The Best Deadpool Movie, According To Rotten Tomatoes

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Here's the thing about criticism: it is completely and utterly subjective. One person's trash is another person's treasure, and there might be no character that exemplifies this better than Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool. People either seem to love or hate the "Deadpool" movies, with fans appreciating the crass humor and R-rated take on the world of the X-Men and detractors finding the whole thing absolutely obnoxious. 

"Deadpool & Wolverine" is in theaters now, finally bringing Reynolds as Wade Wilson into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, along with all of his foul-mouthed chaos. It's either the best thing ever or a soul-crushing disaster, depending on which critic you ask, which makes trying to figure out its actual quality kind of challenging.

So when it comes to ranking the "Deadpool" movies, it's all a matter of opinion, baby. In the big bad world of movie criticism, however, one of the biggest indicators of critical takes on movies is Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates critics' reviews and finds an average score based on whether critics rated the film positively or negatively (fresh or rotten, in tomato terms). So how do the "Deadpool" movies stack up according to the critics sampled by the 'mato meter?

The first Deadpool movie comes out on top

The Rotten Tomatoes score for the 2016 "Deadpool" movie is 85%, which isn't too shabby for a movie that introduced the character to everyone who doesn't read comic books and hadn't seen the abysmal "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." (That sits at 38%, for what it's worth.) "Deadpool" was a massive box office success that shattered people's ideas about R-rated superhero movies (besides "Blade," of course) and shook up the supe cinematic landscape. Like most first superhero films, "Deadpool" is an origin story, but it almost has to be given the character's somewhat unusual origins. After all, introducing a horribly burned Ryan Reynolds without explaining why he looks like that would probably really unsettle audiences, especially back in 2016. Despite origin stories being fairly trite in superhero cinema, "Deadpool" was subversive enough to not feel like a retread of any old ground. It was fresh, funny, and absolutely filthy. 

The first "Deadpool" has a lot going for it, for people who can get on board with Reynolds' whole schtick as the character. That seems to be the make-or-break element for whether or not people like the "Deadpool" movies, because his acerbic sense of humor and constant sarcasm are appealing to some while others find it really, really annoying. It's important that Deadpool has good characters to interact with, and that's honestly where a different "Deadpool" movie soars. 

Deadpool 2 comes in at a close second

The side characters in the first "Deadpool" movie are kind of a mixed bag (Gina Carano and T.J. Miller, anyone?) but "Deadpool 2" gives Brianna Hildebrand's Negasonic Teenage Warhead a bit more to do and introduces Zazie Beetz as Domino, a superhero whose power is her incredible luck. Combined with Colossus (Andre Tricoteux), the crew have to try and fight the time-traveling Cable (the perfectly cast Josh Brolin), which is about as much X-Men fun as you can have without actually being in an X-Men movie. "Deadpool 2" ups the ante from the first film and has a few small issues of its own, like killing off Morena Baccarin's character in the first ten minutes, but it's still a lot of fun. So it's not a huge surprise that it follows closely behind the first film on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of 84%. (For what it's worth, I think "Deadpool 2" is a blast.) 

"Deadpool & Wolverine" is still getting reviewed so the score might fluctuate, but at the time of publishing it's sitting at 79%. Our review only put it at a 5/10, finding the fan service annoying but praising Hugh Jackman's performance as Wolverine. For now, "Deadpool" reigns supreme, but who knows what will happen if we get a "Deadpool 4" or even a "Deadpool 5." Now that he's a part of the MCU, anything's possible.