5 Reasons That Deadpool Might Just Revive Ryan Reynolds’ Career

Could the new R-rated Deadpool be the redemption of Ryan Reynolds? After starring in 2011’s critically lambasted Green Lantern movie and portraying a very much PG-13 version of Wade Wilson and later Weapon XI in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds looks poised to break out of his superhero funk and bring life back to his career with this iteration of Deadpool. The first trailer for the film, which you can see above, was shown exclusively to audiences at this year’s Comic-Con and was very well received. Last night, it finally appeared online and the reception has been over the top positive, signalling a possible resurgence for Ryan Reynolds. Here, then, are five ways that the new Deadpool movie could bring life back to Reynolds’ comic-book career and put him back on the A-list once again. 1) EVERYBODY Is Forgetting About That Horrible Green Lantern Movie In 2011, Warner Bros. released Green Lantern, a superhero movie with a cast of known names, including Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Angela Bassett and Tim Robbins. It told the story of test pilot Hal Jordan and how he becomes the first human member of the Green Lantern Corps. The film was made on a $200 million budget and barely made back its costs with a disappointing $220 million gross at the box office. It was universally panned by critics for a poor script, overuse of special effects and deviations from the comic book canon for the character. As was expected, Warner Bros. cancelled plans for a sequel and are instead using Man of Steel as the true start of their extended universe. So, it looks like everyone has wiped Reynolds' Green Lantern film from their mind, thus giving the actor another chance to get things right. 2) New Deadpool Fixes What Was Wrong With X-Men Deadpool The version of Wade Wilson that Ryan played in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine was very much watered down. With a PG-13 rating for the movie, you couldn’t really explore Deadpool as the merc with the mouth. Sure, Reynolds slings some funny one-liners, but they're all pretty tame. When Wade Wilson becomes Weapon XI (AKA Deadpool), his mouth is sewed shut, making him unable to talk. We do see the dual swords, but never the suit, and we certainly don’t see any sort of origin story where Wade Wilson becomes Deadpool through an operation that horribly scars him. In fact, his handsome face is untouched until the end, when he becomes bald and scarred and closer to what Deadpool looks like under the red suit. Thankfully, the new movie doesn’t flinch from representing the character from the comic books in all his nasty, mutilated, and mouthy glory. Director Tim Miller takes those stitches out and lets Deadpool talk all he wants, and with that R-rating, the script lets him speak unfiltered and raunchy as hell. And that’s just what we expect from the character. 3) Sometimes Leaks Are A Good Thing Those who saw Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson in the X-Men movie saw a tease of what the character could be, but wasn’t yet. Nobody could imagine Reynolds as the classic Deadpool until they saw the test footage that was leaked in July of 2014, right before San Diego Comic-Con was ending. Someone leaked a short bit of test footage that was shot with Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, suit, mouth and all. The footage was so fantastically violent and funny that it had to be real. So real in fact, that 20th Century Fox worked overtime to get the leaked footage taken down from YouTube. In the three minute clip, which you can check out above, we see Reynolds in the suit, talking with a foul mouth and dispatching villains in a gory and nasty way while also breaking the fourth wall. It showed us he could pull off the Deadpool that we all knew and loved from the comic books and was instrumental in the studio moving forward on a film project that had been stalled for a very long time. It's also interesting to note that in an interview with Yahoo Movies, Reynolds even admitted that he considered leaking the test footage online himself at one point, saying: “I was excited, because you can look back at an email chain from all of us, the core group involved in Deadpool, saying ‘We should leak this, f—-,’ like three years ago. Saying, ‘Hey, if this thing is going to stagnate, one of us should just say ‘Whoops, I slipped it online by accident.’ And nobody seemed to want to nut up and do that, myself included. Someone did it for us, years later, when we all completely assumed it was dead in the water.” 4) Ryan Reynolds Is A Funny Bastard When Not Muted By The Studio Reynolds' unfiltered personality is a perfect match for Deadpool’s sarcastic and funny mercenary attitude. If you follow him at all on his Twitter account (@VanCityReynolds), you’ll see him firing off quips and one-liners all the time that just absolutely slay. Simply put, Reynolds’ real life personality is a perfect fit for Wade Wilson. I wonder if sharks are huddled up underwater, scared shitless while watching Human Week. — Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) July 23, 2015 'Member when I performed Britney's "I'm A Slave 4 U"? But instead of wearing a giant yellow snake, I wore @NathanFillion? He has the video. — Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) July 6, 2015 Aside from what Reynolds has been doing himself, the photos and videos that the marketing team have been releasing for the film are like little shots of adrenaline to keep us excited about how amazing Deadpool will be and to keep reminding us that Ryan Reynolds was born to play this role. After all, who can forget that first photo of the character laying on a bearskin rug in front of a fireplace, riffing on the Burt Reynolds photoshoot? We knew then that this version of Deadpool would absolutely be the one that we all wanted it to be. 5) The New Red Band Trailer Puts Our Fears To Rest Ryan Reynolds IS Deadpool, and the new trailer confirms all of our hopes and dreams for the character and what he can be (and will be thanks to that R-rating). He's mouthy, sarcastic, violent and unflinching when dispatching his enemies, and he breaks down that fourth wall by talking directly to the audience and drawing us right into the action. Make no mistake - this movie would not have been made if it didn’t get an R rating, which is incredibly rare for a studio to do, especially for a comic book character property. Deadpool is an R-rated character though, and we’ve all seen what happens when you try to make him PG-13. Thank god 20th Century Fox decided to not only “nut up” on making the movie, but also in giving it an R-rating. Despite the two misfires in the world of comic-book movies of Green Lantern and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds looks poised to breathe new life into his career with the upcoming Deadpool movie and if reaction to the recent trailer is any indication, he already has the backing of his fans as he moves forward. Tell us, do you think Deadpool will revive Ryan Reynolds' career? Sound off below!