It is indeed an era of comic superheroes! The comic adaptations at the box office are raking in the moolah and production houses are capitalising it with sequels, spin offs and reboots. The entire comic genre being at its best today, the roster of superhero flicks lined up for the big screen is overly packed.
From the house of 20th Century Fox, which owns the rights to the entire mutant clan of X-Men and the likes of Fantastic Four, comes another X-Men spin off, Deadpool. Recently, Ryan Reynolds, a huge fan of the comic character and playing the lead himself revealed the first official look on Twitter, creating quite a stir. The poster unlike a conventional action-packed superhero look shows the red and black costumed mercenary casually lying on a bear-skin rug. The first look itself hints towards an unconventional tone of the upcoming movie.
For those who know Deadpool only as the sewed-mouth Weapon X, terribly shown in X-Men Origins-Wolverine, also starring Ryan as the anti-hero, will find the upcoming Deadpool as Fox’s welcoming attempt in rebooting the character. Deadpool aka Wade Wilson is a foul-mouthed anti-hero in the Marvel X-Men universe. Created by artist Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza, Deadpool was originally spun as a villainous fast-talking mercenary but later in the comic age placed himself as an anti-hero mutant, yet an adversary to the X-Men. Famed as the ‘Merc with the Mouth’, Wade Wilson is a talkative and insane master assassin, equipped with great skills of martial arts.
Some comic fans would argue, Deadpool is a rip-off of the DC villain Deathstroke who is also a mercenary but with a serious attitude unlike the red and black costumed Deadpool. The Mutant X programme (remember X-Men Origins-Wolverine) artificially gave Deadpool his primary mutant power of healing, very much like our favourite mutant Wolverine. However, the character’s last seen screen presence was a cinematic wreck and fans were quite glad to have Wolverine claw off his head.
Inspite of this, Ryan with the debutant director Tim Miller have been long petitioning a solo venture for the anti-hero and Fox seemed quite convinced when Deadpool’s test footage that leaked online last year went down well with the fans. The two minute footage is totally kick-ass with our Merc with a mouth, humorously kicking butt, slicing off heads and yet managing a hilarious sign-off to the audience. Commenting on the character, Ryan told Entertainment Weekly, “He’s a character that’s aware he’s in a film, he’s aware that he breaks the fourth wall. I mean, he does certain things that are unlike anything else in the X-Men Universe, yet he is a part of the X-Men Universe.”
What, in the hands of another director, could come out as too gory for the young folks, Miller manages to balance out the footage with decent non-bloody VFX sequences. This raises another question whether the upcoming feature would be a PG-13 or R rated as some fans would want the true graphic, foul-mouthed hero shown on screen.
About the upcoming movie synopsis, Deadpool will tell the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson. After being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humour, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.
Deadpool releases on 12 February 2016 with Ryan donning the red spandex costume who has revealed that “Deadpool is so popular; the comic book alone is one of the most popular selling comic books of all time so it’s exciting to be shooting it. We don’t have the budget that most X-Men movies do. In the super hero world, this would be considered an independent film.”
The independent anti-hero flick will also feature Melissa Baccarin playing Deadpool’s leading love interest, Copycat and Gina Carano as Angel Dust, TJ Miller as Weasel among others.
