Thinking about seeing the Deadpool movie but don’t have a damn clue who the characters you’ll be investing one hour and forty eight minutes of your life to are besides “the Spider-Man looking dude with guns and swords that’s played by Green Lantern”?

Come hold our hands. We’ll get you through this.

Listen to the latest episode of our weekly comics podcast!

Oh yeah, we’re such bad-asses that we even got Deadpool himself* to make some commentary. Enjoy.

Ryan Reynolds/Deadpool (Wade Wilson)

Our unorthodox anti-hero. A former Special Forces operative turned masked mercenary with a regenerative healing factor (based on Wolverine’s) that allows him to recover from nearly any wound; he’s motor-mouthed, morally ambiguous, capricious and a little bit loco (he can break the fourth wall after all)– but deep down he’s trying to do the right thing — or at least prove that he can.

Our Thoughts: Disparage the contrived Hollywood miscreation that was BarakaPool all you want — Ryan Reynolds still killed the Wade Wilson portions of X-Men Origins: Wolverine; if the myriad trailers and teasers from the sly Deadpool marketing campaign (and the slew of thus-far positive reviews from critics) are any indication, Reynolds is more excited and well-suited to play the Merc with a Mouth than ever — which is more sweet manna from the DP movie gods who only two short years ago made hope for a true to comic book form DP on the big screen seem like nothing more than idle prayer.

If you need a better idea of what Deadpool’s capable of, head over to our Deadpool 101: Powers and Abilities lesson.

Deadpool Says: Hot damn, I look sexy in this movie. I mean, s--t… you can see the shape of my manly-ass jaw through the mask and everything (just think about what other anatomical portions you’ll be able to see the shape of). Big ups to Angus Strathie — the costume work you did for me here will make your Academy Award designs from Moulin Rouge! look like a bunch of shoddy French hookers traipsing around a whorehouse by comparison!

T.J. Miller/Weasel

He’s Deadpool’s weapons/tech dealer, occasional sidekick and the closest thing he’s got to a best friend. (Until a certain Hydra agent comes along, anyway.)

Our Thoughts: Although Weasel’s known for trading barbs with Deadpool in the comics, it’s not quite on the same sardonic, shade-throwing level we’ve seen from trailers; not that I’m complaining — if we haven’t seen the best bits already, Miller and Reynold’s back and forths about Deadpool’s Freddy Kreuger facial features should have us rollin’.

Look for DP and Weasel to form a surprisingly heartfelt friendship based on mutual s--t-talking and whatever the equivalent for “doing hoodrat things with your friends” is for a mercenary and a weapons dealer.

Deadpool Says: You probably recognize Weasel from the trailers, saying that I look like “an avocado had sex with an older avocado.” He’s lucky that I don’t brutally murder my own friends. He may not look like much — but the bastard’s witty, keeps me well armed and has the uncanny ability to memorize the work schedules of strippers with the phattest asses.

Morena Baccarin/Vanessa Carlysle

Vanessa is Wade’s girlfriend — a prostitute (sorry Firefly fans — purely coincidental) from Boston in whom DP finds a kindred spirit.

Will their relationship reach its breaking point when Wade finds out he has contracted terminal cancer?

Our Thoughts: It’s not yet known whether or not the movie version will exhibit mutant powers, or even the same mutant powers as the comic book version. The latter move wouldn’t make much sense considering her power set is essentially a Copycat of X-Men movie mainstay Mystique (Vanessa even has light blue skin), but we could see her figuring into either the Weapon X equation or as some variant of a villain/evil ex-girlfriend down the line.

Deadpool Says: Have mercy. My sweet, sultry, raven-haired Nessa. She’s… really purdy, ain’t she? She and I exchange eccentric pleasantries throughout the movie, for all you romantic saps out there. She and I also bang on the regular, for all you thirsty saps out there.

Ed Skrein/Ajax

Ajax is a physician assistant charged with the care of Weapon X test subjects. His life will become a whole lot more “interesting” when a cancer victim named Wade Wilson comes into his supervision…

Our Thoughts: Skrein’s segments will be where the film sheds the kiddy gloves and starts to get pretty dark. Given that the film will be punctuated by flashbacks to Deadpool’s past, and more specifically the experimentative process that made him into the regeneratin’ degenerate he is in the present, Ajax is the perfect choice for this movie’s antagonist — he’s calculating, cunning and downright cruel. And if he becomes the Attending, he’ll not only be a cerebral match for Deadpool — but a physical one as well.

Think those scenes of experimentation on poor Logan in the Wolverine movies were jarring? Deadpool’s should make them look like pizza night at Planet Fitness. Not all experiments under the Weapon X name end up quite as… favorable as they did in Wolverine’s case — Ajax’s twisted forms of experimentation on these spurned failures should establish him as a very personal, meaningful enemy for our protagonist.

Deadpool Says: If I figure out this guy’s real name like I did in Volume 1 of my ongoing series, then get ready for one of the funniest rhyme-form put downs you’ve ever heard in your life.

