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What Can You Get for 47 Dollars and a Bag of Skittles?

On Monday, April 11, 2016, the good folks at Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment were kind enough to invite a select few of us to a special global media event at the ever-so posh Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, California to herald the video release of one of its biggest box office successes, Deadpool on May 10. And I was lucky enough to attend. An X-Menspin-off comic book superhero movie starring Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, TJ Miller, and Ed Skrein, Deadpool broke box office records and currently holds the distinction of being the highest grossing R rated film of all time, pulling in a whopping $757.3 million worldwide. Not too shabby.

The titular character of Deadpool, played with irrepressible verve and style by Ryan Reynolds, is a popular costumed hero from the Marvel Comics canon and even though Disney currently owns Marvel, Twentieth Century Fox currently owns the movie rights to the X-Men and all of its periphery characters, Deadpool being one of them. And that’s probably a good thing because it’s highly unlikely that Disney would have made Deadpool in quite the same style and manner that Fox has. In fact, I’d bet the house on that.

Deadpool essentially takes the classic “Hollywood Style” superhero movie formula and bitch slaps it into next Tuesday, and even that is putting it mildly. Deadpool is the ultimate anti-hero hell bent on revenge in a film that’s “chock full of profanity, violence, sex and nudity.” The official press release plot synopsis from Fox states that “Deadpool is the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.” Doubtless this may have come as something of a shock to the unsuspecting parents who brought their kids to the theater thinking they were going to be seeing Spider-man.”

For the special press event at the Peninsula Hotel, check-in was at 9:00 am, followed by a light buffet of bagels and pastries with coffee, soda, orange juice and plenty of bottled water. After which, we entered the Verandah Room and sat around large banquet tables arranged in front of a row of empty classic-style director chairs flanked by two large Deadpool promotional posters and a large TV screen.

The Q&A, Hollywood Style
At around 9:30, Mary Daily, president and CMO of worldwide marketing for Fox Home Entertainment welcomed us and introduced the special panel of guests; actors Ryan Reynolds and Ed Skrein, director Tim Miller, screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and producer Simon Kinberg. Moderating the panel Q&A was none other than famed hip-hop trio Salt-N-Pepa with DJ Spinderella. That may sound ludicrous but trust me, it worked.

The hour-long panel Q&A session was fun and informative and interspersed with sneak peeks at some of the supplemental material to be included on the forthcoming Blu-ray release of Deadpool but there were some unfortunate technical snafus that prevented the slated clips from coinciding with their respective intros. Ryan Reynolds blamed his mother. You had to be there. A topic discussed during the panel was Deadpool’s overwhelming box office success despite having a significantly modest budget that Tim Miller and Simon Kinberg only half-jokingly referred to as “forty-seven dollars and a bag of Skittles.”

When the Q&A was opened up to those of us in attendance, I couldn’t resist asking why Deadpool had not been rendered cinematically for 3D, since the film seems to be tailor-made for the format. Tim Miller fielded the question and gave a number of reasons that included time constraints, budgetary limitations, and a personal preference for 2D imagery in films. Other panelists chimed in by citing those cumbersome 3D glasses and how they ultimately did very little to enhance the cinematic experience. So much for 3D.

Not long after the panel wrapped up and Ryan Reynolds took his leave, we were escorted in small groups to a special round table discussion and Q&A with screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The obvious topic on all of our minds was the inevitable sequel to come and who would be involved. But since Twentieth Century Fox had not officially announced any plans for a sequel at that time, the subject was considered taboo and the writers had to be very clever and cagey about how they answered certain questions. They spoke of their deliberate intention of writing Deadpool for an R rating and not making him your typical superhero. They also expressed their elation and surprise at the film’s success and elaborated that now that the “origin story” was out of the way, it frees up the plot to go in any number of directions. Again, the subject returned to the inevitable sequel and Reese and Wernick could only speak in “hypothetical” terms; i.e. “If such a project were to exist, it sure would be daunting!” and “If we were to be involved in writing a potential sequel, we would want to further the storyline by including these characters and these plot devices. Nod, nod, wink, wink.” In closing, they spoke of the “Deadpool Effect”, in how a bevy of other copy-cat superhero movies will no doubt try to replicate Deadpool’s unconventional but winning formula and ultimately change the genre itself for better or worse.

After that, we broke for a buffet lunch prepared for us by our gracious hosts and of course, chimichangas, a regular staple of the Deadpool diet, were featured. Having only had a light breakfast, I went at it and devoured three chimichangas along with some chicken tenders and potato cakes, all washed down with a Coca-Cola. And in that room full of other media journalists, some of whom had flown in from other parts of the globe, we ate and schmoozed amongst ourselves.

One on One with Ajax
Then came the part I wasn’t prepared for. The final stage of the Deadpool press event involved each of us getting our own five minute one-on-one interview session with Ed Skrein in one room and Tim Miller and Simon Kinberg in another. Upon learning this, I suddenly became very nervous… and gassy. In a panic, I struggled to write down some questions that would hopefully come off as intelligent and well thought out and not the type of queries they’d already answered a million times before. And I learned in that narrow pocket of time that my creativity skills do not flourish well under pressure. I didn’t come up with much. And since the topic of the Deadpool sequel was officially “off limits” that narrowed the field considerably.

