This post came to me while I was riding in the car earlier, Now that Deadpool is on it's way to becoming the second highest grossing comic book origin story ever I think it is time to look at the lessons that SHOULD be learned, vs the lessons that are probably going to be learned. I say this hoping that I am wrong, because with what we got out of Deadpool and how long it took for us to get it, as well as the colossal risks that were taken to get it to us I am extremely happy with the end results. 700 million dollars for what many thought was an unknown, niche, too small for the big screen character "stick that in your pipe and smoke it." The funny thing is, the reason why Deadpool was thought to be dead in the water and a bum character was the very reason why we were so ravenous for the character to get a stand alone movie: X-men Origins Wolverine. In casting Ryan Reynolds to play Wade Wilson Fox gave us everything we never knew we wanted. I mean it had been a running joke for a while(there is a famous comic panel where Deadpool says "I look like Ryan Reynolds crossed with a Sharpe'), as well as if you look at most of Ryan Reynolds roles he plays a charismatic, cocky, roguish imp, who has way to much fun with his fellow on screen participants and sometimes the audience and it was a match in heaven, and then Fox sewed Deadpoo... I'm sorry Barrackapool's mouth shut for the final giant fight scene.
Seriously, talk about tone deaf. Fox decided that the best way to give comic book fans the MERC WITH THE MOUTH was without his free wheeling swords, or his guns, or his FREAKING MOUTH, walk with me here kiddies. Deadpool is known to run verbal harassment circles around his victims, enemies, fellow combatants, and the fourth wall so in a stroke of GENIUS Fox studios decided that not only did we NOT want the costume, but we didn't want to hear Deadpool talk either.
You know how most movie going fans who have EVER read the source material of an adaption and complain about how they colossally screwed it up (I'm looking at you M. Night, and hey what do you know you too Foxtastic 4) to say this took the cake is an understatement. It's also kind of funny because they had already showed PART of Wolverine's Origin in X2 and somehow they couldn't get that right. Maybe part of it was to stay PG-13 and the rest of it was to assuage some Director or Writers belief that we wanted THEIR vision and not the 20+ years of Wolverine mythos we had been enjoying before they put pen to paper(I know I know, pretty soon I'm going to have to explain that reference. I don't know if I'm ready to just say Thumping Keys yet. Pen to paper/pad/scroll still has some zing to it) and gave us a movie that was BARELY an Origin Story. They took parts of the actual Wolverine Origins story from the comics, and then about half way through just THREW everything they could think of in the movie. Cyclops, Emma Frost(who starts as a psychic mutant and develops the diamond ability as a secondary mutation much later in life), someone who moves around like quicksilver, and a host of other out of place not how they appear in the X universe characters. And the ONE stretch that they made that people would have gone along with they destroyed, by once again sewing his mouth shut.
Who is Deadpool
Wade Winston Wilson is a mercenary, he is also a slight parody of DC comics Slade Joseph Wilson right down to their monikers Death-Dead Stroke-Pool. Both of them are unrivaled killers, and both of them take on the best in their respective universes. Deadpool had a cameo in Ultimate Spider-man, Deathstroke in Teen Titans, wait what. If you look at Deathstrokes costume half black/half burnt orange face, ring any bells? No Slade, Robin's ultimate rival in the show Slade was Deathstroke, I guess that was just to hardcore for a kids show. It's probably also why Deadpool had to say Unalive them instead of kill(by the way ANYBODY ELSE in that episode could say kill just not Deadpool), because you know he ALWAYS has to be a funnier version of Slade Wilson. Slade Wilson is extremely hard to kill but not completely immortal. In the Smallville TV show the actor playing Major Slade Wilson is heard to say "I am Beyond Death's stroke now," that being said Deadpool is immortal. Yes he can regrow limbs, he is actually a rival for the affections of Death(yes marvel has an actual being named death, and She loves her some pool) against Thanos. By the way it is Thanos' fault Wade is immortal somehow Deadpool was given an infinity gem and it allows the merc to stay alive.
Deadpool's powers are basically he is master of pretty much any sort of hand to hand combat, weaponized combat, he is a skilled marksman, and completely nuts. He also has an impressive healing factor, he can regrow body parts, possibly can regenerate from a few cells(anything wolverine can do he can do). Deadpool is known to say he is the best there is at everything wolverine does.
How did we get here?
This is a huge question, because this is where I think the mistake is going to be made. Deadpool's first appearance was New Mutants #98 he was doing a job for Stryfe's(a clone of Deadpool's best bud Cable) Mutant Liberation Front. In X-force #1 he had a huge fight with Shatterstar(I say huge fight but he literally wiped the floor with him), was a bad guy, who later became an anti hero. As his backstory was filled in we find out that Deadpool was created by the same Weapon Plus program that created Wolverine, Weapon X as in 10. After a good 15+ years of love as he went from a villain to an anti hero, Deadpool was included in X-men Origins Wolverine and it was a complete debacle(pronounced with an eh not an ah cause why say a word that means disaster right). As I've said before Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson was awesome, the scene with the swords we here blocks the bullets was golden. Even the jokes on the plane as he is sitting between Wolverine, Sabertooth, and Blob made you go YES. Then you get to the end, where they shove two swords into his arms(because you know what's better than just a COMPLETE Wolverine Rip off, in Wolverine's own movie, and yet at the same time a toothless Mortal Kombat Barraka rip off, quite a twofer), give him a million and a half powers that he doesn't actually have(that was a different character that MIGHT have had a similar name to Deadpool. He carried around pieces of dead powered folks and that allowed him to copy their abilities), okay Deadpool CAN teleport but it isn't a power it's a device he wears on his belt, and he has a UNIFORM, red and black, red mask with a black domino style around the eyes.
