Alrighty. Let me tell y?all what you already know. $135 million in the bank in it?s first three days. Hard R rating. F-bombs, blood, sex and wanton irreverence galore. Yup. That?s Deadpool ? that career reviving, genre twisting, don?t give a darn Fox/Marvel collaboration that is the toast of early 2016. At first glance to the Christian viewer, there?s nothing redemptive about this movie at all. It?s tongue is firmly planted in cheek ? amongst other places! It?s rude, crude, lascivious (look kids! A BIBLE TERM!!!) and has no place in a Bible believing Christ worshipper?s life. Or so we think?
I spent my time firmly hedged in the aforementioned point of view after leaving the theatre. I felt the guilt and stain of all 108 minutes of irreverence and chalked the whole thing off as a guilty pleasure ? something I may repent for when I see Him face to face. But as we peeps here at DA FISH were debating the thing and I hopped on my ?THERE?S NOTHING REDEMPTIVE ABOUT THIS MESS!!? bandwagon, God, as He often does, drops a bomb on me in the form of a thought. As I meditated and debated on the perils of Wade Wilson, The Lord hit me with this:
HAVE YOU EVER RUN FROM YOUR CALLING BEFORE?
Wade (Ryan Reynolds) is perfectly content in his life of buck-wildness. He?s got his swag. He?s got his woman. It?s all good until the hammer drops in the form of cancer. He?s cosigned to the notion of death when a mysterious figure offers him the chance to be saved. Resisting at first, he takes the cat up on his offer and is brought to some cesspool freakazoid makeshift hospital where tons of experiments on presumed mutants and the sick are taking place. In this sick and twisted environment, he obtains his cure of cancer?adding to it a 2000 ton layer of invincibility in which he can heal from any pain, stabbing, gunshot, self-imposed dismemberment and on and on. The one side effect: he loses his calling card ? his boyish matinee idol good looks.
Hellbent on getting revenge on the ?doctor? who gave him these powers, Wade ? now renamed Deadpool ? slaughters nearly every bad guy in town in search of his adversary. Along the way, his exploits become known to a member of the legendary X-Men: Colossus. Colossus does his best over the flick to explain that DP was given these powers to do greater things and that perhaps his call is to join the X-Men to use his ability for THE! GREATER! GOOD!
DP wants no parts of this. He wants his vengeance. He wants his (kidnapped) woman back. And he?s gonna shoot, cuss and give it to all the bad guys till he gets what he wants. Kinda like us?
God has a call on our lives. Thanks to our Mother ? not Mary?EVE ? we were introduced to the concept of SELF; where we now barter and measure what God wants for us against what WE want and what WE desire. In the call of God, Greatness Awaits (thank you, PS4!). But many of us would rather forge our own paths to create our own sense of greatness instead of submitting to God. So we run from Him and that great call. We run to chasing $$$. We run to various addictions and lifestyles. We run, we run, we run. (Not So Epic Spoiler Alert) And that?s where DP ends up by the closing credits: still running.
So now that we?re gonna get at least two sequels out of this puppy (Triple digit opening weekends in February are a leading cause of greenlit sequels from Hollywood), I?m interested to see if Fox/Marvel will further explore this notion of a man running from his call. In my opinion, that?s more interesting to me than two more hours of screwing, shooting and epithets.
The sovereignty of the comic book gods made Wade Wilson greater than he ever imagined. The sovereignty of God has done the same for us. Will he embrace that greatness? Will we? Only time, and God, will tell.
