Deadpool and Wolverine a pretty Marvel-lous team-up

NEW YORK – If there is a magic formula for Hollywood success, Deadpool & Wolverine would appear to have refined it to a simple calculation: Just add Hugh Jackman’s X-Men superhero to the hit comic franchise anchored by Ryan Reynolds and reap the sure-to-be-lucrative dividends.

So why did a film that is projected to be the summer’s biggest live-action blockbuster prove so difficult to get off the ground?

Although Reynolds, 47, had pitched a team-up to his close friend for years, Jackman, 55, initially resisted, preferring to let the well-reviewed Logan (2017) stand as his swansong with the gruff mutant Wolverine.

And while the merger of Disney and Fox allowed Reynolds to set the third Deadpool movie starring his R-rated mercenary in the previously off-limits Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), he struggled to come up with a story that could capitalise on that opportunity. “It was just hard to find the thing that felt right,” the Canadian actor said.

In August 2022, just as Reynolds and Canadian director Shawn Levy debated putting their sequel on ice, Jackman placed a surprise call and told them he was willing to give his signature role one more go.

“There’s parts of Wolverine that I scratched around and wanted to explore, but I wasn’t able to,” the Australian star said. “In this film, there are sides of him that I’ve always wanted to get out.”

On a video call in late June, both men had plenty to say about the long arc of portraying and eventually becoming the steward of major pop-cultural characters.

Reynolds waged an uphill battle to make the first Deadpool film (2016), which was greenlit only after leaked test footage became an internet sensation. Off its modest US$58 million (S$78 million) budget, the movie grossed US$782.8 million worldwide and gave Reynolds his first real franchise.

“I was an actor who was semi-well-known,” said Reynolds, who added jokingly, “I don’t know how you would phrase that without sounding like a dink. But I was 37 when Deadpool had its pop-culture phenomenon moment, and I’m really grateful I was because I knew exactly how to enjoy it.”

Jackman, who has been playing Wolverine for more than two decades, nodded in recognition as Reynolds spoke. For the first X-Men film (2000), Jackman was flown to Canada to hastily replace Scottish actor Dougray Scott, who had dropped out because of scheduling conflicts.

Wolverine was Jackman’s first Hollywood role, and it vaulted him straight onto the A-list.

“Hearing you talk, I’m glad I was 30 when it happened and not 20,” he told Reynolds.

Here, the off-screen besties reflect on the paths that led them to the M18-rated Deadpool & Wolverine, which opens in Singapore cinemas on July 25.

At what point did each of you realise this may be the signature role of your career?

Jackman: In 1999, when I started, I’d never read the comics, so I really didn’t have that much context of how important it was. It happened when my paperwork wasn’t right at customs in Canada and I was told I’m being sent back. I was like, “Oh, I just lost the biggest break of my life.”

I told the guy behind the counter, who had been so cold, and he goes, “Sorry, I don’t understand. You mean you’re an animator?” And I said, “No. It’s a normal movie, live action.”

He goes, “Hang on, you’re Wolverine in live action?” And then I was doing photos, autographs, and every bit of paperwork just got stamped.

So that was the beginning of it. But in terms of legacy, I guess it happened around X2 (2003) or X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) for me. It took a while before I realised because we were coming at a time when there was no genre, really, of comic-book movies. It really started to take off with Spider-Man and Batman and X-Men.

Ryan, you began developing a Deadpool movie 20 years ago, long before you started playing him.

Reynolds: When I finally got to make it, it had been almost 10 years at that point. No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success. I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen. They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers’ room.

It was a lesson in a couple of senses. I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money. It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more – not just on Deadpool, but on anything.

When did you feel like you had real control over where your character would go?

Jackman: Certainly not at the beginning, because X-Men was also my first film in the US. I was very much at the mercy of everyone else: “Okay, we’re doing a sequel, great. Oh, you’ve written a script? Let’s have a look.” I think it crystallised by the time I got to Logan, where I was very much involved. You know, I had a two-picture deal (for the first two Wolverine spin-offs), so I had really no choice for the first two.

From that moment on, I had a choice whether to do it or not. So for me, it was always about, is there a reason to tell this story? By Logan, that’s why I said, “I’m out, I think I’ve reached the end of what I have to offer.” And then it was seeing the first Deadpool in a screening room that had me going, “Oh, hang on. There’s another reason.”

