Deadpool is definitely the best of the entire slate of X-Men films we’ve seen to date, followed closely by X2 and The Wolverine. Those are stone cold facts and you can’t dispute them. But it turns out that part of Deadpool’s greatness is owed in part to Marvel Studios and a creative trade with Fox. It also might be the first sign that Marvel and Fox are ready to play fair over the X-Men on the big screen, along with that Inhumans TV show.
As it turns out, Deadpool and Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 worked out a character trade between a major part of James Gunn’s sequel and a very fun part of Ryan Reynold’s foul-mouthed adventure. Reynolds revealed as much at a special screening of Deadpool in LA according to The Playlist:
As for the two X-Men who do appear in “Deadpool,” metal behemoth Colossus was chosen for fairly conventional narrative reasons (“he was the perfect foil,” Wernick stated), while the little-known Negasonic Teenage Warhead (or NTW) was picked for no other reason than that incredible moniker, itself taken from a song by the stoner-rock band Monster Magnet. “We were looking down the list of the 400 [‘X-Men’] characters that Fox owns, and NTW jumped out and we were like, ‘yes,’ ” said Wernick. ” ‘I don’t care what her powers are. She’s gonna be in the movie.’ ”
Owing to their superficial reasons for adding Negasonic Teenage Warhead to the “Deadpool” cast in the first place, Reese and Wernick elected to eschew essentially everything but the character’s name in the film script, even imbuing her with an entirely different set of powers (in the comics, she is psychic as opposed to literally explosive). For that, Fox was forced to get the okay from Marvel Studios, initiating a superhero swap between the studios whose results will next be seen in James Gunn‘s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.” “Kurt Russell [‘s Ego the Living Planet] in the new ‘Guardians’ movie was the character that Fox swapped with Marvel to [change] Negasonic Teenage Warhead powers,” explained Wernick.
James Gunn went ahead and confirmed as much on Twitter, even noting that he had no backup plan if he didn’t get Ego The Living Planet.
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/798282197702569985
The confusing part for me is how Fox got their hands on Ego The Living Planet in the first place. I assume it was with the Fantastic Four business — which is a waste since we’d never see that at the rate they’re taking those films to the places the comics went — but Ego got his start in Thor according to the Wiki on the character. Totally worth the deal either way. Negasonic Teenage Warhead is a fine name for a character and the version from the film was welcome — and better than Cannonball.
If anything, this just shows how depressing the state of Fantastic Four is and how Guardians of the Galaxy is picking up that slack. There’s some great science fiction action at work in both, but only one shows that at the movies. It also shows that Deadpool is cool, but you knew that.
(Via The Playlist)
