Deadpool 2

Essential within its strand and watch the first film immediately before it: it opens on the consequences of that film's ending and assumes everything about the relationship at its centre.

It is bigger, looser and funnier in bursts, and less controlled. David Leitch came from stunt work and the action is a clear step up, particularly a convoy sequence through a city and the fight with Cable in a prison. The X-Force sequence, in which a team is assembled, introduced at length and then almost entirely killed by a parachute drop into a wind, is the best extended joke in either film.

Josh Brolin's Cable is played completely straight against a film that will not stop undercutting him, which is the right call. Zazie Beetz's Domino, whose power is that she is lucky, produces the most inventive action staging here.

The opening act turns on a death that exists to motivate the protagonist, which the film acknowledges as a cliché and uses anyway. A stunt performer, Joi Harris, was killed during production, and the film carries a dedication to her. A later recut with a lower certificate and a framing device exists and is a curiosity rather than an improvement. The post-credits sequence is the single funniest thing in the franchise.