Reynolds: Hugh probably had the biggest imprint on me because one of my earlier jobs was to play Deadpool in his movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), and I will never forget seeing what it looked like to lead and produce a movie with humility and a level of graciousness that I frankly had never seen in this business before. It really was an antidote to cynicism for me at the time. I remember thinking, “Oh, you can be successful and content and really good at what you do, and you don’t have to be some tortured schmuck who’s wilfully hurting themselves to find some kind of vaporous artistic truth.”

My first day, I walked off the set and Hugh said, “How do you feel?” And I muttered, “Ah, I wish I could go back to that scene we shot earlier in the day because now I sort of see it.” Five minutes later, everyone is being asked to come out of their trailers, lights are being flipped back on, wardrobe is being zipped back up.

Hugh made it so I could shoot. He didn’t even know me, we had just met. I thought, “If I’m ever lucky enough to be breathing the rare air that this guy breathes, this is how you do it.”

I still pinch myself because we can be best friends, but I can also be going, “That’s Hugh (expletive) Jackman, wow.” That never gets old.

Jackman: Thanks, brother.

Hugh, you met Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige on his very first movie, since he was an associate producer on the first X-Men. What do you remember about him then?

Jackman: I was flying up to do a (screen) test with the director, and it was lunch hour. The director was like, “I don’t understand what’s going on, I’ve got Dougray Scott playing the part. Why am I auditioning another guy?”

Anyway, as I left, Kevin came up and said, “Hey man, I’ll drive you to the airport.” I said, “Kev, you don’t have to. I’ll just get a cab.” And he goes, “No, no. I’ve made us a reservation, we’ll get a steak before you get on the plane.”

I said, “Kev, please. We’re all grown-ups here. We all know what’s going on and you don’t have to do that.” But he did, and he took me out for a steak dinner.

Reynolds: He didn’t know whether you were going to get it or not?

Jackman: No, he was just being a really good guy. We sat and chatted, and then he literally dropped me off at the airport. So we did bond on that film, big time, when I got the part. He was slipping me some comic books under the radar because the director (Bryan Singer) didn’t want them on set.

Ryan, you told Vanity Fair that making a Deadpool movie “swallows lives whole” in a way that your other movies don’t.

Reynolds: I don’t think you can do a movie like this unless you’re all in. Physically, this guy has to train, but it’s not even so much about an aesthetic as it is locking your brain into it.

Jackman: With these characters in particular, I’m keenly aware of how I’ve caught lightning in a bottle. I give everything because I respect the character, I respect the culture of the fans, the legacy of the comic books. Maybe it’s because I’m 55, but I just feel a whole opening-up and enjoying of playing this character in a way I haven’t before. Doing it with Ryan, one of my best friends, was one of the greatest experiences I’ve had. So I never take it lightly. It’s the opposite of that.

Reynolds: I’m the same. I mean, this character changed my whole life, it’s like the mothership for me. There was never a second where any one of us were on cruise control. And then the rating informed a lot of it, really deliberately steering away from that use of it as shock value and using it as a means to tell a story about these two guys that’s much more authentic than you could if you were bound by a PG-13 rating.

How does the rating let you tell a story that is more authentic?

Reynolds: Well, I’m not saying that other people should do this, but my nine-year-old watched the movie with me and my mum, who’s in her late 70s, and it was just was one of the best moments of this whole experience for me. Both of them were laughing their guts out, were feeling the emotion where I most desperately hoped people would be.

When I saw rated-R movies when I was a kid, they left a huge impression on me because I didn’t feel like people were pulling punches, and it’s been a huge inspiration to so many of the things that I look to make now.

In terms of the emotion, I’ve waited forever to do a movie with this guy, and I think he’s waited a long time to do something like this with me, so there are scenes where it’s pretty hard to distinguish between Wade Wilson talking to Logan and Ryan talking to Hugh.

I love that, I get goosebumps even just talking about it. That’s the kind of stuff that I will carry with me till my inevitable death in a hail of Danish bullets. Oh, I have a whole plan. I don’t even think they have guns in Denmark, which is one reason I will one day move there.

Jackman: You’ll die by rubber bullets.

Reynolds: Yes, exactly. I’ll die by wry cynicism and lonely winter nights. NYTIMES