Forget the new “Avengers” movie: The most anticipated new comic book film just became “Deadpool.”
Wait, who?
Fans unfortunate enough to remember the 2009 stinker “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” caught a glimpse of the mercenary Deadpool — a k a Wade Wilson — played by Ryan Reynolds.
That movie’s superpower was mucking up a bunch of beloved characters. As a result, it turned Deadpool, the fast-talking, wisecracking fan favorite, into a mute-science-experiment-gone-wrong-bad-guy (about the equivalent of deciding Iron Man should become a suburban locksmith), making a spinoff basically impossible.
But fans kept demanding one, especially after test footage leaked online earlier this year — and their voices were finally heard on Thursday, when Fox announced its plans to move ahead with a Deadpool movie.
Reynolds isn’t officially attached yet, but it’s expected he’ll jump on board, especially since he’s part of the reason fans supported the movie in the first place.
Here are five reasons to be excited for it:
Marvel does well with silly characters
Deadpool’s meta humor would be welcome in theaters, too: It can’t all be gods of thunder and world-threatening deadly invasions. The success of summer’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” proved that the world of comic book movies benefits greatly from an injection of pure fun. Comic books themselves are a diverse media, full of all sorts of weird and wonderful characters — including some, like Deadpool, who are indeed quite funny. “Guardians” introduced audiences to characters who could lighten some of the severity of the superhero genre; Deadpool could continue that, becoming the court jester of the comic book cinema world.
Ryan Reynolds was actually pretty good in “Wolverine”
Ryan Reynolds, not unlike Ben Affleck, gets a bit of an undeserved bad rap. Sure, “Green Lantern” was a stunning flop so bad that the studio probably had to buy extra green screens just to accurately visualize fan disappointment. “Green Lantern” was doomed from the beginning with a bad script and bad effects. But putting Van Wilder in the role of the sarcastic, motor-mouthed Deadpool was damn near perfect casting: You need someone who can be snappy and irreverent — with just a touch of charming. (Plus, he crushes it in the very underrated “Just Friends.”)
The test footage is awesome
This test footage made in 2012 for a potential Deadpool movie leaked online earlier this year, and it showed exactly the right kind of attitude to make the movie work. Reynolds delivered the character’s lines in perfectly schizophrenic, fourth wall-breaking style. After seeing their beloved character inexplicably reduced to a dopey Frankenstein in “Wolverine,” fans went nuts — this was the movie they wanted to see!
“There was such an overpowering reaction to the footage, you sort of feel like, ‘Oh, so we weren’t crazy for our reasons for loving this character, for loving this role.’ It’s interesting to see the power of the Internet. It’s awe-inspiring, actually,” Reynolds told the Niagara Falls Review in September.
It’s a promising start for sure.
He’s a freelance superhero
Deadpool’s nickname is the “Merc With a Mouth”: He’s technically a mercenary for hire whose healing power renders him reckless as a drunken carnival (as opposed to stoic and hardened, like Wolverine). But his freelance status — he’s not on a team like the Avengers or X-Men — means he can pop up in any number of story lines anywhere in the Marvel universe: Comics have seen him both helping the Avengers and alternately being chased by a zombie T-rex while carrying a zombie version of his own head. His lack of grounding to any set character arc opens up a movie to give him all sorts of adventure — we might, mercifully, even be spared an origin story.
Deadpool is meta
Everyone in the Marvel movies is so concerned with building up the continuity of their shared universe — and Deadpool is the guy who likes to blow it all apart. The comic character breaks the fourth wall like Hulk smashes regular walls, frequently addressing the reader directly, making jokes about other characters and even picking fun at rival publisher DC. It’s a refreshing full head nod at readers, letting them in on the joke that Deadpool is playing on the comic book universe. Even better, the muddled production rights situation that prohibits the Avengers (Disney) and Spider-Man (Sony) from appearing in movies with the X-Men, Wolverine and Deadpool (Fox) is exactly the kind of thing Deadpool would make jokes about.