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In the aftermath of Deadpool 2's $300+ million global opening -- including $125 million in domestic box office -- you'd think the reasonable reactions to such numbers would be recognition of an opening that's the second-largest in the 18-year X-Men series history. The domestic figure is lower than early estimates suggested, and fell short of my own expectations, but there's a difference between not meeting high-end expectations and actually having a weak or bad opening.
We can talk realistically about the fact Deadpool 2 opened lower than most predictions, admit that the North American turnout looks to be slightly below the first Deadpool movie's numbers, but do so in a way that still recognizes Deadpool 2's box office results are nowhere near what can be called a failure, and certainly not a sign of "superhero fatigue" or other such nonsense. First of all, I want to make it clear why it's ridiculous for anyone to imply Deadpool 2's opening was literally weak or poor, as opposed to falling short of expectations, so here are a few significant sets of data... Deadpool 2 scored a terrific "A" grade from audiences at Cinemascore, which means the film will enjoy positive word of mouth and strong buzz in the weeks to come.
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That grade, coupled with positive reviews, solid consistent social media impact, and those opening weekend box office numbers, point to the picture having decent box office legs that will carry it north of $650+ million worldwide. That's assuming at least a 2.2x final multiplier, which is pretty modest. A 2.3x multiplier would almost get it to $700 million in global receipts, and 2.5x translates into $750 million.
Deadpool doesn’t finish a mission. One of the men from that incomplete mission comes after Deadpool and fires a gun into his home. Vanessa, the love of Deadpool’s seemingly immortal life, is hit by a stray bullet, which kills her.
There’s now a debate on whether Vanessa was “fridged,” a term for a comic book trope in which the girlfriend or wife of a hero dies to further said hero’s motivations and story. The trope reduces the girlfriend or wife to a plot device. They have no business existing aside from being a source of pain for the hero. The controversy was compounded by comments from Deadpool 2’s co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (who wrote the screenplay with star Ryan Reynolds), who said they didn’t know the trope existed. Deadpool Dadpool Like A Dad Only Cooler Shirt. “I think at some point somebody just said, ‘Y’know, Deadpool kind of works best when he’s had everything taken away from him, when he suffers,’” Reese told Vulture. “So the thought was maybe we can really, really engender great suffering for him by having his line of work be the thing that costs Vanessa her life.” With the debate that Deadpool 2 has caused, Reese probably knows what “fridging” is now. The term has a long history that existed way before superhero movies and geek culture fused with mainstream pop culture.
The term was created in 1999 to point out how lazy writers and creators can be when creating female characters. The term was one part of a bigger push for creators, writers, editors, and artists to tell richer, more rounded, and more realistic stories for women and female characters. Recognizing “fridging” changed the way audiences thought about and consumed stories and highlighted the blind spots that creators have when making their stories. The controversy surrounding Deadpool 2 is a reminder, especially to fans disgusted with fridging, that even the most progressive of superhero movies can still rely on the genre’s most frustrating tendencies — that even though representation of women should be better, it isn’t.
