By Chris Snellgrove | Published
The MCU has suffered in recent years, but one bright spot has been Deadpool and Wolverinea critical and commercial success that grossed over $1.3 billion at the box office. Now, there are strong rumors that Ryan Reynolds is working on a future film in which his famous bad-mouthed mercenary teams up with the X-Men.
While some fans are excited about this idea, the truth is that such a team-up would ruin the introduction of the X-Men into the MCU, as the inclusion of Deadpool kills any potential for these new characters to develop.
Deadpool doesn’t work or play well with others
That’s because the Deadpool movies revolve around the main character: he steals every scene, speaks directly to the camera, and generally comes off as a tryhard meme manifested. This works well for his solo films, of course, because everyone is there to see the main character. But it doesn’t work for an ensemble film because, as we see in every Deadpool movie, our main character can’t let the X-Men or anyone else say a word before interrupting with another witty zinger.
It works well when the zingers are funny, and there’s certainly a thrill in seeing Deadpool constantly roasting goody-two-shoes like Colossus. But be honest: Do you really think Colossus or anyone else in Deadpool’s orbit actually had character development in these films? The answer is “no” because the Deadpool films have no real characters; instead, everyone on screen is a living prop meant to help our merry mercenary deliver his next crazy CCC punchline.
Strange X-Pectations
Therefore, Deadpool’s appearance in a future X-Men movie would be disastrous as Marvel tries to make these mutants perfect for their first on-screen appearance. The bar is already very high because most of the original X-Men films are very good, and shows like X-Men ’97 showed us how well these mutants work on screen when written well. Now, it’s no exaggeration to say that if the first X-Men MCU movie is going to succeed, it’s going to have to be bigger and better than anything we’ve seen before (movie, series, or comic).
Let’s be optimistic and assume that the first film is a smash hit; if that’s the case, the introduction of Deadpool in the sequel would threaten to undo everything the first X-Men movie built. No matter how good the characters and characterization were, Deadpool would ruin everything by turning every scene into another joke. Plus, it’s incredibly difficult for a new cast to shine when one of the most popular Marvel characters constantly hogs the spotlight.
The AARP superhero
The irony here is that having Deadpool appear in a much later X-Men movie could work because our new mutants will be well established, making it harder for Ryan Reynolds to steal everyone’s spotlight every time he’s on screen. But we don’t even know when the first X-Men movie will come out, and Reynolds is already 50 years old. By the time the MCU X-Men franchise is ready for Deadpool (roughly half a decade after the film’s first premieres), the actor will officially be too old to convincingly portray a young, acrobatic superhero.
Marvel faces a dilemma that even TVA couldn’t help solve: if they cast Deadpool in the first X-Men sequel, they could turn a serious profit in the short term (remember, Deadpool and Wolverine earned more than $1.3 billion at the box office). But it would effectively destroy any momentum the first film built, bringing to its knees the one new franchise Marvel is counting on to save itself. And if they wait until the X-Men are more established, Reynolds will be so old that he’ll have to be recast, destroying the potential benefits of putting Deadpool in a movie.
Marvel’s Minimum Effort
As funny and popular as Deadpool is, he simply needs to stay out of the MCU X-Men films for the foreseeable future. It’s the only way these films can succeed on their own merits and not rely on stunts that will ultimately destroy the franchise. And unless its writers make a “maximum effort” to tell an original story instead of just adding a bankable star and hoping for the best, the MCU itself is going to become this mercenary’s latest victim.
