Tim Miller’s Deadpool movie is so good and so true to the character, it’s hopefully wiped out most memories you had about his first incarnation as a gooey ninja who couldn’t speak at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Now the director of that film, Gavin Hood, has explained why his version was so bad and the new one so good — beyond the fact that they took a character called “The Merc With the Mouth” and SEWED HIS MOUTH SHUT TAKING AWAY HIS NUMBER ONE CHARACTERISTIC.
Speaking to Cinemablend, Hood said the Hollywood system wasn’t ready for the real Deadpool back in 2009.
I think the character works so well now, because the character is allowed to be who the character really is, unencumbered by, you know, PG-13 requirements and a great deal of marketing debate….It was just a little bit more below the radar initially. And more credit to the filmmakers and to Ryan, that they took control of their character and got on and let Ryan do the film. Deadpool is a motor mouth, foul mouth character, and it’s very difficult with these big movies to, when you have to work within certain parameters that are set by, by [studio heads].
But wait, there’s more! Hood says Deadpool was kind of thrown into his movie without much thought, and the fact the script was being produced during the writer’s strike meant they couldn’t fix it or build him up to his potential.
You know, when he did the little cameo bit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it was exactly what we’ve been talking about. It was the studio attempting to plug in a few characters and test the waters. But now he gets to make his own movie and he did it with great courage and with the full force of his personality, so he deserves every success. I think he’s done really well, and I think it’s fantastic that they had the courage to just go ahead and make the film. They had to make it R rated, but can you imagine if they were trying for PG-13? I just don’t think it would have worked. Which is not to say that other films shouldn’t be PG-13. Of course you want that huge audience. But you’ve got to be very careful that you’re not torturing the material to fit a particular marketing strategy, and that’s what they didn’t do with Deadpool. They just made the film the way it needed to be made, I think.
Hear hear. And now we’ll get much more Deadpool, totally unfiltered, the way even the director of X-Men Origins: Wolverine thinks he should have been presented — the sequel is currently in the works.