Throw out your A-listers, never mind the CGI: in Hollywood, there’s sometimes no more valuable asset than low expectations. At least, this seems to be the thinking behind Deadpool & Wolverine’s marketing campaign, which this week took a swerve into full-bore self-fustigation. “We should set the table correctly,” begins star Ryan Reynolds, in a video “disclaimer” fans could access by following a QR code. “This film is as paper thin as a sequel to Battlefield Earth.”
As marketing similes go, evoking the name of John Travolta’s Scientology-adjacent sci-film is more or less the nuclear option. But Reynolds continues to dunk on his own movie. “We’re mostly going to beat each other senseless, make enemies with Disney, tell a few dick jokes,” he says. “So sit back, relax, let us lower your IQ and raise your heart rate while we travel to a vapid Dreamland, a place where grown men and grown women walk around in tights, and act like it’s not a giant cultural cry for help.” As promos go, this sounds like an – almost – entirely honest assessment from Reynolds, or, more likely, from the bods in Deadpool & Wolverine’s marketing department.
