As movies based on comic book franchises go these days, Deadpool was a breath of fresh air.
Loaded with irreverent one-liners, and often breaking the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience to poke fun at itself, comic book movies, the actors and even the studio, the movie succeeds as both a very funny comedy and one of the more entertaining Marvel superhero action flicks to date.
Ryan Reynolds, who also played the similarly campy, though less funny, Green Lantern from DC Comics and Warner Bros., was the perfect actor to pull off a comic book movie targeting adults. His Chevy Chase-like tongue-in-cheek delivery combined with superhero-looking physique command the attention of the audience without going too far over the top. Co-star Morena Baccarin, who I used to have trouble getting out of my mind as the reptilian leader in the mini-series remake of V, stands up as both a beautiful distraction and a desirable main squeeze for the movie’s hero.
Director Tim Miller does a fantastic job taking a relatively low-budget and a lesser-known comic book character and making magic happen. Almost more impressively, the movie does very well using the new medium of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray with high dynamic range (HDR) to make select colors and lighting pop as you would expect from a colorful comic book franchise.
Read more on our review of the Ultra HD Blu-ray of Deadpool after the jump:
4K/HDR Picture Quality
Deadpool is presented on Ultra HD Blu-ray as an “Ultra HD Premium” logo-bearing title, offering 3,840 x 2,160-pixel resolution, a 24p frame rate, HDR, HEVC (H.265 encoding), Rec. 2020 wide color gamut and 10-bit color depth.
We watched the movie for the review using Samsung’s top-of-the-line edge-lit SUHD TV model UN65KS9500 and the Samsung UBD-K8500 Ultra HD Blu-ray player. Like The Revenant, Deadpool was one of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s first box office hits to make a day-and-date release in Ultra HD Blu-ray format. The studio stands as one of the biggest supporters of 4K Ultra HD digital and Ultra HD Blu-ray formats so far.
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Almost as well as The Revenant, Deadpool does a great job at showing what the benefits of 4K Ultra HD with HDR should be. Colors, right down to Deadpool’s red suit, are dazzling and the resolution shows off all of the details right down to the weave of the material. Throughout the film the HDR reveals spectral and specular highlights in objects, like the skin of the metallic Colossus, giving home theater owners an opportunity to show off the true benefits of those more expensive 2016 HDR-supporting displays. In comparison, the standard Blu-ray version looks duller and flat.
Sound
Deadpool is offered with support for the Dolby Atmos object-based surround format on the Ultra HD Blu-ray disc. The regular Blu-ray Disc copy included in the package carries only the standard 7.1-channel DTS-HD Master Audio and other usual soundtrack suspects. Even in DTS-HD Master Audio, the quality is both loud and immersive with dialog coming across clearly. The music soundtrack to the film also comes across clear and clean, despite some of the eclectic selections, like Neal Sedaka’s Calendar Girl, dating back to the 60s.
Extras
The Ultra HD Blu-ray disc package of Deadpool comes packed with extra bonus material, although virtually all of it is found on the regular Blu-ray Disc in the set. The exceptions are the audio commentaries that are included on the Ultra HD Blu-ray disc. The extras on the standard Blu-ray include a number of sections and sub-sections including deleted/extended scenes, which are divided into five scenes. These include: Prison: The Raft, Cancer World Tour, Extended Freeway, Extended Workshop Fight, Morgue, 5 Year Montage, No 5 Bathroom, Extended Angel/NTW Fight, Extended Rubble Pile: Gratuitous Worth It and Alt. Coda.
Other bonuses include: Gag Reel with comical outtakes; From Comics to Screen… to Screen offering five parts including: Origin… which traces the travails of getting the film made; People and Muties, which follows the film’s characters and actors; Stylin’, which provides background on the freeway scene; ‘Splosions, which discusses the special effects and Magic, which provides detail on the music in the film and other facts.
Among a number of other bonus sections and features is Deadpool’s Fun Sack, which provides a run through some of the other marketing and promotional materials that went into helping make the film a success. These include two sections: Videos, with all of the trailers and ads for the movie; and Stills, which shows the posters, images and other promotional items used to bring the movie to the public’s attention.
Conclusion
Deadpool is rare movie amid the legions of movies incessantly dipping into the comic book universe for creative material. Instead of continuing to cycle through the same stale franchises and characters aimed primarily at kids, this movie takes a lesser-known hero and directs the story and the joke at adults. The language is irreverent, the sexual scenes relatively explicit and the violence often extreme and grotesque, all of which works fantastically well.
This might not have the power and artistry of my current reference Ultra HD Blu-ray title — The Revenant, but it is entertaining and illuminating on the benefits of 4K and HDR just the same.
Fox has hit another winner by opting to release this movie in the new Ultra HD Blu-ray format. The use of resolution, color and luminance contained in the wide contrast range of HDR provides another reason for home theater lovers to consider getting an HDR-supporting 4K Ultra HDTV when it comes time to upgrade.
We award the Ultra HD Blu-ray version of Deadpool 4.5 out of 5 hearts.
By Greg Tarr
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