What exactly do we want from a Deadpool movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? The integration of Ryan Reynolds’s potty-mouthed mutant into the rather more wholesome universe populated by the likes of Spider-Man, Thor and the Hulk? Or a freaky, bloodthirsty, meta-fuelled superhero buddy movie that gives Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine one last hurrah on the big stage? Thirty-seven minutes of footage screened for fans from Shawn Levy’s film (at a super-snazzy London fan event featuring live bands, Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp DJing 80s hits and Jackman and Reynolds themselves) suggested we may well need to settle on one or the other, at least for a while longer.
Much has been made of Deadpool & Wolverine’s potential to integrate X-Men – once the property of 20th Century Fox, now owned (like Marvel) by Disney in terms of big-screen rights – into the MCU. And yet what was most striking about this early glimpse was the prospect that Levy and Reynolds may not spend much time worrying about making the chimichanga-munching antihero “work” in this new universe at all.
