20th Century Fox scored a major critical and commercial success with Deadpool, ripping up the rule book to offer up a fresh, comedic take on the traditional superhero formula, and it the process becoming the highest-grossing instalment of the X-Men franchise, not to mention the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. And it seems that screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are hoping the tone it established will be carried forward to future X-Men movies.
“The different universes tend to have different tones, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a very specific, genius tone that was set in Iron Man and has lived well beyond that into the other movies,” Reese tells Heat Vision. “DC tends to have its own tone, which is this dark, gritty tone. The X-Men have their own tone, which is kind of somewhere in between. Not too funny, not too light. But not quite as dark as the DC stuff. And I think what we stumbled into was a new tone, and I haven’t seen Logan, so it’s tough to say if they have it, but I think we hope to have our own universe that is defined less by characters and timelines and things like that and more by tone. The hope is Deadpool 2 and X-Force and future movies all be this new, consistent, sillier tone. More self-aware tone. And edgier and rated-R tone. We want to be establishing the universe but also focusing on each individual movie and not worrying too much about building a larger threat to the world or a larger plot machination.”
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Wernick went on to discuss how they are not beholden to the rest of the X-Men franchise when it comes to what they can do with Deadpool: “What’s nice is Deadpool exists in his own universe. He’s part of the larger X-Men universe, but in a way he isn’t. He interacts with that world but he is in the present. We don’t deal with the ’60s or the ’70s or the future. It’s here and now. More than anything, I think he’s going to have his fun with what they do in the other franchise. But fortunately, we don’t have to play by those same rules. Deadpool is a movie that did break all the rules. And I think we’re going to continue to break those rules. That involves knowing that he’s in a movie, talking to the audience, breaking that fourth wall, a characteristic that they established so brilliantly in the comics way back when. So yeah, I do think that timelines are something that we can make fun of and don’t have to be slave to.”
While Logan has gone down the same R-rated route as Deadpool, I think we can safely rule out a silly tone for Hugh Jackman’s final outing as Wolverine, based on what we’ve seen in the trailers. But would you like to see that carried forward into future X-Men movies such as X-Men: The New Mutants and the main franchise? Or should Fox keep its sillier, edgier tone reserved for the Merc with a Mouth? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
Originally published January 29, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
