DeadpoolSave

We open mid-action. Deadpool — a man in a red latex suit, with two katana swords and a mouth that won't shut — is sitting on top of a highway overpass in Manhattan, monologuing directly to the camera, breaking the fourth wall every ninety seconds. He is hunting a man named Francis. He uses twelve bullets, kills seventeen mercenaries, runs out of ammunition mid-fight, and switches to katanas. Title cards play instead of actor credits: 'A movie starring God's Perfect Idiot.'

We then jump back via flashback. Wade Wilson is a former special forces operator now working as a mercenary-for-hire. He meets a sex worker named Vanessa Carlysle at a bar. They fall in love. They are happy. Then Wade is diagnosed with late-stage cancer — liver, lungs, prostate, brain — incurable. He is recruited by a mysterious 'Recruiter' for an experimental program that promises to cure his cancer and grant him superpowers. He says yes. He doesn't tell Vanessa.

The experimental program is run by Ajax — Francis to everyone who knows him — a sadist who tortures patients to trigger their mutation. Wade is locked in a sensory deprivation chamber and slowly burned, drowned, and asphyxiated until his mutation activates: extreme regenerative healing combined with severe facial disfigurement. The cancer is gone but Wade looks, in his own words, 'like an avocado had sex with an older, more disgusting avocado.' Francis tells Wade he's now Francis's slave. Wade escapes by triggering an oxygen explosion in the lab.

Wade renames himself Deadpool — taken from a betting pool he and his bar friend Weasel had been running. He builds a red latex suit (to hide the bloodstains from the constant healing-required violence). He spends months hunting Francis to: (1) kill him, and (2) force him to fix Wade's face so Vanessa will accept him back. He is too embarrassed to approach Vanessa as he is. The film's structure cuts between Deadpool's present-day pursuit of Francis and the love-story flashbacks. Two timelines, one obsession.

Two X-Men — Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead — try to recruit Deadpool to the team. He refuses ('Yes, but no'). They follow him to the final showdown anyway. The climax takes place on a beached aircraft carrier in the New York Harbor. Vanessa has been kidnapped by Francis as leverage. Deadpool kills Francis's mercenaries one by one in increasingly profane ways, monologuing to the camera throughout. Vanessa escapes her bonds and joins the fight.

Deadpool reaches Francis. Francis admits he cannot reverse Wade's disfigurement — the mutation is permanent. He says it cheerfully, expecting the news to make Wade let him live. Wade kills him on the spot, then turns to camera: 'Four or five moments. That's all it takes to make a hero. People think it's a full-time job — wake up a hero, brush your teeth a hero, go to work a hero. Not true. Over a lifetime, there are only four or five moments that really matter.'

Wade returns to Vanessa. She sees his face. She loves him anyway. The film closes on them slow-dancing in their wrecked apartment to Wham!'s 'Careless Whisper.' Deadpool turns to the camera one last time: 'You see? You don't need to be a superhero to get the girl. The right girl will bring out the hero in you.'

Deadpool grossed $782 million globally on a $58 million budget — making it, at the time, the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time and the most-profitable X-Men film in Fox's franchise history. The film changed Hollywood's R-rated superhero math entirely. Without Deadpool, Logan (2017) would not exist. Without Logan, the Marvel Studios direction shifts. Reynolds and Hugh Jackman eventually teamed up for the franchise's biggest swing: Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).