Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine was one of the best things about the 2000s X-Men trilogy, so you’d be forgiven for getting hyped for his first solo outing. Fans were shocked and disappointed, though, when they finally saw the terrible X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009. A combination of an awful script, shoddy CGI and bad production decisions sunk the film and to this day, it’s considered the worst entry in Fox’s X-Universe.
The finest example of how much they screwed up is Deadpool, who’s a long way away from the hilarious fourth wall-breaking antihero that broke box office records. I’ll grant that they delivered the basic notion of a smart-talking mutant assassin for a few early scenes, but what they did to the character has to go down in history as one of the dumbest things in superhero cinema. First, they rendered the Merc with a Mouth mute by sewing his lips closed, and then they gave him laser vision, ditched his red and black costume and erased his personality.
It turns out that Ryan Reynolds knew all this was a mistake, but felt he had to go along with it for the sake of the solo movie. He discussed this in an interview soon after Deadpool‘s release, saying:
“I was already attached to the Deadpool movie. We hadn’t, at that point, written a script yet. But that came along, and [I was basically told], ‘Play Deadpool in this movie, or else we’ll get someone else to.’ And I just said, ‘I’ll do it, but it’s the wrong version.'”
He went on to explain that X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a casualty of the 2008-2009 writer’s strike, meaning he had to effectively write the character himself, stating:
“Every line I have in the movie, I just wrote myself. The script that we had, it just said, ‘Wade Wilson shows up. He talks really fast.’ I was like, ‘What? What am I supposed to do with that? I had fun with the beginning stuff, I felt like that was pretty appropriate for Wade Wilson. The latter half is where they sort of called an audible at the last minute, and just changed him.”
Reynolds also shared an amazing conversation he had with one of X-Men Origins: Wolverine‘s producers, who seemed to be completely oblivious as to how this would go down with audiences.
“I said, ‘You guys, people are gonna go nuts over this.’ And he was like, ‘I know right?” And I was like, ‘No, not in a good way.'”
Thankfully, it all ended well and we got a much more accurate and entertaining Deadpool, who’s confirmed to make the leap to the MCU soon(ish) in the franchise’s first R-rated superhero flick. Right now, we don’t have an exact date, though after months of silence, Feige recently confirmed that Deadpool 3 is in active development. Let’s hope we get a release date in the not too distant future. Also, would it be too much to expect a Reynolds cameo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?
