Both Sides
A film review podcast between a film student, and a film industry outsider, about a film. https://www.youtube.com/@BothSides_Podcast
Both Sides
#2. Deadpool (2016) w/ Washington Heilman #filmreview
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In this podcast, Andrew reviews Deadpool with Washington Heilman, a let's play YouTuber and Streamer
~ FILM SUGGESTIONS ~
Comment about films you guy's want to see, and I'll credit you.
~ HOST ~
Andrew Heilman is a student film producer, owner operator of Heilman Productions (a free-lance media/film production company in Silicon Valley) and social media editor.
~ GUESTS ~
The guests for this show are people who are not actively seeking a career in the film and television industries.
Welcome to the Both Sides Podcast, a conversation between a film industry insider and an outsider to get their unique perspectives on films. I'm your host, Andrew Heilman, a film student and owner-operator of a film and media production company. Today, my guest is my brother Washington Heilman, a Let's Play YouTuber and streamer from the United States. Today, requested by Noah Flores, we're watching Deadpool. Washington has never seen this film. I haven't either. Here's the story in a nutshell. Deadpool follows Wade Wilson, a former Special Forces mercenary who falls in love with Vanessa. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Wade agrees to an experimental treatment offered by a shady organization promising a cure. The treatment gives him accelerated healing powers, but leaves him horribly scarred. Adopting the Altarigo Deadpool, Wade becomes a wise-cracking anti-hero obsessed with hunting down Ajax, the man responsible for the experiment, so he can force him to fix his appearance. Along the way, Deadpool teams up, often reluctantly, with the X-Ben members Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. In the climax, Deadpool defeats Ajax, rescues Vanessa, and accepts that she still loves him despite his scars. Stay tuned till the end to hear Washington in my final reviews of the film. Now, let's talk about this movie. So what'd you think?
SPEAKER_01Well. I liked it. Could not remember a single name of the character besides of the characters besides Deadpool and Francis. Everyone else is just in and out of my mind. Metal Man, uh Little Girl, uh, and girlfriend. And guy at the bar. Ugh, jeez. Couldn't remember their names. It was very similar to like John Wick meets the Phantom of the Opera meets the uh superhero movies, kinda.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Obviously the movie doesn't work without the unique character of Deadpool.
SPEAKER_01It kind of it kinda it completely kind of falls apart and becomes a normal superhero movie if it weren't for Deadpool, which is good why he's there. And um would have been nice to see someone die at the end, you know, give us a little bit of something. It's an adult uh film made for adults. Would have liked to see more negative consequences that the adults could handle. Also, when the movie came out, uh, it's really funny that a bunch of kids went to go see that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But it is a Marvel movie, so all the Marvel movies gotta have a good ending. And it's unfortunate to see that at the end of the movie when the credits rolled. When the what's passed since word for credits rolling? Rolled. Rolled. When the credits rolled, there was no Deadpool will come back and blah blah blah. Marvel sh stuff.
SPEAKER_00Well, there might might have been at the very end. I paused it right as the credits started rolling.
SPEAKER_01Cool. What other Deadpool are there other Deadpool movies?
SPEAKER_00There's there's there's There's two more. There's Deadpool 2, I think. That's the one with the X-Men, and then the Oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The Christmas. It was like Christmassy, I remember that. Yeah. And then there's the Wolverine one. Oh, yeah, I also forgot to say. Um I know how to kill like Wolverine Deadpool. Anybody who's invincible, just if you just put them on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, they will never leave. I thought that was interesting. But uh plot of the movie, I thought the flashbacks, like like the first half of the movie, where they were where we were flashing forward and backward from past to present. I thought that was good. I thought that was well paced. And um they told us what was going on in the story of everything well, they taught us up well. But what did you think? What did directors uh and director movie people um see when they watch a movie? Are they focused on the shots and cinematography and the lighting and the uh acting and stuff?
