Everyone and their grandma knows about Batman: The Caped Crusader and your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, but those who haven’t fully immersed themselves in pop culture or those who aren’t hardcore comic book fans probably have no idea who the regenerating degenerate also known as the Merc with the Mouth also known as Deadpool is. Deadpool made his first appearance in New Mutants #98 in 1991 and when he was first introduced, he was supposed to be a supervillain but over the years, Deadpool has blossomed into the odd ball mercenary anti-hero his fans know and love.

  In 2009, 20th Century Fox released “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”–the fourth installment in the X-Men franchise where Ryan Reynolds played a faulty version Deadpool for the character’s theatrical debut. In almost all Marvel continuity, Deadpool is depicted as a mentally unstable, wise-cracking, fourth-wall breaking mercenary, but for some reason the writers of this film decided to completely change Deadpool’s origin and depict him with sewn lips, laser vision, and blades protruding from his arms. This incarnation of Deadpool was not received well by most fans and many believed that Fox had absolutely disgraced one of their best licensed characters.

  Just over two years ago, test footage for a Deadpool movie leaked online and this resulted in millions of Marvel buffs guffawing at a teaser of their beloved character singing Gwen Stefani while slicing a guman’s head off with his infamous katanas. This leaked footage sparked the production of the long-awaited Deadpool movie and in February of 2016, Reynolds finally returned to portray the accurate version of this fan favorite character.

  The Deadpool in this movie proved to share far more similarities with the comic book version. This character provides a necessary contrast to the average good guy and this solo film is pretty much the first time that the star of a comic book movie has been able to swear like a sailor, spew subliminal messages, break the fourth wall, and make witty pop culture references. Deadpool isn’t a hero. He’s a goofball mercenary who cracks obscene jokes and will kill almost anyone to make a quick buck. This film recognizes this and takes full advantage of it.

  As far as the high points of this movie go, Deadpool was, without a doubt, the funniest comic book movie I’ve ever seen. As the film progressed, I found it reminiscent of other action comedies based on comics like “Kick-Ass,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” and even “Guardians of the Galaxy” to some extent. In the first few moments of the film, the camera panned around a freeze frame of an epic still of Deadpool taking on a whole gang of bad guys in a rolling car as Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning” played in the background. The shot showed Deadpool giving one bad guy a painful wedgie, and the whole audience was already thrown into laughing fits.

  One of Deadpool’s most popular and well-known powers is his ability to recognize that he’s in a fictional universe. Throughout the movie, Deadpool is absolutely lucid about his imaginary universe and he consistently breaks the fourth wall by speaking to the audience directly and making endless references to the viewer’s world. Every scene was chock-full of easter eggs and every time I noticed one, I freaked out a little inside.

  One aspect of the movie that I really enjoyed was how the ensemble of secondary characters provided more chemistry and hilarious sequences for Deadpool. Ajax, Colossus, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Weasel, Blind Al, and even Bob from Hydra all bring something unique for Deadpool to take advantage of. The best part of this movie aside from the humor was the absolutely appropriate soundtrack. Songs like “Mister Sandman,” “Shoop,” and “X Gon Give it to Ya” captured the entire tone of this movie flawlessly.

  The most shocking aspect of the plot for me was the love story. When most people look at Deadpool, they don’t see a romantic symbol but for the most part, this movie totally pulled the romance genre off with this ridiculous character. Deadpool falls in love with a woman named Vanessa Carlysle, but after being diagnosed with terminal cancer he decides to end their relationship so she isn’t forced to watch her significant other suffer. The whole romance aspect of the plot provided this otherwise sophomoric character with some serious, rich, and even touching moments.

  While this movie’s portrayal of Deadpool was true to his source material, it wasn’t completely flawless. Most of the gripes I had with this movie were due to my knowledge about Deadpool’s comics. I noticed that Deadpool’s healing factor wasn’t necessarily used correctly. In one scene, Deadpool made an amusing play on “127 Hours” by cutting off his own hand to escape Colossus’s death grip. This action resulted in a hysterical scene as his hand slowly grew back but it took several hours to regenerate. In the comic book, Deadpool can take a round from a machine gun or completely dislocate his hip and heal within minutes. The error that stood out to me more than this were the changes to the Merc’s origin. In the comics, Deadpool had cancer–like in the movie–but he received his healing factor from X-Man Wolverine rather than a random test that exposed his mutant gene as shown in the movie. I assume that Fox decided to create this origin so Deadpool ties in more with the X-Men franchise and less with the Deadpool in the “Origins” film. This isn’t a huge issue because this idea was well executed, but the movie did a poor job of explaining how the random procedure cured Deadpool’s terminal cancer.

  By the end of this film, I was completely satisfied. Fox and Ryan Reynolds did justice for Deadpool and I loved nearly every part of this movie. SPOILER ALERT: According to the hilarious Ferris Bueller inspired post-credit scene, a sequel to Deadpool is in the works and Cable is officially confirmed to be in the next movie. This is significant because Cable isn’t a very widely-known character and he’s never been in an actual movie but he’s played a huge role in the creation of Deadpool’s character from the 1990’s until the present day. This movie has me pumped not only for its definite sequels, but also for future R-rated comic book characters that don’t take themselves too seriously.