Blame it on the Bat. For a brief period, Deadpool seemed like the most subversive player on the cinematic superhero circuit, deflating the genre's pretensions with a barrage of self-referential humor and fourth wall-breaking asides. But after last year's "The Lego Batman Movie," he's starting to look rather tame: a potty-mouthed prankster who ultimately plays it safe, respecting comic-book conventions rather than trying to blow them into a heap of interlocking plastic pieces.

That's not to say he isn't a heck of a lot of fun. "Deadpool 2" is the perfect antidote to the Wagnerian pomp of "Avengers: Infinity War." In a serendipitous bit of casting, it even features the same actor as its antagonist. Fresh from playing Thanos, the thinking man's megalomaniac, Josh Brolin dons the guise of Cable, a time-traveling super-soldier with various bionic enhancements that make him look like a prototype Terminator — or, as Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) puts it, a "grumpy old f——- with a 'Winter Soldier' arm."

He arrives from the future intending to kill a portly teenager with pyrokinetic powers, Firefist (Julian Dennison), before he grows up to become far more dangerous. Having just rescued the boy from a creepy mutant "reform school" while working with the regular X-Men, Deadpool decides to protect him, even if it means getting riddled with bullets and ripped in half (hey, that's what accelerated healing powers are for).