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This article is nothing but non-stop Deadpool & Wolverine spoilers!
A key appeal to Marvel movies remains their cameos, as anyone who recognizes Stan Lee’s million-dollar smile will tell you. But Deadpool & Wolverine takes it to another level, as one would expect for Wade Wilson’s first entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper. Deadpool doesn’t just drag Wolverine into the fray with him for this one. No, he is bringing the whole Fox X-Men universe along for the ride, or at least as many of the B-listers and off-shoots from thereabouts that only the most hardcore of nerds or terminally online will remember.
Deadpool & Wolverine has room for MCU mainstays too. Wunmi Mosaku reprises her role as TVA agent B-15 from Loki; the Avengers show up on monitors (and in clips from older movies); and most of Deadpool’s supporting cast has a at least few scenes, including Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, and Rob Delaney as Peter. However, Wade and Logan’s multiversal adventure is ultimately about bringing back some outrageously deep cuts from the dandruff of 2000s superhero cinema and abandoned pop culture cul-de-sacs. And in case you missed it or need a little context for the most obscure of callbacks, here are the cameos that left our mouths gaping on the floor…
Chris Evans’ Hot MCU Return as Johnny Storm
Deadpool and Wolverine get a bit of early hope in the Void when they encounter a hooded man with a calm demeanor and a commanding voice. This mysterious wise man immediately promises to be an Oasis in the desert. The figure then removes the hood to reveal the face of Chris Evans, the man who brought Captain America to life. We see bits of a blue costume beneath his rags, which makes us believe that we’re about to see a variant of good ol’ Cap, which might account for his dark brown hair and more pronounced New York accent.
When a group of baddies beset the heroes, Evans tells everyone to stand back, and Deadpool starts fanboying so hard. He’s about to say his famous phrase! Yes, he is, Wade. Evans tilts his head back and shouts, “Flame On!” Yep, Evans is reprising a classic role, but it’s not as Steve Rogers. This is Johnny Storm, one-quarter of the Fantastic Four.
Now remembered as little more than a piece of barroom trivia, Evans’ introduction to superhero cinema was the two 20th Century Fox produced Fantastic Four movies directed like a sitcom (and with sitcom-like cinematography) by Barbershop’s Tim Story in the mid-2000s. But Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) failed on almost every other level. They were flat, uninspiring movies with terrible performances by Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, and Julian McMahon as Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, and Doctor Doom, respectively.
Along with Michael Chiklis as the Thing, Evans was one of the few bright spots of those movies. He played Johnny as an X-Games loving party dude, whose fire powers kicked in while snowboarding with the future star of pre-movie quiz shows, Maria Menounos. Apropos of someone trapped in the Void for years, Johnny’s easy-going attitude has become anger, which may or may not account for the angry rant that results in his grisly death.
Elektra, The Woman Without Daredevil
After escaping from the clutches of Cassandra Nova, Deadpool and Wolverine search for a group of resistance fighters who knew Johnny Storm. But it’s the fighters who find them. Well, one of them, anyway. They are brought to a safe house by Elektra, the Greek ninja assassin played by the non-Greek, non-ninja, non-assassin Jennifer Garner. Somehow, against all good sense, Garner spun her forgettable performance in the dire 2003 movie Daredevil (2003) into an even more forgettable and more dire solo film, Elektra (2003).
In this entry, she’s back in a version of the black leather with oh, so early 2000s midriff she wore in the 2003 film. She also is still acting more like a hero than the comics assassin/antihero. Some fans might roll their eyes at the return of Elektra, but she does get in one delicious gag.
While discussing with Wade and Logan other of their Void freedom fighters who apparently died off-screen, she mentions that her Daredevil (the Ben Affleck version) was executed while trying to resist Casandra Nova. Never one to miss a setup, Reynolds’ Deadpool cries something along the lines of “we will avenge Daredevil!” “It’s fine,” Elektra shrugs without missing a beat. Given how this particular Daredevil and Elektra’s love story ended off-screen, that opportunity for a winking dig from the ex-Mrs. Affleck drew some knowing cackles in the audience.
Wesley Snipes’ Blade Unsheathed
Leaks had revealed Garner’s role several months ago, so Elektra’s appearance wasn’t a huge surprise. Nor was the appearance of X-23, thanks to the trailer that spoiled Dafne Keen’s appearance just a week before the movie’s release (more on that in a moment). The other two members of the resistance, however, were huge shockers…
The first is Wesley Snipes as an older, but still awesome, Blade. Kevin Feige, of course, has been trying to get a Blade movie off the ground ever since Mahershala Ali used his Oscar clout to call for a new Daywalker adventure. While we still wait for that much delayed production, it was great to see Snipes put the wraparound shades back on. Snipes’ Blade might have a touch of stylish white in his goatee these days, but his charisma is still intact, managing to avoid sounding as exhausted as Michael Keaton did in The Flash when Snipes re-delivers this money line: “Looks like some motherfuckers are still trying to ice skate uphill.”
