Ryan Reynolds On DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE Script, Wolverine Dialogue & MCU Future

Deadpool & Wolverine star Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy spoke with IndieWire at the end of 2024 to explain their process for creating the massive R-rated hit film. Earning $1.33 billion at the global box office, the Marvel Studios blockbuster resonated with audiences. In this post, we’ll focus on the quotes from Reynolds (click here for quotes from Levy).

“One thing that’s against it [in the awards space] is that a lot of people consider it a comedy,” said Reynolds on crafting a comedy with dramatic elements. “That’s fair, but it has a backbone that is emotion and warmth. Comedy and drama both subsist on tension. Certainly comedy is designed to set up an expectation and then come 90 degrees to it or subvert it. Somehow, you can do that so much more when you have dramatic stakes. When these two feelings are working in concert with each other, it allows you so much more leeway.

“We just write a drama with the stakes that a drama would have. We’ll work with comedy later, just need that narrative and that backbone to go from that canvas. And it’s counterintuitive, because everyone’s expecting us to find different ways to be subversive in comedy. And that’s later, that’s easier, once we have the emotional side of it, then you do the task of building in the comedy, which is so difficult to do and to get right, especially in the writing, because you have to write and rewrite and rewrite, and then you have to get on set and listen to the movie and see what it’s telling you, because it’s yelling at you. And then I’m in a Deadpool suit. He’s in a parka, in the winter, we got our laptop.”

Getting Hugh Jackman on board was a win for Reynolds and Levy. Reynolds explains how he came to write dialogue for a character as layered as Logan, the Wolverine.

“For me to write Wolverine dialogue was a terrifying process,” he admits. “There’s a specificity to the character. Obviously, he’s very Clint Eastwood, less is more, he’s a non-verbal character. But we’ve also capitalized on Marvel’s pre-existing multiverse format to find a viable way to bring back a Wolverine that is maybe different than the one they knew in “Logan.” Not only that, we brought back what, contextually, is the worst Wolverine— this guy is a loser. So these are all problems you have to solve over and over again. When the first thing we said to Hugh, “You’ve got it, you got to be in the yellow suit.” And we have to wait. We can’t just put you in it. They’ll clap when they see it. They’ll love it. But we have to find out why you’re wearing it. There’s got to be a reason. And then the other thing is that the character, traditionally, at least, from the core comic books, is a guy who cannot control his rage. He has a berserker rage. He doesn’t just kill the bad guys. When he goes into that state, he kills good guys too. And that is like a sickness for him. The suit, we wrote it as a hair shirt, or a penance, or this thing that he carries with him out of shame.

“The thing I’ll never take for granted, particularly when you’re writing with stakes like this, is having an actor like Hugh Jackman, who’s incomparable. I love watching him. We wrote this sequence that I don’t think there’s a syllable he changed, in the van where he has a monologue that has more words in it than he had maybe in any entire Wolverine movie in the past.

“Hugh took that monologue and just devoured it,” he continued. “He chewed it, swallowed it, and delivered for us…and at the end, there’s a stage direction at the bottom that briefly says after he finishes that whole speech, “a flicker of regret crosses his pupil.” And Hugh, in the scene, if you watch it, there is the tiniest little feeling of “I went too far,” and if you blinked, you would have missed it. I get goosebumps even thinking about it, because it was an actor who is so in tune with his instrument and himself. I get to sit there, wearing a mask.”

Where does Reynolds see Deadpool going in the future? The actor previously said that he wants to take a break from thinking about Deadpool 4 to spend time with his family. It also sounds like he’s more open to appearing as a supporting character in other projects.

“I can tell you that Deadpool works best on scarcity and surprise. So the character is a better supporting player than he is a central figure. And I say that because Deadpool works best when you take everything away from him. And in order to take everything away from him, you have to centralize him, and we’ve done that now. I can’t keep taking everything away from him. I would love to, if we’re in the future, have an idea for an ensemble where it doesn’t necessarily center on Deadpool, but includes Wolverine and some other interesting pair-ups within that. I always think simpler is so much better. Say very little. Very, very clean stakes right at the beginning, not plotty. And then we’re off to My Dinner With Andre mixed with X-Men. No, I’m joking.”

But with the massive about Deadpool & Wolverine made at the box office, there’s no doubt Disney/Marvel Studios have eyes on where to go neXt with a sequel.

Source: IndieWire

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