Genre: Action/Superhero
Premise: Immediately after meeting the love of his life, a merc receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. After being turned into a freak by a fake experimental cure, he declares revenge on the man who made him this way.
About: Everyone knows the story by now. Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Ryan Reynolds, and director Tim Miller have been trying to get this movie made for 7 years (Ryan Reynolds even longer). Fox didn’t think a hard-R superhero film would work but reluctantly gave the group a small amount of money to shoot some test footage. When it came back, the execs weren’t impressed and the movie seemed to die for good. But then one of the four (they won’t tell us who) leaked the test footage online, the internet went crazy, and Fox decided, eh, why not. Still, they considered it EXTREMELY risky and didn’t like the film’s prospects, giving the production a very non-superhero-like 60 million bucks, hoping for a tiny profit. Well, the film’s been setting all kinds of records, racking up 150 million dollars at the box office, blowing away expectations left and right. It’s safe to say that Deadpool may have just done for Fox what Iron Man did for Disney. Here is my previous script review.
Writers: Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick
Let’s be honest here. There’s something about analysts, number crunchers, and marketing experts being wrong that tickles our film-loving posteriors. Formulas can’t tell us what audiences want. What audiences want are good movies, something fresh, something that resonates. And that can’t be quantified by a database of “comps” (by the way, when did the “comps” term migrate from the real estate market to the movie business??)
And the nice thing about this weekend’s screw-up is that nobody gets hurt. Deadpool made a bajillion dollars for the studio. They’re going to make bajillions more on sequels and an expanded universe. All is good at 20th Century Fox this morning, and I’m sure all those number crunchers are retroactively reframing their warnings (“I didn’t say it WOULDN’T do well. I said it wouldn’t do well if it was released in the SUMMER. Remember? That’s what I said. I never knew you were going to release it on Valentine’s Day. I would’ve redone the comps if you would’ve said that”).
For those who haven’t seen the film, it’s a superhero origin story with a twist. Or a few twists. This guy, Wade Wilson, falls in love with a prostitute. He’s then told he has terminal cancer. Resigned to his fate, Wade gets a hail mary pass from a mysterious man who says he can cure him.
Wade decides to take that chance, only to find out the whole thing is a front to torture desperate people. Wade is tortured in a lab for months, and the experiments turn him immortal (yeah, I know, I didn’t understand that either). They also burn his face into a crispy pizza pie looking mess, and when Wade finally escapes, he can’t exactly slide unnoticed back into society.
So he becomes a costume-wearing killer! Yeah! He also goes looking for the man who made him this way, AJAX, whose rather questionable power is that he can’t feel pain (c’mon, couldn’t we have found someone better than that?). Wade (now “Deadpool”) even grabs a couple of X-Men to help him, Colossus (a giant steel man) and Megasonic Teenage Warhead, a teenage girl who’s sooooo over it. Together, the three take on Ajax and his baddies, and Deadpool does (or does not?) get his revenge.
So how did this change from the original script that received so much buzz when it first leaked? It’s weird. It feels like it changed a lot, and yet not at all. Really, things were just moved around, or rephrased. I remember in the script there was this endless voice over where something awful would happen to Wade (I think being diagnosed with terminal cancer) and he’d tell us, “This is only the 7th worst thing that’s happened to me in my life.” Which was kind of cool, cause you’re going, “Jesus, I want to know how bad the first six things were!”
They got rid of that. And then there was stuff like the experimentation torture. If I remember correctly, the original script had Wade being tortured for 7-10 years. Somewhere along the way, they must have realized that it would be odd to throw Wade back into his buddy system 10 years later. So they kind of fudge it in the movie. It might’ve been 5 years, it might’s been 5 months. Whatever the case, it was a better choice. There was no need to torture Wade for 10 years.
The movie still kept the script’s schizophrenic timeline though. We’re in the present, then we’re in the past, then the later present, then the later past. Here’s the thing if you’re going to try to pull this off – it’s great to have a running voice over so that the narrator/hero can immediately tell us where we are. Where I see these excessive time jumping devices fail is when there’s little explanation of what’s happening. When we jump to the past in Deadpool, Wade is there to tell us where we are in a voice over, so we’re never lost.
One of the biggest changes from the script occurs in the area I was most worried about – character development. I didn’t FEEL anything in the Deadpool script. I just thought it was cool. But in the film, they really go all out in exploring Wade.
And this is a great lesson for writers who hope to work in the industry someday. The reason they made this so character heavy was because they had to. They didn’t have 200 million dollars like Iron Man. They had 60. That severely limits your show-stopping superhero set pieces. And from what I understand, nobody gets the exact budget they want. The studio always slashes it. So, like Reese and Wernick, you too will be asked to dial back your action spectacle and fill those set pieces in with something else.
And it’s kind of a win-win when you think about it. Your job when you write a script is to move people. When you have 200 million dollars worth of toys, you’re more interested in moving 50 cars across a highway in the greatest chase scene of all time. Deadpool REALLY gets into its love story (cheap to shoot!), really gets into Deadpool’s alienation (cheap to shoot!) and really gets into his mundane day-to-day life (cheap to shoot!). All of this not only kept the budget down, but it made this superhero film unlike any superhero film we’ve seen before (giving audiences the “fresh” take they’re looking for).
Deadpool also had a secret weapon that helped hide its low-fi approach – Deadpool himself. I don’t think Batman or Spider-Man or Superman could’ve survived a 60 million dollar budget because none of them have the personality to keep us entertained during long stretches of set-piece-less scenes. But Deadpool is his own stand-up comedy routine. Even when things “aren’t happening,” he’s still saying funny shit, either through voice over (“Now I bet at this very moment your girlfriend is wondering how you convinced her to come see this shit”), or to other characters (“Hash-tag, driveby”).
And then of course there’s Reynolds himself. I’ll be honest. Reynolds has always struck me as an okay to occasionally decent actor who was extremely lucky to keep working. He just never seemed to have the gravitas to break out. Bill Simmons even once wrote an article pointing out why Reynolds wasn’t a movie star. This goes to show that, as an actor, when you find the perfect part for you, you can shine. And that should be a lesson to screenwriters as well. When you’re stuck in a script you don’t believe in or that doesn’t highlight your talents, it’s not going to end well, no matter how hard you try. But if you find that story you love and that your type of writing is perfect for, you’re going to write something great.
As a movie, I thought this was on par with the script. A fresh and unique way into a stale genre that does a solid job. I’m more enamored with the story behind the story here. I’m just so happy for everyone involved.
[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The making of Deadpool is a story of two qualities that are ESSENTIAL to succeeding in this business: passion and perseverance. Without these two qualities, you will fail. Hollywood is a cold place that doesn’t give a shit. But when you love something and you’re willing to put everything into showing it to the world, assuming you’ve done the hard work (you’ve studied the screenwriting craft and become the best screenwriter you can be), you WILL succeed. Don’t run away at the first, second, third, or fiftieth “no.” Keep going like these four and you’ll find your salvation. And there will be those who doubt this. But if you asked everyone who’s ever made a film how they got their movie made, the large majority of them will give you a story similar to this.
