R.I.P.D.2.Rise.of.the.Damned.2022 RIPD 2 - Rise of the Damned

R.I.P.D. crashed and burned nearly 10 years ago when it tried to adapt Peter M. Lenkov’s Dark Horse comic for the big screen. Audiences weren’t yet ready for the comic-based lunacy that a movie based around God’s dearly departed police department entailed, even one starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges as unlikely cops from different eras. Though audiences had been coached through the first Phase of the MCU’s Infinity Saga, embracing The Avengers about a year before R.I.P.D. lost millions at the box office, they still hadn’t been introduced to some of the weirder sides of the Marvel universe. The main heroes were still being established with sequels and team-ups; the space pirate freak parade that is the Guardians of the Galaxy was another year away. A movie about an Old West lawman teaming up with a Boston detective—both dead—to stop the machinations of undead Deados…it was a bit too aesthetically and tonally jumbled, not to mention silly, to stand up to the competition.

That makes it all the more strange that, this month, R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned dropped on VOD and Netflix with absolutely no fanfare. There is no greater sign of acute IP poisoning than indie filmmakers struggling to get anything made while a comic adaptation that didn’t even recoup half its $154M budget (not counting marketing) got a prequel.