When my turn came, I was ushered into a room with tight enclosures with two director chairs facing each other and digital video cameras pointed at each one. In one chair sat actor Ed Skrein, the other was empty and waiting for me to park my tuches on it. I shook Skrein’s hand and thanked him for hanging around all day to talk to us. His pleasure, he replied. Skrein plays Deadpool’s arch-nemesis Ajax, a mutant and Weapon X agent with hyper-enhanced combat abilities and total immunity to pain. Ajax is also the one chiefly responsible for making Deadpool who he is and Skrein plays the part to the hilt.

I slated my name into the camera and we got started. During the Q&A panel, Skrein had mentioned a pre-established enthusiasm for comic books and I took my lead from that, hoping that Skrein’s answers would be lengthy and occupy most of the allotted time we had, thereby getting me off the hook somewhat. I asked him how much foreknowledge he had of Deadpool and its periphery characters prior to being cast. He replied that was aware of the popular comic book hero called Deadpool but was unfamiliar with the character of Ajax. I followed up by asking him if his research into his character involved reading a giant stack of comics and graphic novels, to which he cheerfully answered in the affirmative.

Tick-tock, tick-tock…

Trying to keep the focus on the film’s production, since there was little else to talk about, I feebly continued with questions like, “How much of the verbal banter between you and Reynolds was actually scripted?”, inwardly grimacing at my bounteous banality. Skrein was always kind and gracious in his replies but his answers seemed to have that “pre-packaged” quality about them, as if my questions were the sort that he had fielded about a million times before. And let me tell you, five minutes may not seem like a long time but in that situation, it was interminable. And my only thought through all of it was, “Dear God, please don’t let me fart.”

Mercifully, my five minutes with Skrein passed without incident… or flatulence. I shook his hand and thanked him again and was then led back out into the hallway to await my turn with Tim Miller and Simon Kinberg. I had an easier time with them. Upon entering the room, I shook both of their hands and once I was comfortably seated, I slated my name again to the camera and we began.

I asked the pair if the project ever evolved to a level even beyond their expectations from what was on the printed page to what ultimately ended up on the screen. Miller answered, “Oh, every day.” He elaborated further that the creative team from the writers to the actors to himself brought fresh new ideas on such a continual and enthusiastic basis that it elevated the film to a level that even he wasn’t prepared for. His answer coincidentally helped to further answer the question I had earlier posed to Ed Skrein about his and Reynold’s unscripted banter, that a large portion of the best inside jokes and puns were either improvised on the set or added later in post-production. Miller further enumerated the immeasurable advantages of having your central protagonist wear a mask that completely conceals his face. Last minute dialogue changes can be looped in post and no one would ever be the wiser.

I then remarked on how the Fox executives must have watched an early test screening of the film and fretted about how in the hell they were going to market it. Kinberg responded that the studio execs had read the script and gave it their blessing and pretty much gave them carte blanche in how they went about making it, just so long as they stayed within budget. Anything after that was good by them. “That must have been liberating.” I told them. I summarized by noting that the film’s ultimate appeal lied not in the excessive profanity or the egregious violence but in its innate ability to peel back that “fourth wall” and poke a lot of fun at itself in a way that no other superhero film has done yet or probably ever will. Audiences typically love those moments when the central character looks directly into the camera and addresses them as if they were in on the joke. Miller and Kinberg agreed that Deadpool’s trademark self-effacing humor completely demolishes that fourth wall and gleefully exposes the wizard behind the curtain while flipping him off at the same time. To quote Deadpool himself in a classic scene, “A fourth wall break within a fourth wall break?? That’s like… sixteen walls!” You let me know when Wolverine or Captain America does that.

Predictably, only a week after that special press event in Beverly Hills, Twentieth Century Fox officially announced Deadpool 2, with Ryan Reynolds, director Tim Miller, and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick all returning. Wow, what a complete surprise. None of us in the press corps saw that coming. But I have to say that all in all, it was an absolute thrill to have been a part of this. I personally would like to thank the folks at Fox Home Entertainment for throwing one hell of a shindig, and a special shout out to God’s perfect idiot, the British villain, the real heroes here, the asshat and the overpaid tool for making it so much fun. The only thing that could have possibly made the event any cooler would have been a live performance of “Shoop” by Salt-N-Pepa!

We have yet to fully calculate the “Deadpool Effect” but we already know this much; it’s a genre breaking, trendsetting comic book action film that will inevitably influence all other comic book movies to come, whether the imitators choose to acknowledge it or not. It’s currently the highest grossing R rated film of all time; a distinction not likely to change any time soon. It is also arguably the coolest superhero movie yet made. Not bad for forty-seven dollars and a bag of Skittles.

Corey has been writing reviews for Sound & Vision (and before that Home Theater) for almost ten years. He regularly attends movie and comic conventions and avidly follows the cinematic adaptations of many sci-fi and comic book characters.