Snipes even plays along when Deadpool makes a crack about the famously troubled production of his final outing as the Daywalker, Blade: Trinity from 2004. In another half-forgotten piece of superhero movie trivia, before playing Deadpool or Green Lantern, Reynolds starred as vampire hunter Hannibal King in that Blade threequel. Snipes was reportedly quite unhappy with the new wisecracking sidekick (as well as Jessica Biel as Hannibal’s sister), and had an allegedly contentious relationship on set with writer-director David Goyer. (NOTE: Snipes denies these claims).
Whatever the truth, Deadpool & Wolverine invites some inside baseball laughter when Blade mutters “I don’t him” about Deadpool, to which Wade sighs, “You never did.”
Channing Tatum Finally Wins a Hand as Gambit
The final member of the resistance has an equally long Hollywood backstory. The X-Man Gambit completes the team, but he’s not played by Taylor Kitsch, who portrayed the Ragin’ Cajun in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Rather he’s played by Channing Tatum in full, comics accurate gear, complete with head sock.
Since his debut in the early 1990s, Gambit has been one of the most popular mutants, so it makes sense that Fox would want to give him a solo film. Studio heads wanted Tatum from the start, who was an up-and-coming leading man back in the late 2000s. They went with Kitsch, also then a popular leading man choice back then, only because Tatum’s commitments to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra prevented him from participating in X-Men Origins.
But between Kitsch’s poorly received take and Tatum’s subsequent explosion in popularity, the studio went back to the latter when the Gambit movie went into pre-production. And despite Tatum’s enthusiastic participation, pre-production was as far as it went. The Gambit solo film cycled through Rupert Wyatt, Doug Liman, and Gore Verbinski as potential directors, went through Léa Seydoux and Lizzie Caplan as potential female leads, and went through scripts written by numerous writers and genre approaches. Tatum kept talking up the movie in the press and online, all the way until Disney purchased Fox and put Gambit out of its misery.
Thus, Tatum plays Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine as not a has-been, but rather as a never-was. To be sure, a lot of Tatum’s Gambit is played for laughs, from the ridiculous looking outfit to his indecipherable Cajun patois. But Tatum also manages hints of sadness in his performance, making the loss of a proper Gambit movie feel all the more disappointing. Still, as he jokes he finally will get his day and uses Gambit’s kinetic abilities better than Kitsch ever did in his single fight sequence.
Dafne Keen’s Laura and Hugh Jackman’s Logan Finally Get a Happy Ending
As previously mentioned, trailers gave away that Dafne Keen would reprise her role as Laura in Deadpool & Wolverine. What wasn’t known is that she’d actually get a relatively significant supporting role. It is never made clear why exactly Wolverine’s half-cloned daughter from Logan ended up in the Void since she is also from the same timeline as our favorite Deadpool (which means her world still exists), but it ultimately doesn’t matter.
The point is the movie finds a way to give Keen and Jackman a handful of scenes together again. The first one, which is teased in the trailer, is X-23 giving the movie’s Wolverine a pep talk. It is to Laura who Logan confides to that “I’m no hero” and his larger sob story. To be clear, this isn’t the Wolverine who bonded with Laura and accepted her as his child in James Mangold’s 2017 tearjerker. However, the new Wolverine seems to step into that role pretty quickly. As with Logan, Laura telling the berserker “you always were the wrong guy… until you weren’t,” guilts him into doing the right thing.
Logan shows up for the final battle where Laura still wears those endearingly silly sunglasses she got as a child in Logan (we could have used her insulting her enemies in Spanish more as well). Yet unlike the rest of the Fox Resistance Force, Laura comes back later in the movie too when at the end she and Logan are invited friends at Deadpool’s dinner party. It’s the ending we all wanted in Logan, but which was impossible: Wolverine feeling himself to be at home and peace with a family. At last, he is.
Wolverine Madness… with Henry Cavill?!
With the Wolverine of his timeline dead, our Deadpool needs to go across the multiverse to find another Canucklehead who’ll happily change places with the six feet under Logan. And to the surprise of no one, the multiverse sequence is an excuse for in-jokes and deep comic lore. Most of these various Wolverines reference specific storylines and issues from the comic books. The black-clad, one-handed Wolverine is from the alternate reality Age of Apocalypse storyline from the 1990s. The suave Wolverine in a white suit is “Patch,” the secret identity that Logan takes when doing undercover work. There’s even a more cowboy-esque version of Old Man Logan, to match the comics that inspired the story.
The Wolverine on a cross recreates the famous cover to Uncanny X-Men #251, while the brown-costume Wolverine in the snow references 1987’s Incredible Hulk #340. In doing so, Deadpool & Wolverine gets in a quick appearance of the Hulk. It will have to do for those still dreaming of a Hulk vs. Wolverine movie. Deadpool & Wolverine, meanwhile, even winks at the fact that the tall, handsome, largely hairless Hugh Jackman plays a short, hairy character from the comics with a scene with Jackman digitally shrunk and covered with body hair.
