Sup Disney. I know you’ve got your hands full pumping out blockbusters, running billion dollar amusement parks and getting ready to launch your streaming service next year (you know, basically taking over the world one piece at a time). But while you’re crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s on your seemingly inevitable purchase of 20th Century Fox’s movie and TV properties, I just wanted to bend your ear about this little franchise known as Deadpool.
And why you should keep it absolutely as is.
Video 20th Century Fox
As I’m sure you know, Fox took a huge risk when it released Deadpool in 2016 (which is why it had a budget that was modest at best and opened during the relatively safe box office territory of February). But the merc with a mouth shocked everyone and was a smash hit, proving that there was a huge market for R-rated super hero fare along the way. It also let Ryan Reynolds and company know what they could get away with (even with an R rating) and where the new boundaries were.
I know you’re not exactly an R-rated kind of studio Disney, and you have a family friendly (or at the very least a PG-13) brand to maintain, but you’d be leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table if you walked away from the audience appetite Deadpool tapped into.
Because it isn’t just Deadpool’s box office numbers you need to consider . Take a look at what it has also done for the super hero movie genre as a whole. If it weren’t for Deadpool, we never would have gotten Logan last year. Not only was Logan the best Wolverine solo movie (by far), but it was an appropriately violent cinematic farewell to the Crazy Canuck. And it pulled in over 619 million worldwide all on its own.
There’s going to be a lot of talk about Deadpool 2’s domestic opening; it’s 125 million dollar debut fell shy of a lot of expectations (not to mention the original’s 132 million premier). But I would be remiss if I didn’t play devil’s advocate and point out that it did nearly half of the first Deadpool’s entire global run in just a single weekend, it was competing with your Infinity Wars juggernaut and you had cranked up the promotional campaign for Solo: A Star Wars Story just a week before it’s release. Once ‘Pool is firmly in your toy chest, you won’t have to worry about those two mitigating factors anymore.
All in all, not too shabby.
There’s little doubt you will do an admirable job with the other X properties (not to mention the Fantastic Four), but while every nerd’s imagination is running wild with the infinite possibilities surrounding those characters in the MCU, I can’t possibly imagine how you would be able to improve Deadpool.
And in reality, you kind of need Deadpool the way it is right now.
This isn’t to say that that anyone should buy the super hero fatigue argument people who should know better have been trying to sell lately. When James Cameron claimed in an interview a few weeks ago that super hero movies should cool it because there were “other stories to tell,” (this coming from the man currently producing Terminator 6 and allegedly working one four Avatar sequels), it was kind of shocking to see how many people got in line behind him on that particular train of thought.
Fortunately that line was nowhere near as long as the one to buy tickets to said movies. If the box office success of Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and, yes, Deadpool 2 (despite the economic hand wringing) proves anything, its that people still want to see spandex battle royals on the big screen.
And that’s kind of the point. Not only does Deadpool offer a unique breed of irreverent, fourth wall bashing comedy, but it also provides some pallet cleansing counter programming as well.
With DC seemingly still unable to get their act together and the rest of the X world on apparent hiatus, Deadpool is currently the only other genuine option we have in the super hero movie genre. No matter how much you like chocolate ice cream, every once in a while you need some cookies and cream thrown in to keep things fresh.
Entertainment is no different. I may like smart, serious science fiction but every once in a while I need a something a little lighter like The Orville thrown in. It helps you appreciate the other stuff even more.
You wouldn’t have to worry about continuity. Deadpool picks right up where the first one let off, attacking the fourth wall in an all out assault of wink-wink, nudge-nudge jokes and one liners. And Deadpool’s writers have proven they know exactly when to hold the line when it comes to its self awareness, reigning in the running gag before it becomes stale.
Nor would you have to worry about managing the production either. Even after Fox nearly doubled Deadpool’s budget for the sequel, it still only cost about a third of what it cost to make Infinity War. And despite having a new director, Deadpool 2 followed the original’s winning formula, but this time it cranked the vulgarity, obscenity, hyper-kinetic action, absurdity and hilarity to a crowd pleasing 15.
Once it gained steam, it was a machine gun of sight gags, dirty jokes, insane pop culture references and depreciating humour. There were times when it felt like there were three jokes going on in the same scene. In short, Deadpool 2 was bigger, bolder and better than the groundbreaking first.
Ryan Reynolds and company have proven they have everything under control.
So you can do whatever you like with anyone else wearing an X and still keep Deadpool in his separate, dare I say adjacent movie universe.
With that in mind Disney, should any temptation to put your own creative fingerprints on ‘Pool arise after everyone has signed on the dotted line, I would suggest you keep your hands off. There’s nothing wrong with him, there’s probably little you could do to improve him and Mr. Wade Wilson is a gravy train that probably has a lot of track left in him.
You know the old saying, if it ain’t broke . . .
And Deadpool is in very fine form.
Image 20th Century Fox
