While we’ve seen R-rated comic book movies before, the reality is director Tim Miller’s Deadpool should offer up material unlike anything we’ve seen. This is largely because of a very important combination: a psychotic titular character with a rapid healing factor, and the project being made with a hard-R-rating in mind. As such, you can expect the movie to be quite bloody and violent – and from star Ryan Reynolds’ description, it probably won’t be for the squeamish.
During San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, I had the fantastic opportunity to sit down with Reynolds, in addition to his Deadpool co-stars T.J. Miller, Morena Baccarin, and Brianna Hildebrand, and it was during our chat that we touched on the specific violence that the movie will feature. Asking about the aforementioned combination, I queried just how torn up the Merc With The Mouth would get in the film, and Reynolds promised a lot. He said,
He gets pretty fucked up. I mean, I get shot in places that you don’t usually see people get shot in movies. He does thankfully have a rapid healing factor, and a very long digestive track.
In the comics, Deadpool is regularly sacrificing his own body in battles against enemies – knowing that he will always heal – and the fact that the movie is rated R means that the production could adapt this in full-on realistic fashion.
On beyond just the pain that Deadpool can take and the violence he can deliver, however, Reynolds also noted that the R-rating really opened up every aspect of what’s great about the character – expressing that a whole universe is opened up without rating restrictions. He explained,
You have unlimited possibility when you’re rated R. You have an unlimited world at your disposal, but you couple that with Deadpool’s meta-sensibility and his ability to break the fourth wall and self-awareness and the sarcasm and, honestly, we felt like pigs in shit. It was truly amazing.
The production was given a good amount of freedom from the studio because, as Ryan Reynolds has admitted, the budget was kept rather low – but having seen the trailer that was shown at San Diego Comic-Con, I can tell you that the movie looks far from low-rent. It just looks action-packed, violent, and great.
Deadpool, which also stars Gina Carano, Ed Skrien, Andre Tricoteux, and Leslie Uggams in addition to the actors mentioned above, tells the story of an ex-special forces soldier named Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), who finds himself struck with terminal cancer and limited options. In order to try and survive, he agrees to enter into an experimental program to turn him into a superhero… but this doesn’t go exactly as planned. Instead, his body winds up covered in hideous scars, and a gifted rapid healing factor leaves him totally and utterly insane. The film wrapped up production earlier this year, and is on track to be released on February 12, 2016.
