Deadpool: why it was successful?

Deadpool's success accelerates the inevitable: total geek domination

Ryan Reynolds’s sexually-fluid superhero is set to clean up at the global box office this weekend. It has done so by being the essence of a 21st-century movie: a product symbiotic with its fans and social media

Ryan Reynolds at a Deadpool film fan event, New York, 8 February. Photograph: Startraks Photo/REX/Shutterstock Paul MacInnes Sunday 14 February 2016 08.39 GMT Last modified on Monday 15 February 2016 11.06 GMT

This weekend, in what will be a notable achievement, Deadpool looks set to break box office records for R-rated superhero movies which feature the sexual activity of pegging. Not so long ago, superhero movies struggled with any kind of sexual activity beyond an upside-down kiss in the rain. But now those fusty preconceptions are finally being replaced. In 2016, grown adults are allowed to dress in kevlar-enhanced costumes and root the heck out of whatever they like. At last, freedom!

I’m not going to explain what pegging is – life is too short and Google too easy – but I can assure you it’s not the only eye-popping feature of Deadpool, the latest extension of the Marvel Universe. (It should probably be pointed out that this is the other Marvel universe, licensed by Fox which pretends the Disney owned one doesn’t exist).

The story stars Ryan Reynolds as a mercenary who is not only virtually indestructible but also has a hideously disfigured face. This face is exposed to the viewer a lot more often than you might expect (or hope for). This mercenary is also a “pansexual” sybarite, a brutal cynic, and someone who believes the appropriate punishment for most types of wrongdoing is death (unlucky in love? First kidnap your rival, then kybosh him).

It probably goes without saying, but violence is not just a means to an end, but a source of artistic expression. And while he loves shoving Japanese katana swords into his victims with a balletic panache, Deadpool is also a lover of words. Or at least a metatextual smart-arse; a relentless fourth wall breaker who at one point even breaks the broken wall. There’s a lot going on with Deadpool and once you’ve dealt with it all, the fact that his housemate is a blind octogenarian Afro-American woman with whom he engages in banter about flatpack furniture seems barely worth noting.

Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds’ determination to get this film made is already the stuff of legend (and, most likely, mythology). The sizzle reel, the cheeky imagery, the online bandwagon, it all falls in line with the contemporary drift towards fan-inspired cinema, where movie studios feel safest spending money on films with their audience already guaranteed. But Deadpool doesn’t just offer up a hero it thinks the fanbase will love, it offers up an entire world. It is one of the best articulations of “geek culture” to reach the big screen. And if it can pull off big numbers at the cinema with an exclusively adult audience, it will presage not only more movies like it but bring geeks one step closer to what they truly want; control of the entire world.

 Here are a few of the ways in which Deadpool mirrors geek taste. Its hero is a young white male who’s also the ultimate outsider. It’s built on layer upon layer of cultural reference, where the fun comes not from dramatic irony, but its opposite, knowing something that the character knows but other viewers might not.

Of course it’s cynical like its protagonist, and is full of zesty insults (Deadpool’s face, for example, is described as looking like “an avocado had sex with an older avocado”). There’s all that violence, delivered with a keen visual flair right down the final bloody splodges that burst from the top of victims’ heads, but it’s violence without consequence and violence staged as fun. Its politics, such as they are, are libertarian, with an emphasis on expression of identity. There’s some vague motivational thinking going on, or at least a catchphrase, “maximum effort!”, that is used frequently for no clear reason. To top it all off, Deadpool doesn’t just take it’s tonal cues from social media, but its form too, at points overlaying emojis and little animated critters over the filmed action.

Reynolds at the New York premiere. Photograph: Brendan Mcdermid/Re

Basically Deadpool is Reddit: the movie.

It’s highly enjoyable, and very well made, but it’s also a marker, a moment where a massive multi-million dollar bet has been made on geek culture being not only a mainstream proposition but an adult one too. I’m not saying it’s bad for that. Even if I did despair for our common humanity, it’s delivered with real brio and that hyperactive style – both in form and content – is exciting and new to watch. It feels like a real articulation of now, a style that couldn’t have been achieved only a few years ago. (Its visual density also means that it’s suited for multiple viewings, another habit of our age.)

Personally speaking I am surprised by how the nerd has inherited the earth. In the eternal battle between the two, I always thought it more likely that the jock would triumph. But as our world becomes increasingly a digital one there’s only so much a ripped physique and willingness to feel the burn will get you. If the box office predictions prove correct and Deadpool is just a sign of things to come, I for one welcome our geek overlords.