DUBAI: Canadian filmmaker Shawn Levy says he was thrilled to helm Marvel’s first R-rated superhero outing — “Deadpool & Wolverine” — which lands in cinemas July 25.
“I was thrilled by Marvel’s lack of boundaries,” Levy tells Arab News. “Clearly (they) understood that to make a ‘Deadpool’ film that’s satisfying, it needed to be creatively and audaciously free. So, we were given very few limits. I think there was one joke in the entire movie that was requested to be changed.”
“Deadpool & Wolverine” imports both Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and the newly resurrected Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) from 21st Century Fox and into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, currently reeling from a series of recent flops. In fact, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is the only cinematic release scheduled from the MCU this year.
The film picks up six years after the events of ”Deadpool 2.” Wade Wilson has left his time as the mercenary Deadpool behind him, until the Time Variance Authority pulls him into a new mission. With his home universe facing an existential threat, Wilson reluctantly teams up with an even-more-reluctant Wolverine on a mission that, according to the blurb, “will change the history of the MCU.”
Levy, who has previously worked with both Jackman (on 2011’s “Real Steel”) and Reynolds (on 2021’s “Free Guy” and the following year’s “The Adam Project”), says he has been a fan of the ‘Deadpool’ franchise since the first film came out in 2016.
“I remember watching (the first) ‘Deadpool,’ and I was stunned because it redefined the superhero genre and it was also one of the most relentlessly funny and creative movies I’ve ever seen. It still is. I’ve watched it seven or eight times. So, I really came to this as a fan,” he says.
“(When the opportunity came to direct this film), I realized: ‘I have the privilege to tell the first Deadpool-Wolverine story.’ I also thought: ‘Oh, I can not only honor these characters, I can also tell a story about friendship and about brotherhood that is as poignant as it is funny.’ And that felt like a great opportunity.
“I came into this with a keen awareness of what preceded me,” he continues. “And I’m aware of the passionate love for this world and these characters around the world. So, I was humbled. I was momentarily daunted. But then I did a mental trick with myself where I focused on the opportunity, an opportunity to play in a sandbox that is familiar to the world, where the tropes and conventions and the encyclopedic possibilities were huge. And once I started focusing on the opportunity of stepping in, I wasn’t intimidated by it. I was excited by it.”
Levy says there are two things he’s most excited about audiences discovering. “The first is: In a movie with Deadpool and Wolverine, we all know there’s going to be sick fights and there’s going to be a lot of them, and I think there’s a delightful surprise in the mandate we gave ourselves making this movie, which was that there should be an evolution to the action. It’s got a cinematic language, in that each action sequence has its own visual vocabulary. I think that’s going to be a delightful surprise.
“But maybe the most subversive surprise of ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ is the extent to which it is emotional,” he continues. “It is — especially in its second half — a very poignant film about friendship and about redemption.”