SPEAKER_00All of that stuff was pretty solid. I mean, for these kind of big budget movies, they very rarely have bad directing and bad acting and all that kind of stuff. Um I talk about in storytelling and I think a lot about favoritism, um, which is basically giving each main character their own giving them their own spotlights and giving the audience reasons to sympathize with each and every one of them and making them more human as opposed to having a direct message of this guy's bad and this guy's good, root for the good guy, because that that kind of content can be really boring and cliched. That's why uh Martin Square says Martin Squirt says he, the famous director. Um he doesn't really like my of the Wall Street. Yeah, the director of The Wolf of Wall Street and a bunch of other movies. He's the wolf, but yes, continue. His pers his perspective, his perspective on superhero movies, from my understanding, is like they're just popcorn movies. They're predictable, they're simple, they're easy to follow, they're the they're the movies of the masses, the opiate of the masses. Um and that's pretty much true for most superhero movies. Most superhero movies are very simple and they're very clean cut. And this movie is not that simple. It has a bunch of intricacies in it, but like you said, I mean, it follows the very standard superhero formula. It plays with it a little bit in the in the maybe the first half with not starting with the origin story, but you know, kind of going using the origin story as a flashback as opposed to starting at the actual origin of the story. But what it doesn't do right in terms of trying to be not, you know, very basic superhero movies, that with the super villain, there's a lot of favoritism towards Deadpool. Um, and you know, it the movie makes it very clear that Francis, whatever his name is, AJ, um, is a bad guy, and that we're supposed to think that he's a bad guy. And I would have liked to see more of his motives, I would have liked to see more of his life, I would have liked to see more of why he's going after Deadpool. The the main reason the movie gives us is that Deadpool basically just like humiliates him and like makes fun of his name and he doesn't like Deadpool's guts, which yes, that's motivation, but it doesn't feel as deep as a real human being would um attack someone to me. Um I'm sure you know in real life people do that kind of stuff all the time, but to the level that he wants to pursue and kill Deadpool and just the crazy crazy negative attacks he has against Deadpool, it doesn't feel like him having his name made fun of and then him kind of being like messed around with by Deadpool. That I it's not the strongest way to build a villain like that. The main villain of the story is just Deadpool's insecurity. Um, and that's what it feels like, is it it the story feels like it's much more a story about getting over your insecurity of the way that you you look than it is like an actual superhero story about like killing Thanos or something. Um that being said, the fourth wall breaks, the comedy. Um it borders it borders on cringe a little bit sometimes when I don't know. He makes it there's a certain threshold that you you can get when you're being too meta, I in my opinion, um to where it's just kind of like, okay, that's that's the thing that I know of, that's the thing that I'm that you know, whatever. Um but a lot of the times it was genuinely genuinely clever the way that he would you know he would break certain fourth walls and he would bring in some outside context of the real world into the fictional world that they're trying to create in the story, like um specifically the fourth wall break when they're coming out when he's coming out of the the X-Men mansion building, and he says, you know, I wonder, you know, this house like looks like it could it could like live 12 and you two are the only one you two are the only two I see here. Um maybe that's because the studio couldn't afford more X-Men. Stuff like that is clever and funny because they r probably really couldn't because at the time I'm pretty sure Sony owns I'm pretty sure Sony owns the X-Men IP. Maybe maybe Marvel Pops.
SPEAKER_01Oh shoot, I was watching a video essay the other day about stuff like this. Um don't uh okay, wait. Sony owns Spider-Man. Warner Brothers owns um shoot! I was looking at this the other day. I think I think Warner Bros. it's either Warner Brothers or Oh shoot. Um no, I think it's either Warner Brothers or Paramount that owns the X-Men.
SPEAKER_00No, 20th Century Fox owns X-Men, I think.
SPEAKER_01Shoot! It was 20th Century Fox at the beginning of the movie. Yeah, yeah, 20th Century Fox owns X-Men.
SPEAKER_00But now now Disney owns 20th Century Fox, but so but back then, when this movie was made in like 2016, I don't uh Disney hadn't bought 20th Century Fox yet, so they didn't own they didn't own the X-Men IP. Um and then I think in Deadpool 2, they bought they either made a deal or some sort of thing. But there's a all that to say there's a there's a film-making reason and like a film industry reason why m more X-Men weren't in that movie and Deadpool calls it out, um, which is mainly that it was a f probably a financing thing. Um because they did eventually tell the story of Deadpool with all the X-Men in the next X-Men movie, which, you know, the plot of this movie isn't very interesting to me. It's just a very basic origin superhero movie.
