STACK #140 Jun 2016

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• Deadpool is out now

(US) R-rated movie to date, with a global box office take of more than $1 billion. Unsurprisingly, a sequel has already been greenlit. Adapted from the Marvel Comics character created in 1991 by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld, the film tells the origin story of Wade Wilson (played by Reynolds), whose terminal cancer is ‘cured’ by the same Weapon X program that created Wolverine, leaving him permanently disfigured, but impervious to pain and able to regenerate when wounded. Dubbed “The Merc with a Mouth”, this potty-mouthed, amoral superhero is unique among comic book characters in that he can break the fourth wall – and Miller had long been a fan. “When I came on board the project, the script was already great,” he says. “It was one of the best scripts I’d ever read, which was why I wanted to do it so much. Plus, I’ve been reading comic books pretty hardcore for the last 35 years or so. If you came to my studio, you’d see a giant two-story wall of bookshelves that house my years and years of comic book collecting. I’m primarily a Marvel guy, so of course I’d read tons of Deadpool. “Captain America’s very serious and the X-Men are very serious, but Deadpool was one of the few that had a real sense of humour about it and didn’t take itself so seriously. In my

stack of comic books, it was always the nice palate cleanser to the more serious stuff.” Reynolds shared Miller’s passion for the character and the fledgling director is full of praise for his star. “He’s a brilliant actor, and for a first-timer it’s really interesting to watch him work. We’d done the first week of shooting, and I’m not one of these guys who thinks I have to know everything, and I went over to Ryan and said, ‘dude, what could I be doing better?’ He said, “Tim, this has been the most satisfying week of filming I’ve ever had. You don’t know everything, but at least you don’t pretend like you do’. We had a really great experience and there was no drama on the set.” Because Deadpool does break the fourth wall, the film is stacked with jokes that poke fun at the whole superhero world – including Fox’s own stable of characters. However, Miller says the studio didn’t interfere and pretty much gave him free reign. “We got no pushback from Fox at any point,” he says. “Though I think they were little prepared for how weird this movie is! “There’s some really odd stuff in there, and tonally it’s all over the map. I think it does a nice job of balancing it, but you go from action to tragedy to weird situation comedy with a blind black woman in an apartment with

Wade. The biggest thing we’ve had to adjust in post is to give the audience a beat to make those transitions.” And while the long development process was frustrating, in a cinema world overloaded with big budget superhero flicks, the delays probably ended up helping the film. The first wave of superhero movies opened up the world of comic books to a mainstream audience and now they are ready for something different. Miller says: “Now people are familiar with it and they’re ready to take the training wheels off the bike and look to something more aggressive, like Deadpool . As much as it’s for the hardcore fan – and I don’t think we ever sold out on who the character is – we’ve also made a real effort to be inclusive and make it accessible to people who haven’t read the comic. Humour, really, builds most of that bridge. We like to laugh, and this one’s funny. We’re not packing it too much with insider references where the audience will feel stupid if they don’t get it. “I want my wife to like the movie, which is why I made sure that Ryan took his shirt off a little bit. There’s a love story there and I think people really respond to Vanessa’s character. I think you care about the characters before they start beating each other up, which is really important to me.”

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