Somehow, These Deadpool Deleted Scenes Were Too Gnarly For The Films
The central appeal of the "Deadpool" movies is their habit of deconstruction. In a world where superhero movies are rated PG-13, feature no sex, and whose level of violence always stays comfortably within the limits of kid-friendly fantasy, Deadpool burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man with both middle fingers raised and F-bombs on his lips. He was viciously mutilated regularly, talked about his genitals endlessly, and was even seen being pegged by his girlfriend. I can assure you that no "Captain America" movie will feature a pegging scene. Additionally, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) often addressed the camera directly, offering a running meta-commentary on the action; in the first "Deadpool," he is told he is going to meet Professor X, and he wonders aloud whether it will be James McAvoy or Patrick Stewart, the actors who have played the character.
A lot of the snarkiness and filth come from the mandates of star Ryan Reynolds, who produced the film, controlled large elements of its advertising, and improvised many of its dirtier jokes. It was screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick who conceived of the horrible violence; Deadpool is stabbed in the head in the first movie, and ripped in half in the second. Good job, all around.
The R-rated violence and crassness of the "Deadpool" movies have led to some concern over the fate of the upcoming "Deadpool 3," the first made under the auspices of Disney and intended to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Will Disney have the temerity to include a pegging scene? Only time will tell.
Indeed, the "Deadpool" movies are so brazenly crass and violent that even Fox had to make cuts to avoid NC-17 ratings in some cases. Here are some scenes from the original film that were too wild for the studio.
The bar scene
At a 2016 fan event in Los Angeles, covered by ComicBook.com, "Deadpool" director Tim Miller revealed that Reynolds went a little overboard while improvising a scene with co-star T.J. Miller. Deadpool was left scarred all over his body thanks to a vicious medical experiment that triggered his superpowers. When commenting on the way Deadpool now looked, Reynolds and T.J. Miller admitted that their jokes became really dark and hateful really quickly. Tim Miller said of the exchange:
"[T]here was a bar scene that was too vulgar for even the R-rated 'Deadpool.' That bar scene was particularly mean and offensive to a lot of people because T.J. and Ryan got together and wrote a version of the scene that we just said, 'Oh my God, this is too far.' I mean, there were so many people offended, it would have really been ... we couldn't do it. It was just mean and so I said, 'No. We don't have to do that.'"
Miller also acknowledged that some of his jokes went too far. Both Reynolds and Miller were known for their crass senses of humor, and T.J. was relieved that some of the gags got cut. He related that one of the gags involved defecation and that it was pretty gross. Some of the deleted gags — the more tolerable of the least acceptable — made their way onto the "Deadpool" DVD's special features, but most remained on the cutting room floor.
(It should be noted that T.J. Miller has since been ousted for an alleged sexual assault from when he was in college, for making a fake drunken bomb threat, and for a vicious series of transphobic e-mails. He will not appear in "Deadpool 3.")
Blood and violence
One of Deadpool's superpowers is that he cannot die. Even if he loses a limb or gets ripped in half, he grows back like a planarian. This allowed the "Deadpool" and "Deadpool 2" filmmakers to abuse and mutilate their hero to their hearts' content. In exchange, Deadpool feels no compunction about murdering and torturing the bad guys around him. But, you know, in a funny way. Usually Deadpool's acts of violence are played for laughs.
There was a scene in "Deadpool," however, that producer Simon Kinberg revealed, in an interview with the Express, was too much to include in the final cut. Early in the film, Deadpool, still going by the name Wade Wilson, is diagnosed with cancer and is desperate to find a cure. He and his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) end up in Mexico with a quack. What happens there ... well, no one liked it. Kinberg said:
"He and Vanessa go on what they jokingly, darkly call the cancer world tour, to try to find a cure for it. And they end up in sort of their darkest moment in this sh***y clinic in Guadalajara with a doctor who is a charlatan. Wade realizes that and ends up in a very brutal and dramatic and cool way killing him, and he and Vanessa split up in that moment of Wade realizing that he is in some ways a monster, who can't be with this woman."
Screenwriter Rhett Reese acknowledged "that gruesome Guadalajara scene was just a bridge too far." What Wade did to the doctor is not described, but one can well imagine a horrendous scene of torture. That might match the film's gleeful levels of violence, but it would certainly cut into its sense of impish fun.
The brutal fight
In the same interview, actor Ed Skrein, who plays the film's villain, Ajax, admitted that the martial arts in his final fight with Deadpool went a little over the top. The actor thought the raison d'être of a "Deadpool" movie was to be violent, but the filmmakers elected to scale it back a little bit. Skrein said:
"I do the suplex and stuff, I come in and start breaking him down and they took out quite a lot of beats because it was just horrific. Literally, I'm breaking wrists, shoulders, jaws, and it was pretty hardcore. It did make me laugh that they chose not to put that in because they thought it was too far. And I thought 'How can you go too far in a movie like 'Deadpool?'"
An article in IGN also revealed a montage of self-slaughter in "Deadpool 2" that was likely cut for reasons of good taste. When Deadpool experiences a personal tragedy, he attempts to take his own life several times, only to be resurrected each time. The suicide montage was left out.
But not all the deleted scenes were dark. Indeed, one of the deleted scenes from "Deadpool 2" would have made the film less brutal. At the film's end, Deadpool gets his hands on a time machine and travels to 1889 Austria where baby Adolf Hitler has just been born. Deadpool stands over baby Adolf's cradle, working up the courage to kill him. The film's final shot implies that our hero smothers Hitler to death.
In an alternate cut, Deadpool hoists baby Hitler out of the cradle ... and posits that maybe Adolf Hitler could be cared for and treated well and taught tolerance. It's a much more compassionate ending than the one we got.