Brianna Hildebrand/Negasonic Teenage Warhead

NTW is based on a character created by Grant Morrison during his tenure on New X-Men, where she had telepathic abilities that rivaled Emma Frost. According to Deadpool director Tim Miller however, they gave NTW powers more befitting of her name for the film:

Her power, I mean, we chose her because we wanted a trainee for Colossus in the film and the writers and I just fell in love with her name. It’s just so out there and so Deadpool and it was Grant Morrison who named her, so we knew we had to get her in there. And then we thought, well, we’re going to need to make her powers fit with who she feels like she is in the movie so to me it’s just like other characters in the Marvel universe, like Nitro, for instance, whose power is to just explode parts of their body. But we did try to do it so that it wasn’t just a simple, ‘oh, I can explode’, she can transfer the force of the explosion down so she can move upwards – she can put it into a punch if she wanted to. So it was really just her fist exploding as she hit somebody.

Our Thoughts: The verdict’s still out on this character. And talk about a confusing explanation of one’s superpowers from Tim Miller; guess we’ll just have to wait and see the film to get a better idea of just what the hell he’s talking about. It’s clear the Deadpool moviemakers are looking to differentiate her from the comic book version and have her there as a reminder that the X-Men still exist and have a movie coming out after Deadpool, so if she can manage not to be overly annoying, she should be a fine fit.

Deadpool Says: You mean they’ll let this little weirdo into the X-Men and not me? We’ll see how that goes after my ticket sales come in. Hey Negasonicsomething orother: Sinead O’Connor called — she wants her androgynous haircut back. Speaking of throwing X-Men into the movie to remind us that they have a movie coming out after mine…

Stefan Kapicic/Colossus

He is Piotr Rasputin, a Russian mutant who made his first comic book appearance in Giant Size X-Men #1 back in May 1975.

He’s been the X-Men’s resident strongman/powerhouse throughout its many iterations thanks to his mutant ability: transforming/coating his entire body with an extremely resilient form of organic steel. When he transforms, he bolsters his already considerable height of 6’6” to over 7’5” and doubles in weight; he also gains superhuman levels of strength, durability and stamina.

Our Thoughts: Chances are you know him from such activities in the X-Men movies as carrying little kids around with no shirt on in X2 and getting pulled apart like a flimsy G.I. Joe action figure by Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

And… that’s about it, really. Which is too bad — we’ve always liked Colossus as a character here at AiPT!, so hopefully his role in Deadpool is a little more meaningful than “enormous metal punching bag.”

Gina Carano/Angel Dust

Angel Dust is a mutant character whose adrenaline-increasing mutant power grants her bursts of super-strength and, to a lesser extent, enhanced levels of speed, stamina and agility.

The person who gave her these powers? None other than Ajax, who she’ll be working with in close capacity in the film. She’ll also be throwing down with Colossus, in a fight scene actress Gina Carano described in an interview with ScreenRant as:

… A lot different than most of the fight scenes and the physicality that I’ve had before. I’ve never done anything with CGI, let alone I’ve never done anything with a 6’8” man as far as physicality goes. And then, on top of that he wears these big, massive boots. So it makes him taller. And then he wears this ball on the top of his head because he’s in a CGI, gray suit the whole time. And all of my movements have to be so much bigger.



My physicality and my adrenaline and my strength has to match this guy. So everything that I do has to be legitimately strong. Usually, I’ll get a fight scene and I’ll see the stunt guys do it, and I’m like, “OK. I’ll make it my own, make it a little bit more fluid.” Well, this one I’m like really relying on the stunt guys to be like…because everything they do is like old-school martial arts movies. And now I’m kinda like, “OK. There’s something to that for this character.”

Our Thoughts: MMA fighter Georges St. Pierre as Batroc the Leaper was a brief, enjoyable inclusion to Captain America 2 so if Gina Carano’s physicality can add a similar dimension of physical formidability and visual spectacle to Deadpool, we won’t be mad.

Deadpool Says: Apparently she didn’t like it when I called her “Less angry Rosie O’Donnell.” The hell? Has she never seen A League of their Own, Now and Then or Exit to Eden?

Leslie Uggams/Blind Al

Just as Spider-Man has Aunt May to bring him back down to Earth every once in a while, so too does Deadpool have such a character in the form of Blind Al. Of course, there’s a twist: in the comic books she’s both his roommate and his prisoner.

Our Thoughts: The Deadpool film probably won’t get into the twisted details of the latter bit of information, but expect Blind Al to bring an element of snarky counsel to Deadpool that he can’t find from anyone else.

Deadpool Says: So, it’s decided — changing “my beloved Bea Arthur” to “my beloved Leslie Uggams.” I likes ‘em sassy. (And blind.)

Are you as amped to see the Deadpool movie as we are? Sound off in the comments.

*Disclaimer: 90% chance commentary isn’t actually by Deadpool but one of our editors in a drunken fugue state.