It’s hard to believe now, but there did exist a time on this planet when Deadpool – as a movie character – felt like a gigantic risk. No one knew if it would work. No one knew if a story could be hammered out and an adequate budget paired along with it. The public’s first filmic taste of the character, which came in X:Men Origins: Wolverine, was so poorly received that it probably set back any development for, well, 13 years. It took some persistence from Ryan Reynolds and writers Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick to get this baby into shape. And then it took a mistakenly-or-perhaps-totally-intentionally leaked proof-of-concept short film to finally kick down the doors.
The point is: this is a movie that had a lot going for it, and yet: no one knew if it would be successful.
$781 million dollars at the worldwide box office will certainly help with that question.
The best thing Deadpool did, beyond make a lot of people a ton of money (and show that superheroes could be exceedingly silly and violent and still be an awful lot of fun), is show the character had been accepted. Now, the creative team didn’t have to worry so much about financing or funding or pushing a rock up a treadmill of a craggy hill. It could focus on telling a good story, coming up with some crackling humor, and having some goddamn fun.
This enabled them to take their time. To let the original director go over creative differences. To get a great actor like Josh Brolin aboard. To add a little more cheddar to the budget and raise that freak flag even higher than before. There’s beauty in confidence that comes from acceptance. And the Deadpool 2 team took it and ran with it as far as they could, before the public ever noticed they were about to run out of breath.
When Marvel got a taste of success with their first Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America movies, they started lining up the next installations in their ongoing story. But it didn’t matter how much money these movies made or how well they seemed to be accepted; I simply could not understand the appeal of a movie or character called Ant-Man. It seemed so desperately uncool. So uncinematic. What could possibly be the fun in this endeavor?
Edgar Wright’s involvement with Ant-Man gave me some indication the character had more potential that I realized. But his departure in 2012, a particularly sad piece of business, only increased my doubts. Surely, Marvel would realize they had something so uncool on their hands they couldn’t possibly heat it back up. But they moved on, hiring Adam McKay and eventual star Paul Rudd to finish up the script. They hired director Peyton Reed (Bring It On, Down with Love, The Break-Up) to take over. And they sped ahead, making this seemingly uncool thing into something worthy.
The original Ant-Man, like the original Deadpool, is a great example of what happens when fresh air is pumped into popcorn-stained theaters. I’ll never forget being positively delighted by the final showdown with the villain, an epic train fight that took place on a child’s Thomas the Train set and eventually the inside of a suitcase. After the excess of Avengers: Age of Ultron, it cleansed the palate so well my sense of taste and appetite for movies returned. Instead of feeling numbed by status quo, I felt enlivened by all the possibilities.
But the biggest thing the success of Ant-Man (and his appearance in Captain America: Civil War) taught its filmmakers is that the audience can definitely accept Paul Rudd – a delightful actor far more known for comedies such as Anchorman – as an action star. Just because Brian Fontana had a panther cologne didn’t mean he needed it to be credible; he could believably exist alongside the Black Panther himself, T’Challa, as well as Peter Parker, Tony Stark, and Steve Rogers, and no one would wonder if he had stumbled onto the wrong film set.
Deadpool 2 and Ant-Man and the Wasp came out only a month apart, but they taught us the same thing: confidence through acceptance leads to an emboldened, risk-taking attitude. Deadpool 2 amps up the humor and brutal action, but it also takes some chances with more dramatic storytelling and spends a good chunk of its runtime building up a team for Deadpool that gets entirely killed off minutes into its first mission. Ant Man and the Wasp sees Reed and his collaborators having even more fun with all the shrinking and expanding, as well as deepening relationships, characters, and the presence of the Quantum Realm. Both films have an undeniable glee to their energy. They want to entertain you. They want you to get your money’s worth. But they also are clearly having so much goddamn fun. It’s a form of contagious that can’t help but make you giggle along.
The next steps for Deadpool and Ant-Man are less sure. Deadpool might be joining an X-Force movie before any further adventures. Worst case scenario: Disney’s purchase of Fox means we may have seen our last R-rated Deadpool flick. Deadpool can do without a swear word or two, but theres a level of chaos and inappropriateness inherent in the character that cannot be and should not be washed out. Ant-Man more than likely has to help bail out some of the Avengers in next year’s Infinity War: End Game before any further solo adventures with the Wasp. I don’t know what will happen with these two emboldened, far-less-risky characters, but they can take satisfaction in knowing when the time came, they shot their shot.
