The numbers should speak for themselves: over the course of just two films, the burgeoning “Deadpool” franchise has made Fox over $1.5 billion.
It’s a cash cow! A strange, twisted, violent, weird cash cow that manages to exist both inside of and wholly removed from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the X-Men’s own convoluted cinematic canon.
No other current superhero franchise is as invested in its own meta machinations, its own foul-mouthed digs at its place in the superhero world, or its adherence to violence that could only come with an R-rating.And yet, apparently, a billion and a half bucks is just not enough.
That’s why “Deadpool 2” has been edited down, chopped up, and stuck inside a strange (though not entirely unlikable) framing device, all the better to earn a PG-13 rating and get served right back up to an audience that presumably liked it just fine the first time around.
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