People THOUGHT after his inclusion in the Wolverine movie that Deadpool would get a spin off, but of course all the fans HATED BARRAKAPOOL so even though Ryan Reynolds was attached to the project it floundered. 20th Century Fox didn't want to invest a DIME into the failed villain from the Wolverine movie, because they didn't listen. Fans love Deadpool, what they didn't like was the movie version of Deadpool we were given the first time. It looked like somebody heard that Deadpool was a popular character, that fans would love to see on the big screen, and that they just threw something together and said HERE buy a toy of this suckfest. A similar issue would have been the Venom from Spider-man 3, now lets be clear Sam Raimi was upset that they weren't going to give him a 4th Spidey movie so instead of giving us a real venom they gave us Spidey-lite. I'm sure Topher Grace is a great actor, what he wasn't was Eddie Brock. And in Costume he also wasn't Venom, both Eddie Brock and Venom TOWER over Peter Parker. As with many Marvel Villains he is WIDER/STOCKIER than the hero he opposed. The scrawny guy in the Venom suit was a no go, and the Mouthless, Mute, Let me give you the Single Finger Salute, waste of film that was the Wolverine Movies Deadpool fit into the same boat.
Thankfully Ryan Reynolds had read Deadpool comics and wanted to give the Merc with a Mouth a fair shake on the Silver Screen, unfortunately DC came calling and wanted Ryan to play Green Lantern. And if ONLY somebody would have told that directing crew that trying to tie up EVERY loose end in the story in the last 30 minutes was folly we may have never gotten Deadpool. Because it looked like DC would sign Ryan Reynolds to a multi picture deal. The movie floundered, Reynolds did a few other projects and Deadpool seemed dead(pun fully intended). Then in mid 2014 a video started surfacing on the interwebs, it was grainy, it was choppy but it showed a fully costumed Deadpool, listening to Gwen Stefani's "Holla Back Girl" sitting on on the edge of an overpass. And the awesomeness was given flight, this was Test footage leaked of Tim Millers take on Deadpool, which started a storm of accusations. A storm of Accusations that was one upped by Tim Miller when he released HI QUALITY test footage for the fans, so the blank or mostly blank piece of paper we thought we saw had a drawing with lettering on it. As does the drawing when Deadpool shows it to the biker(honestly I wish that scene with the biker had been included but I'll take the highway scene I got) right before he slices off his head.
This obviously started a flood of demand on Fox studios to give our Deadpool free. So Ryan Reynolds, Tim Miller, and two AWESOME WRITERS went to work to give the world the Deadpool film it deserved. With a Paltry 58 million dollar budget(which if it can hold on to make 18 more million dollars in theaters it will have made 300 million dollars after you remove the cost of production domestically), they gave us a masterpiece. A movie that while it did change a few critical points about the character(the Deadpool isn't above the bar at Sister Margaret's it is actually in the Weapon X facility and also Worm not Weasel tells Wade about his odds on it), it felt more like a massage than a fisting, No you don't see him interacting with members of X-force but you do get an X-man. By the way, why does it take Deadpool to give us a correct interpretation of Colossus? 4 X-movies that have included Piotr Rasputin and the only one that gets him right is the R rated movie that was supposed to be a throw away. The writers, actors, and directors paid homage not contempt to the source material. They were just as passionate about the character as the fans who read his comics, buy his merch, and pretend to be him at comic conventions.
Fox is cashing this huge check, but they are doing it with a grimace because they didn't have any faith in this movie. They basically abandoned this movie to make the Fantastisuck, and it appears that it has officially set the tone for how movies need to open this year. To make matters worse the "niche" character had a record breaking open, so now the next Super Hero movie that is coming out is going to be in a deep hole. Which considering it's Batman vs Superman, a movie moved up so that it wouldn't have to fight against Civil War and is already getting it's head bashed in it could be monumental. Not only was the movie true to the character but the ad campaign and the viral videos were strokes of genius.
This is getting kind of wordy, I think I'm going to do this in a couple of parts. No cursing, all on blogger, and since I have seen the train wreck that is Batman v Superman I am even MORE inclined to finish this. Some people liked Deadpool, some people hated it, but for it's budget it is a definite success story. And since I keep hearing about "fun" reshoots for "Suicide Squad"(You know the DC movie that should be overly dark) I am even more inclined to speak on what I believe Hollywood is about to get wrong.
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