attire, talks about masturbating to gay icon Bernadette Peters, lets his girlfriend make love to him with a strap-on, refers to his prostate as his “on switch,” and cheerfully describes the sexual favors he did for Wolverine to get this movie made.
What’s more, not once in “Deadpool” is there a “Suck my d - - k” comment or a prison-rape joke or any other throwaway line of the sort that’s so often, and so depressingly, the homophobic norm in macho mainstream movie fare.
Nevertheless, there are zero scenes in this movie that actually depict him having an interest in men, until those end credits — so the whole “All are valid” thing loses credence. Deadpool is, when you get down to it, just as hetero as the next male superhero. And anyone who’s read the comics knows this is selling the character, and his skewering of the macho genre standard, way short.
Reynolds, who was the driving force behind getting this movie made, has made it clear he’s on Team Make-Deadpool-More-Bi, remarking to Variety that he thinks it would be “nice” to give his character a boyfriend in the all-but-inevitable sequel, given the film’s towering box office performance.
“I certainly wouldn’t be the guy standing in the way of that. That would be great,” he told the magazine. So who, exactly, is the one standing in the way of that? Watch “Deadpool,” and it’s so easy to imagine how a slightly different edit would have made our hero a little flirtier with the guys.
At this point, it’s not like having Deadpool smooch a man would even have been very risqué — for years now, a big trend in comic book characters has been busting them out of the heterosexual box. Too bad Hollywood suits can’t get with the times.