This post comes to us from our friend RJ Grunewald.
After an experimental treatment turns Wade Wilson into a mutant with healing powers–while simultaneously retaining his wit and a crude sense of humor–Wade Wilson becomes Deadpool and gives himself to hunting down and destroying the man who left him disfigured and ruined.
Spoiler Alert: If you don’t want to have the story ruined for you, you should probably stop reading this.
Wade Wilson, before becoming Deadpool, is a sarcastic, profane, and funny vigilante. He’s a bad guy who deals with worse guys. Wade uses his wit and looks to get with whatever women he wants, until after a spree of sexual conquests he falls in love with an escort named Vanessa. Wade proposes with a ring pop only to soon find out that he has stage four cancer.
About to lose it all, Wade is invited to be a part of an experimental procedure that would cure him. Wade’s told, “When you finally hit f*** it,” the procedure is the place to turn. In other words, when he’s lost all hope and has nowhere else to turn–there might be a last grasp option for a new life.
When “rock meets bottom,” Wade turns to this expiremental treatment, which turns him into a disfigured, angry Deadpool who’s on a mission to seek his redemption by hunting down Francis and finding his cure. Like all super hero movies, Deadpool is a story of redemption; however, unlike the typical story of a sacrificial hero–Deadpool’s story of redemption is the pursuit of a self-salvation project (in vengeance and a cure) that ultimately leaves him with nothing.
There is no cure.
This is when the rock meets bottom for Wade. When he gets stage four cancer, he has somewhere to turn–he turns to the procedure. When he is a disfigured mutant out to get revenge, he has somewhere to turn–finding Francis. But now, he has nowhere else to turn. He’s disfigured without a cure and hopeless of finding love.
And that’s where love meets him. Love meets him at the bottom and takes off his mask. Vanessa sees him as the sarcastic, arrogant, jerk whose afraid to let anyone see who he really is – and she loves him in that moment. She looks past the ugly face. She looks past him walking out on her. And she runs into his arms.
And this is what love always does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6gCrniSEdc
Grace always meets us at the bottom. Grace meets us when we’ve run out of places to hide and our self-salvation projects have run out of steam.
This is what happens in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve hit rock bottom, they try to hide behind a mask but they can’t hide for long:
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” – Genesis 3:8-10
They don’t want to be found out. God couldn’t love somebody so disfigured, so ugly because of sin. They can’t let God see them like this. They can’t be exposed for who they really are. Their shame hinds them behind a mask; they’d rather hide than be exposed vulnerable and at the mercy of God.
When you’ve said screw it and you’ve gotten to the end of your rope, Jesus meets you there. Jesus isn’t waiting for the super heroes who’ve got it all together, Jesus is reaching out to the bad guys who’ve got nothing left.
Grace sees us for who we really are underneath the mask. And love looks past the ugly shame.
In Luther’s lectures on Romans he said, “Christ wants our whole disposition to be so stripped down that we are…unafraid of being embarrassed for our faults.” Love looks past the hurt and the sin and loves what’s under the mask.
Jesus meets you at the bottom. Jesus covers over your attempt to walk out, he redeems your broken attempts at vengeance, and he forgives your sin no questions asked. You might be able to hide your shame behind a mask and hide your wounds with a suit of red, but its only his blood that heals. And his blood always flows down to the lowest places and finds you where rock meets bottom.
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2 responses to “Rock Meets Bottom: When Love Finds Deadpool”
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Glad to see Deadpool got some Mbird love!
I wanted to write about DP too but couldn’t make it work. I thought it was interesting that despite of all the superhero cliches Deadpool ditches, like, well, decency for example, the one that the movie could not ditch was the theology of glory’s work-hard try-hard winner mentality. The catchphrase “Maximum Effort” wasn’t from the original comic- it was written into the movie to have the normally uncaring character pump himself up. For all its anti-establishment, stick it to the censor hoo-haa, it’s still a superhero movie, just with more swearing and dirty jokes.
That said, I’m a sucker for a superhero movie with swearing and dirty jokes. Deadpool made every unredeemed part of my soul cackle with laughter!
Saw this last night – I agree Bryan – it does maintain a glory story narrative – even unnecessarily………being “about a girl” was enough. It didn’t need the “max effort” crap – that almost derailed the film for me.
At the end though, I was able to resign to it being about a girl – like all good action films, super hero genre or not.
It also stayed on the tracks for me because it was dang funny – haven’t laughed out loud watching a film that much in a while.
To RJ’s point though, “getting one’s life back” (whatever that means) and some semblance of revenge should always both end without satisfaction. The film drives that home well.
At the end, Deadpool is a profane version of Shrek, except that Fiona doesn’t stop looking like Cameron Diaz.