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Movie News: San Diego Comic Con

February is still a long way, but one of the most anticipated films at San Diego Comic Con is Deadpool.

How this film does upon its release could very well help reshape the landscape of comic book films.

For the uninitiated, you might ask, “What makes Deadpool so special?” Well, for those of you who have been living under a rock, there hasn’t exactly been a spate of R-rated comic book films. Of what’s been out in recent years, you have Kick-Ass (2010), its sequel Kick-Ass 2 (2013), Watchmen (2009), Dredd (2012) and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014). Three of the five involved Matthew Vaughn and Mark Millar. None of the films involved Marvel or DC.

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The only exposure film fans have had to Deadpool was X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) where he eventually became a primary antagonist to the title character played by Hugh Jackman. Many panned Deadpool’s depiction on film since one of his biggest features as “the merc with the mouth” was silenced in the penultimate fight of the film. While post-credit scenes did finally address the character’s ability to break the fourth wall, it was too little, too late.

Two years later, visual effects specialist Tim Miller was hired to direct and the following year, test footage with Ryan Reynolds returning to reprise the character only in a voiceover role leaked online. The popularity from the footage resulted in Fox green lighting the live action film for February 12, 2016 release.

https://youtu.be/BOuzWlOp3Yc

Deadpool is something of an uncharted territory for Fox since this will be their first Marvel-oriented film with an R-rating which producers and Reynolds had to push for given the trend for action films to stay PG-13. The appeal of Deadpool is that there aren’t creative boundaries to restrict what would be acceptable. As long as he can say and do whatever he wants, that’s as authentic an experience as possible. A lesser rating would have very much affected the quality of this film as it would have affected Kick-Ass, Watchmen and Kingsman.

As studios are looking to churn and milk franchises, we have seen what happens when original R-rated franchises keep producing sequels or remakes with the PG-13 rating. They get watered down, the grittiness is eroded and you lose out in part of what made the movie special.

Politics was part of the message for the original 1987 Robocop, but more so of what it made it memorable was the gratuity. You didn’t get that with the latter 2014 version. Same with 1990’s Total Recall and what you lost in the 2012 version. Dredd didn’t water itself down in the remake. The most recent example is Terminator: Genisys (2015). It was supposed to bring back the feeling of the first two films, but it just served as a reminder what is wrong with filmmaking today trying to re-invent the wheel yet again while being more convoluted in the process.

What Fox has here can set a trend to what Marvel and DC can do to appeal more to the adult market. While the Blade trilogy and the two Punisher films predate the current Marvel Cinematic Universe, we only know for sure what future has for the Punisher given that Jon Bernthal‘s casting as Frank Castle in Marvel’s Daredevil on Netflix. We also know that Wesley Snipes has had a recent meeting with Marvel execs to see about Blade’s future.

Not to say there’s a lot of pressure for this film to succeed since adult comic films will still be made, but it can very well factor if Marvel and DC can bank on bringing more adult-oriented characters to franchise in their respective cinematic universes.

I, for one, will definitely be looking forward to Deadpool’s pending release. In the meantime, I’m sure Ryan Reynolds doesn’t mind if more people talk about Deadpool while he’s trying to promote his current film Self/less.