SPEAKER_01Um but the way of telling it was fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but the yeah, and that's the main thing is that there's a difference between the story and then the storytelling. And the storytelling is that it's you know, a lot of fourth wall breaking, there's a lot of unconventional humor and a lot of violence and swearing and all that kind of stuff, which does make it unique and interesting in its own movie. And the storytelling aspect of it is all good, but it but you have to have a good foundation in order to build something off of. And this movie does have a solid foundation, but it's not, you know, it's it's not the I I would I would pick movies like Infinity War or Civil War or Um Winter Soldier as being much better than this movie in terms of what the actual story is. But, you know, I think normally at the end of these, well, I had some other perspective that I was gonna add, but yeah, mainly just that if when you're creating a story that having favoritism for a main character can make your story feel very bland, but it can appeal to more of the masses because most people want a very simple, simply understandable movie, and that's why um crazy foreign films that are all over the place or something that's you know unconventional doesn't normally have our art artistic movies like that don't normally have a big wide audience because they're really hard to understand. So it's like it's kind of like a negative consequence of trying to go out and create something that's never been created before, is that people need something that they've seen before in order to understand what what they um what they see. So I think I like to end these kind of things by looking at Well, I has I had a few more questions.
SPEAKER_01Okay, what was a few more questions? First question, if you had to change something about the movie, what would you do it how what would you change about the movie and how?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes. Uh I would change definitely what we've been saying about probably making the the story a little bit more unconventional. What you were saying about having like someone die at the end. Yeah, I would have liked someone to die at the end.
SPEAKER_01You know, but who?
SPEAKER_00I want to know how. I think I think making something less predictable.
SPEAKER_01If the girl died at the end, that would be to because because the movie would i even if the girl died at the end, people would anticipate her coming back to life because that cliche is so such a such a thing. I feel like somebody should die at the end, but it couldn't be the girl because that's too obvious. I feel like I don't know, maybe maybe the old blind lady or something. It's just somebody die, please, it's Deadpool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you definitely don't want well, it depend uh what audiences want are different than what film buffs want or people that like movies. Um when you watch as many movies as I've seen, or as many movies that you've seen, you want something new and different to really come away with a movie. You don't want to just see basically another movie that you just saw. Yep. Um if I were to make it different, I definitely would have made the main the main villain a little bit more interesting. Um having having that world be left on the table, like we get to see Deadpool go to do this, you know, uh Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man kills spree where he goes against all these uh people on his way up to the top. I would have liked to see maybe him explore that world a little bit more and then learn, you know, what this what this organization really was, what they were doing to these people and that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01That was kind of confusing.
SPEAKER_00And that would that would have been a good good point to go deep into this in this Francis character in that industry instead of focusing so much on Deadpool's insecurity as like the main plot of the movie. Uh I would have changed that. I would have made I think the X-Men characters, I think it's Colossus, is the the Chrome guy. Big Metal Man. Big Metal Man, and then I don't remember the I I've we have to preface this by saying we've never read any of the Deadpool comics or X-Men Commons.
SPEAKER_01We're not, uh yeah. So we're not experts in that at the beginning. Yeah, I don't know. I've never read the comics, never seen the movie before, never seen any shows or anything. I'm trying to think what else would he be in. X-Men movies. I I've seen like one X-Men movie.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so like those characters aren't the most interesting to me, but they did add a little bit of human.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like off-brand Hulk and off-brand human torch. I'm like, I don't really care.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But um, yes, at the end of these, I normally like to look at what there's a platus.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna ask another question. Uh, what was your other question? Um how should I how should I ask this? What's the big if you were to describe this movie in one word, in a film descriptive way, how would you describe it? Just describe just describe this movie in one word.
SPEAKER_00In one word? Yeah. Well, it would just be like overcoming or something.
SPEAKER_01Okay, overcoming, overcoming. Now, um I wanna learn I wanna learn some behind the scenes like stuff about film, actually. Like uh like any any anything I should know about directing or writing or or casting or acting or there's a lot of there's a lot of different stuff about movies which I don't really know, but is there anything in movies that you should like end this podcast with, like a lesson about movies or something?
