My favorite thing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become the sprawling tonal geography of it. I know “tonal geography” isn’t actually a thing, but here’s what I mean: I love that a Thor movie can indulge in dopey space-fantasy hijinks while the first season of Jessica Jones is an unrelentingly dark meditation on the aftershocks of sexual assault, and it all ends up feeling weirdly cohesive. While DC rarely steps out of its default mode of gritty, violent action epics, Marvel is constantly playing with tone, genre, and scope. In the mood for a claustrophobic, socially aware crime story? Netflix’s Daredevil fits the bill. Want a fizzy, funny caper flick? Ant-Man will do you right.

If The Winter Soldier was Marvel’s Three Days of the Condor, then, Deadpool is its Porky’s—it’s vulgar, juvenile, and crass, and it seems specifically engineered to ramp up its appeal to kids by horrifying their parents. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of film the character’s fans were hoping for, and it’s a lot of fun.

For the uninitiated, Deadpool is a cult-favorite character created in the early ’90s by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist/writer/walking, talking ego trip Rob Liefeld. Deadpool, aka Wade Wilson, is violent, motormouthed, and occasionally queer, and he’s never met a fourth wall he couldn’t break. His shtick is that he knows he’s a comic-book character, and he constantly addresses the reader with self-aware commentary about the medium and his role in it.

All of that translates surprisingly well to the big screen under the guidance of first-time feature director Tim Miller. Ryan Reynolds stars as Wilson, the Special Forces soldier-turned-mercenary destined for red spandex and endless one-liners. Not all of the jokes land, but Deadpool lobs them so constantly that it can afford a few duds, and even the clunkers benefit from Reynolds’ zippy delivery.

Wilson is elbow-deep in carnage when we meet him, but soon enough he interrupts the action to fill us in on his tragic history. Deadpool is a pretty straightforward origin story, but it benefits from a jittery structure full of flashbacks, flash-forwards, pauses, and rewinds.

It’s during one of those flashbacks that Deadpool really hits its stride. Wilson hooks up with a prostitute named Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), and a gleefully deranged take on movie meet-cutes leads to a raunchy montage of sex and snuggling set to Neil Sedaka’s “Calendar Girl.” The couple’s sexually acrobatic bliss is interrupted when Wilson is diagnosed with terminal cancer and he checks himself into a clinic that promises to cure him by turning him into a superhero.

Things don’t turn out that way, of course, with Wilson becoming more of a guinea pig than a patient. Deadpool’s plot hinges on an extended torture sequence that, though it isn’t gory, is so cruel and uncomfortably relatable that I found it more disturbing than most of the horror films I’ve seen recently. Wilson finds himself transformed into a hideously disfigured, mentally unstable mutant with superhuman physical prowess and regenerative abilities. Separated from his best girl, he sets out to find the guy who messed him up—and to shoot practically everyone else in the process.

But no one will remember Deadpool for its plot, or its one-note villain. (That note, in case you’re curious, is smarmy sadism, and it gets tiresome after a while.) The main attraction here is the movie’s inventive, offbeat tone. Meta humor and self-parody certainly aren’t new, but Deadpool shores it up with a lot of heart; as vulgar and irreverent as it can be, it’s never mean-spirited about the genre it’s spoofing. It’s lewd and self-deprecating, but it’s ultimately an affectionate send-up of superhero movies. It plays by at least as many rules as it breaks.

Plenty of viewers will be put off by its hard-R content, but there’s much more to Deadpool than its crude frat-boy humor and splattery, insert-projectile-A-in-villain-B violence. It’s a manic Jenga tower of parody and sincerity, and if it occasionally wobbles a bit, it never falls. It’s proof that there’s still plenty of ground worth breaking in the Marvel Universe, if the studios controlling it are willing to take chances and map out some underexplored territory.

Matthew Everett

Senior Editor Matthew Everett manages the Knoxville Mercury's arts & entertainment section, including the comprehensive calendar section—Knoxville’s go-to guide for everything worth doing in the area. You can reach Matthew at matthew@knoxmercury.com.