Ryan Reynolds is best known as the foul-mouthed superhero Deadpool, but now he's in theaters voicing a cute and cuddly little Pokemon who just happens to sound a lot like Deadpool. I certainly half expected little Pikachu to drop an F-bomb randomly in the middle of the new Pokemon movie just because he was voiced by Reynolds, and it turns out that sort of happened.
CinemaBlend had a chance to sit down with Ryan Reynolds and ask him if he thought about how fun it would be to just go ahead and make Detective Pikachu an R-rated movie, and Reynolds let our own Jeff McComb know that he actually recorded a lot of dialogue that would have been unsuitable for the PG-13 version of the film. According to Reynolds...
Have I considered it? Are you kidding me? I think there's one that they could cut. Yeah, not hard R, but there's some stuff in there. Because you just sort of want to be free. Sometimes you have to get it out. You have to say the worst thing that's on your mind just so it goes away and then you can focus on the stuff that can actually be in the movie. So yeah, there's a version out there that will never see the light of day.
One can only imagine just how much fun a foul-mouthed Pikachu would have been. It certainly wouldn't have worked for a lot of people, but the concept just sounds hilarious from the outset. If Reynolds really did let loose with the language on a regular basis as a way of clearing out his head, then there probably is enough content to create an R-rated version of the film.
Unfortunately, Ryan Reynolds wasn't able to give us many examples of exactly the sort of thing that he said when he cut loose. Also, if you're expecting to see an R-rated Blu-ray at some point, probably don't. While Reynolds may have recorded some filthy dialogue, the animators certainly have no plans to turn those into actual scenes. As Reynolds tells us...
There was some very sweary hyphenates. I remember that but otherwise no. They don't even animate that, they're just like 'ok that goes right in that little garbage can shaped icon on the computer and that's it.'
Since voice acting is usually all done before any animation is begun, there's traditionally a lot of freedom given to voice actors to try different things in order to see what works best. Reynolds isn't the first to use that freedom to go blue. You have to believe there are outtakes of Robin Williams and Don Rickles that Disney will never let us hear.
While we'll never be blessed by a swearing Pikachu, the actual Detective Pikachu movie that we got is pretty funny even without the adult language. It's in theaters now. To Hear Ryan Reynods' complete comments to CinemaBlend, including one joke that he didn't think would make it into the movie, but did, check out the video below.
