I was trying to figure out why Returns was more poorly received (including by me). I think it has to do with the elegance of the first Batman. Bruce Wayne lives in an opulent mansion. Batman is surrounded by neat gadgets. Even Joker continues to live in a swanky penthouse, then to give away stacks of cash to sway his victims into his grasp.
Batman Returns is full of sewers, raw fish, and catnip. Penguin bites a dude’s nose off. Catwoman is revived by cats attempting to eat her dead body. The movie is gross in so many ways. I think that is why the movie was derided as dark. It wasn’t really darker than the first one, just way more gross.
Are you fucking kidding me with the wild success of this piece of shit? It’s like it was custom-made in a lab specifically to annoy me for a little over two hours.
Here’s some relevant material from the guide to how comedy can be properly graded:
Default joke - success is a +1; failure is a -1
Self-refential “aren’t I fucking clever” joke - success is a +1; failure is a -3
Poop joke - success is a +1; failure is a -10
So unless you REALLY have something, just don’t do self-referential self-satisfied jokes. Certainly don’t do something like 50 of them and miss on something like 48 of them. I laughed at “you entered at kind of a low point” and I legitimately laughed hard at “I can gently tap the fourth wall too. The Proposal.” “THAT’S what you think I do??” That last one is legit hilarious. But it does not excuse the absolute onslaught of failure. It’s not that those jokes happen and I just quietly clock them and don’t laugh and move on; it’s that I hear them and then I actively sigh and sometimes fully lay back in my reclined seat and question my life choices. This happened so many times.
And let me tell you something: at one point in the movie, Ryan Reynolds LITERALLY WINKS AT THE CAMERA! It’s like I drove to another location just to volunteer to have a rambunctious child relentlessly poke me with a stick for a prolonged period of time.
Now I admit: it’s my fault. I watched the first Deadpool movie while knowing of its popularity and relative acclaim, did not like it, and seemingly moved on from the franchise. Deadpool 2 existed and I never gave serious thought to watching it. But this was a formal MCU entry, I’ve seen the first 33 of them, and I’m not fully immune to the pull of completism. I know full well about sunk cost fallacy, I’m pretty good about avoiding it in most cases, but at the end of the day I’m flesh and blood. Giving up a perfect 33-for-33 is a bit difficult when the most it will cost me is a couple of hours. On some level, that thinking is quasi-reasonable. On another level, it’s just rationalizing being an idiot. So, mea culpa, I hereby apologize to myself.
I also apologize to Eternals. I mean I’m not wrong about that boring movie or anything, but still, I’m definitely going to stop calling it the worst movie in the MCU. It simply no longer holds that dubious distinction.
In most cases, I hope that my A-List subscription purchases actually go toward a film’s gate so that it can be successful. And I suspect it does. In this case, I hope it’s as simple as, “Well I didn’t actually part with money specifically for a ticket to this, so maybe those numbers won’t count me.” But they probably will.
The biggest flaw in caving to completism here is that I went in already knowing that it’s printing obscene money, which is to say that I went in basically already knowing that Deadpool 4 will happen at some point in the future. And when that occurs, I solemnly vow I won’t do this to myself again. But unfortunately, printing money like this probably also means I’m stuck with stupid Deadpool in future Avengers movies too.
That was definitely a “would have walked out of the theater” one, except I was with a friend and if I’m with someone then I really hesitate to signal that I’m even having that thought, because if they’re enjoying it then even putting that out there feels like it takes a wrecking ball to their potential enjoyment. After all, if you know the person next to you is that miserable, I think it would suddenly become impossible to enjoy something. And it’s not a comedy, so you don’t have something like laughter to really put a gauge on what the person next to you is thinking in a theater setting where talking is forbidden unless you’re a terrorist. So I sucked it up and stayed for the full runtime.
Friend immediately brought up afterward before I did that he would have walked out.
I’m not going to say it’s one of the 3 worst movies I’ve ever seen, but it’s truly awful. Torn between 1/5 and 1.5/5, but I have no interest in watching it again for accuracy.
