The screenplay’s title page says it was written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, but if Quentin Tarantino wrote a superhero movie, it would be a lot like this script for Deadpool. In its best moments, Deadpool is like reading Van Wilder meets Kill Bill, a genius mix of insane dark comedy and ridiculous over the top violence the likes of which we’ve never seen in any other superhero movie before. As a character, Deadpool is kind of like The Bride, but with a Looney Tunes sense of humor.
Till now, our superheroes have fallen into pretty much one of two categories. They’re either deadly serious and dark, like The Dark Knight, or they’re fun and light like Iron Man. If it gets made, Deadpool will be the first superhero movie to successfully be both styles all at once. It does it by taking everything to the extreme. All the darkness and despair of Batman is amped up and punctuated with brutal, almost horror movie like violence while all the humor and flat out charm of Iron Man is amped up as well, to create a dark and deeply violent superhero movie that’s also ridiculously funny and engaging in nearly every single moment and all at once.
The thing is, it’ll only work with Ryan Reynolds. The character of Deadpool is written in his voice, his style, and when you read it, it’s impossible not to hear him talking in your head. It’d never work with anyone else but if Reynolds really steps up and takes on the role, it could be the defining moment of his career. Deadpool could become a pop culture icon; he could be Ryan’s Captain Jack Sparrow. He’s that good.
Of course there’s a problem in turning Deadpool into a movie, it’s a problem caused by X-Men Origins: Wolverine where the character was first introduced, abused, ruined, and then killed. This script eliminates that problem brilliantly by, well, mocking it. The script never comes right out and mentions Wolverine, it’s all accomplished through one specific subtle reference, which says everything that needs to be said. It’s as though the character of Deadpool exists in a world where Wolverine is a movie that he’s seen, and hates. Deadpool literally throws everything Wolverine did to screw up this character in the trash can, and then spends the rest of the movie endlessly poking fun at the celebrity of Hugh Jackman.
That’s not to say Deadpool is disconnected from the rest of the Marvel universe. It just distances itself from Wolverine because, well, there’s no other way to handle it after the way Jackman’s movie treated the character. But it’s still part of the Marvel world and there’s a huge role in this movie for Colossus, one of the most famous X-Men who has never really gotten a proper treatment on screen in any of the X-Men movies. Colossus had a cameo of sorts in X-Men 3, but here he gets a personality and plenty of fight scenes, at times serving as the straight man to Deadpool’s morally ambiguous hijinks. It’s a genius pairing; an indestructible superhero odd couple who work so well on the page that you’ll hope that the sequel will find a way to put them together permanently.
With X-Men Origins: Wolverine out of the equation, the script approached everything as if you’ve never seen Deadpool before. That means including an origin story, but origin stories are boring and Deadpool doesn’t have time to be boring. So rather than dragging us through an endless opening sequence in which Deadpool is introduced, the entire movie takes place at the peak of Deadpool’s career and his origin is told in flashbacks, interspersed throughout the movie between breaks in the action. The script’s not really linear, not exactly, and that works perfectly for a movie with the comedic sensibilities of Family Guy and the kind of brutal violence that only works when it’s not thrown at you all at once. The result is a fairly well defined rhythm of insane, violence punctuated by weirdly hilarious flashbacks, which may not seem like they’re moving the story forward but eventually do. Stopping to watch the last time Deadpool ate carbs may not seem like an important part of this tale, but in the end it all comes together.
Deadpool is funny and sarcastic and smart even when not engaged in random flashbacks. It contains a whole host of completely crazed pop culture references from Caddyshack to Amy Winehouse and everything in between. It tries to take place in the real world where Wade (Deadpool’s real name) sits around and watches Gallagher wielding his sledgomatic on television and in his apartment has his floors cleaned by a Roomba. It contains ruminations on everything from the titles of Steven Seagal movies to the potentially evil nature of IKEA. And it does all of that while telling what is almost without a doubt the darkest, most disturbed superhero story ever told.
Deadpool isn’t even really a hero. He sneers at the notion of doing the right thing. He doesn’t care about justice or really much of anything beyond this hooker he fell for once and his own, prideful, vanity. If he has any redeeming qualities there’s no sign of them in this script, other than a wicked sense of humor. In fact the script goes out of its way to paint him as sort of a scumbag. But he’s so well written and so incredibly likeable, that you’ll love him anyway. Non-fans will eat this up and existing fans of the character will probably douse themselves in gasoline and set themselves on fire in celebration over just how faithful this is. All the Deadpool staples are here, right down to his non-stop motormouth, those hideous scars, his hilarious penchant for breaking the fourth wall, and Blind Al as Deadpool’s roommate (who never leaves their apartment and hilariously, spends all her time attempting to construct IKEA furniture). The costume is the one fans know from the comics, mask and all, red because it hides the blood. Deadpool wears the mask for much of the movie, but early on we see the vicious scars hidden beneath it. It’s not until much later on in the screenplay that their origin is explained, but those scars end up being the lynchpin in his whole story. You have to wonder if it was written that way, to keep some nervous studio exec, from taking the scars off. If so, well done.
Deadpool’s face could have been a real problem, since it’s obscured a lot, which would mean seeing very little of Ryan Reynolds’ ticket-selling face. But the script, like just about every problem it encounters, gets around that brilliantly through all those flashbacks which tell the story of his origins before he was scarred. Reynolds gets plenty of visible face time, enough to sell tickets to his perpetually swooning fans.
What I’m getting at here is that this is a killer script and more than that, it’s a well-thought out story, which fills in every plot hole and solves every problem that could have been encountered with the character. I can’t imagine anyone doing this any better, and it’s a movie which deserves to be made the right way by the right people. Right now there’s no way to know if that will happen. Reynolds is busy filming Green Lantern and his commitment to Deadpool remains up in the air. Without Reynolds there is no movie here, Deadpool is Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool. At one point Robert Rodriguez was in negotiations to direct and short of actually getting Quentin Tarantino he’d be perfect. Like Reynolds this movie could make his career, but Rodriguez now seems to be doing other things. With the right director and Reynolds in the lead, this script has the potential to be the Dark Knight of R-rated superhero movies.
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