When it was first announced that Deadpool 3 was an upcoming Marvel Studios movie, the first question everybody asked was “Would Deadpool still be Deadpool under Disney?” The studio insisted time and again that the new movie would still be rated R and would be just as much a Deadpool movie as fans wanted. And with Deadpool & Wolverine, we got exactly that. This is not to say there weren’t jokes that Disney wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
Deadpool & Wolverine makes several jokes at the expense of the MCU and Disney. Kevin Feige is called out by name. They joked about Marvel movies that never happened. Even the things Disney asked Deadpool not to joke about were joked about. And yet, apparently, Disney had no issues with any of it. Director Shawn Levy tells EW that there was only one line in the entire movie that they were asked to change. They did so, and Levy says we’ll never learn what the original joke was. He explained…
Well, the general rule is to never punch down and to only take the piss out of people who can take it. Certainly, when it was about Hugh in a meta way, Hugh was always the first to laugh uproariously. There was only one line in the entire movie that we were asked to change. We have made a pact, Ryan and I, to go to our grave with that line.
Ryan Reynolds himself talked about the joke in question with i09. He insisted that they were never told to change the joke, simply asked to do so. The unnamed Disney executive who made the request was clear that they would let the original joke go, but they would appreciate the change. In the end, Reynolds decided to go ahead and make the change.
While we don’t know what the original joke was, we can guess that it had something to do with Ryan Reynolds’ ass, as we do know what joke replaced it. It was a joke involving Pinnochio doing something dirty. Levy continued…
But I will say that it was replaced with an equally dirty line of dialogue about Pinocchio shoving his face up Deadpool's ass and starting to lie like crazy. I was like, 'Ryan, that's your replacement line in response to, 'Can we clean it up?' That's Ryan Reynolds for you, audacious to the very edge.
If Disney’s Pinnochio sodomizing Deadpool is the joke that was better in the eyes of the executive, it makes one wonder just what the hell was the original joke. We don’t even really know what the problem with the joke was. Was it even more vulgar? Did it make a Marvel or Disney reference that was worse than the others? Levy and Reynolds say we’ll never know, and considering we still don’t know for sure who leaked the original Deadpool test footage, there’s no reason to believe this word will ever be broken.