For all of their variety, all of these Wolverines are played by Hugh Jackman. Save for one, who turns around to reveal himself to be Henry Cavill, the erstwhile DC Extended Universe mainstay. Deadpool geeks out at the sight of Cavillrine, urging him to come to the MCU and promising that he’ll be treated better than he was “across the street.” Deadpool’s wooing references not just the terrible scripts that Cavill had to work with, forcing him to play a brooding Superman who doesn’t like to help people, but also the fiasco that involved the Rock trying to make Black Adam into an A-lister (and yes, if you’re wondering, Deadpool does make a “the balance of power in the universe is about to change” joke, just not in this scene). Cavillrine kicks Deadpool aside, leaving hope that Cavill can get a better role in the MCU—Brian Braddock, perhaps?
The Familiar Voice (and Wife?) of the Deadpool Corps
As much fun as the many Wolverines are, the film is called Deadpool & Wolverine, and so of course Wade needs to get into the variant fun. And boy howdy, does he ever!
Wade and Logan cross blades against an entire Deadpool Corps, a host of variants from across the Multiverse. In addition to a Samurai Deadpool, a Baby Deadpool, or Severed Zombie Head Deadpool, the most important Variants have been spoiled already. We’ve seen an unmasked Ryan Reynolds playing a peaceful and very Canadian Nice Deadpool. We’ve also glimpsed the ugly little mutt Dogpool, aka Mary Puppies. We’ve seen the Gunslinger, the Deadpool Kid, and we’ve seen the shapely Lady Deadpool.
That last one has resulted in a lot of online speculation. Who is playing Lady Deadpool: is it Ryan Reynolds in a mask? Is it Reynolds’ Welcome to Wrexham co-star Rob McElhenney, rumored to have a cameo in the movie (full disclosure: this writer did not find Rob McElhenney in the film)? Is it Taylor Swift, long speculated to play the X-Man Dazzler?
It turns out that the internet guessed right when they immediately speculated that was Blake Lively in a Deadpool suit. While we were not entirely sure just based on her voice, if you stay until the ending credits, you will see in the cast listings that Reynolds’ Green Lantern co-star and also real-life wife, Blake Lively, is the Lady Merc with a Mouth.
The B-List X-Baddies
Speaking of secret cast list problems, there are the many minor cameos.
As all the trailers showed, the most consistent antagonist is Cassandra Nova, the evil twin sister of Charles Xavier who is played by Emma Corrin. Her right-hand man is Pyro, the sympathetic evil mutant from X2 who, as actor Aaron Stanford told Den of Geek, has become a full-on villain. As the trailers spoiled, Tyler Mane returns as Sabertooth (identified as Logan’s “brother” in the movie, which isn’t 100 percent true) and Ray Park is back as Toad. Those are roles neither have played since they very first X-Men movie in 2000.
The trailers hyped a lot though, and not all of them were delivered upon, including a big throwdown between Sabertooth and Wolverine. Another aspect the trailers teased seemed to be a lot of returning bad guys in Nova’s army. We just assumed that Kelly Hu was once again playing Lady Deathstrike, Vinnie Jones was back as Juggernaut, and that Kevin Nash would reprise the role of the Russian in The Punisher.
But instead, its new, less-recognizable actors (whose names are not available at the time of this writing) playing these characters, even though Juggernaut gets a surprising amount of screen time. The movie goes for bolder alternates in some cases, too, with a Black actor portraying Bullseye from Daredevil (you can see the signature scar on his forehead) instead of Colin Farrell. It appears that Mei Melanço and Dania Ramirez are both back as Psylocke and Callisto from X-Men: The Last Stand, but like Lady Deadpool’s identity, it’s not confirmed yet.
All in all, the scenes at Nova’s Ant-Man compound end up being more distracting than compelling, driving us to identify the cameos instead of paying attention to the actual film. Which, as this list might be showing, could be the point of the actual film.
Happy Hogan Returns
Lastly, we’d be remiss to not mention the one major cameo that is not in reference to a movie produced by 20th Century Fox, New Line Cinema, or some other non-Marvel Studios enterprise. Rather in the one traditional MCU easter egg, Deadpool is presented as auditioning for the Avengers in 2018 (the same year Deadpool 2 came out) and hoping to meet Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, who is still very much alive at this point in the timeline.
Unfortunately, he is totally shut down by gatekeeper Happy Hogan, played by MCU good luck charm Jon Favreau. It’s a gag that feels right out of one of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies, complete with Happy encouraging Wade Wilson to “aim for the middle.”
If not for referring to Iron Man as being alive, we’d wonder if this sequence might have originally been intended as a post-credits scene. Consider that Wade seems oblivious about the “sacred timeline” and multiverse-hopping until he’s kidnapped by the TVA years later. Perhaps this was a mid-credits scene gag and, for whatever reason, Marvel opted to instead move the scene to the front of the picture while putting a bow on the Fox-Verse with some Green Day acoustics? Or maybe not. Either way, the scene is a funny gag and the lone major connection to the MCU Proper.
Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters now.
The post Deadpool & Wolverine’s Funniest, Craziest and Most Bat-Sh!t Cameos and Easter Eggs appeared first on Den of Geek.