SPEAKER_00Um a lesson about movies you really gotta find out what your goal is. If your goal is to make a superhero movie, then go ahead and make a superhero movie. What if your goal is to like make money? If your goal is to make money, appeal to what the audience wants. I mean, that's just that's making money one-on-one. Because if you m make a Deadpool movie and then kill off Deadpool at the end of the first movie, no one's gonna want to show that movie to people. So you have to find a way to figure out what your audience wants and then makes them make the movie your audience wants. That doesn't mean that it's the movie that's the most innovative, or the movie that's the most interesting, or the movie that's the most creative, or the movie that'll appeal to the most, you know, critics and stuff, but it's the movie that'll appeal to the most the you know, the widest audience, and they clearly wanted to make a successful movie, and I get it that if you're gonna as a company make, you know, I think it's the first R-rated Marvel movie, and it was a it was a big gamble for them to create. But so they wanted it to make money. But you know, it's it's you wanna make the movie that you want to make that you have pride in, and if the filmmakers have pride in this movie for, in their opinion, making it as interesting as they thought it should be, and all that kind of stuff, then I can't I can't blame them too much. Um everything in this movie was pretty solid from the lighting and the acting and the directing, and they like you s you mentioned the editing and the pacing. If it's that was a really creative decision to tell the origin story in a flashback, as opposed again, like I said, like as opposed to starting the movie in the original origin story. Yeah. So it it's not like they were making a movie that they thought was gonna be that they didn't take an effort in making sure that it wasn't formulaic. I think that they could have they could have draw dragged out and made more of a crescendo of the ending and the the middle. I think they could have made it longer. You know, that's a common complaint with me with a lot of these movies, is that they're going s I just want more of them, which I know that that's uh that's very much a director's and producer's decision of why a certain movie isn't as long as it could be, because when you shoot these movies you get hundreds of hours of content, and then you have to edit it down to you know what'll get people in the most seats. They make a big deal out of that in the show The Offer, which is kind of like a documentary um um what do you might what do you call it? It's like a biopic TV show. I don't know what you would call that.
SPEAKER_01Um it it's like a bio biopic TV show, but or mini-series is a show, it's a show about the creators who made the Godfather and what they had to go through to make it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the point of that the offer is what it's called. Right, and with distribution, the longer a movie is, the less show times you get in a day, which means the less money you make overall. So the reason why these movies, even though they could probably keep someone in a theater for three, four, five hours, is because you make less money because you can't charge more for a certain um certain movie just because of how long it is, and you get less of that time to less show times to show people. So obviously, I'd want a movie to be as long as it could in order to get the most bang for your buck. Get the most bang for my buck to convince me that these characters are real and that they're not one-dimensional, and that they have all of these things that go behind their creations. And you know, I get it. It's it's a director's choice because they want to show things that are interesting to them, and it's it's a producer's choice because they want to have the money to fund those scenes and all that kind of stuff, and they want to get the money back from distribution. Uh the Rotten Tomatoes score for this movie, I believe.
SPEAKER_01I'm looking at the 20, uh 98 is my guess. No, no, no. 85.
SPEAKER_0084. So critics?
SPEAKER_0185. 85, man. I said 84.
SPEAKER_00So critics gave this movie 85 on Rotten Tomatoes, and um audiences gave it 90%. Um I think that kind of just bolsters my theory of if you make a movie that's a little bit more safe or predictable that most audiences like it, which, you know, is fine. Um I if you were to rate.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say we should both rate, we should both at the same time say our ranking for one of the five stars. Not at the same time. No, it's like one, two, three, five stars, four stars, three stars. I would rate it three and a half. It's pretty fun for a very average action movie.
SPEAKER_00What would you out of what um where would that fall, do you think, on a rotten tomato score of one to a hundred?
SPEAKER_01Um if five is a hundred, then four is eighty, then three is seventy. Five. Seventy-five rotten tomatoes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd probably give it closer to.
SPEAKER_01Wait, is that correct? Two, four, six, eight.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if that's a number one.
SPEAKER_0165, 65. I would give sorry, I'm sorry, sorry. Uh 100 divided by 5 is 20, 2, 4 is 6. 65 rotten tomatoes.
SPEAKER_00I'd give it 75 rotten tomatoes. Because I do think that there's enough of it to be unique and interesting. It's not like you're literally watching. You know, a cliche. You're watching a bunch of unique stuff with cliche elements in it, which I would have made a little differently, but that's our our scores that you say 65, I say 75. Um and yeah, I appreciate you being on the show. We have some other movies I think that would be fun to watch and you know just talk about afterwards because that's kind of what this show is all about, is just talking about movies. It's not this huge produced thing.
SPEAKER_01But do you have a like let us know what movie we should watch next type thing? Do you have like a forum where people can submit movies?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's mainly through just the comment section on multiple social media apps, but that's gonna be it for today. Thanks for watching. So thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. It's a it's a audio audio podcast.
SPEAKER_00Alright, audios bye.
SPEAKER_01Alright, see ya.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for listening to both sides. Leave a comment below of a movie you want me to watch with a guest, and I'll credit you and your username. Like and follow if you enjoyed this podcast, and to stay notified of future reviews. Remember, your right to your opinion matters, whether you're an expert or not. Peace out.