What a start!
The opening credits of the film are one of the most epic ones. Here’s Some Douchebag’s Film decoded:
God’s Perfect Idiot (Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool)
A Hot Chick (Morena Baccarin as Vanessa)
A British Villain (Ed Skrien as Ajax)
Comic Relief (T.J. Miller as Weasel)
A Moody Teen (Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead)
An Entirely CGI Character (Stefan Kapicic as Colossus)
A Gratuitous Cameo (Stan Lee)
Produced By Asshats (Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Ryan Reynolds)
Written By The Real Heroes (Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese)
Directed by Some Overpaid Tool (Tim Miller)
The Green Lantern Potshots
Everyone expected Deadpool to take a dig at Ryan Reynolds’s disastrous attempt at playing a superhero, no one expected it to come as early as the opening sequence. Those with a sharp eye will have spotted a collectible Green Lantern card in one of the wallets flying around in the tumbling car. Of course the suit wasn’t distinguishable (the rights belong to someone else) but you get the point. The second reference — Wade Wilson says “don’t make the super suit green, or animated” when being taken in for the experimental treatment — is much easier to spot.
The Ryan Reynolds references
There were quite a few Ryan Reynold references thrown into the film as well, the most obvious one being the picture of Ryan Reynolds on People magazines’s cover as the Sexiest Man Alive. But a Ryan Reynolds reference slips into Deadpool’s dialogue where he says “this is what happens when you are bitten by a radioactive Shar Pei”, which is actually from the comic book, and from the same panel that takes a dig at Ryan Reynolds (picture above).
The X-MEN digs
The shots at X-Men came thick and fast — from the name of the person whose ba**s he had to fondle to get a movie of his own rhyming with Pulverine to Negasonic Teenage Warhead mentioning X-Men’s matching ‘unitard’ and the house that blows up every now and then (in reference to the X-Men Apocalypse trailer).
The most noticeable is of course Deadpool’s dig — “Who is it now, McAvoy or Stewart? The timelines are so confusing” — as Colossus threatens to take him to Professor X.
The ‘ORIGIN’-AL Gags
Everyone knew there would be barbs aimed at Ryan Reynolds’s last attempt at Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and we were not disappointed. While there are the subtle “sewing Deadpool’s mouth shut” and “lips are sealed” references, one of the most obvious ones is the scene where Wade Wilson talks about his most “prized possession” and we see an X-Men Origins Deadpool figurine. Thankfully, it was a decoy because Wade picks up his WHAM! music CD. There is also that scene when Weasel finishes Wade’s sentence where he says being in the Special Forces wasn’t too bad because he got to “travel the world to exotic places to meet new, exciting people” and Weasel finishes the sentences with “and then kill them”. How did he know what Wade was going to say? Well, the line is a lift from his dialogue in X-Men Origins!
Is that a Helicarrier?
The final face-off between Ajax and Deadpool was on a helicarrier — S.H.I.E.L.D’s iconic flying base. The design might have been a little different but it was a helicarrier nonetheless. Its effortless destruction may have been another pointed reference to Marvel.
Some Marvel fun
When deciding on a name for his alter ego, Weasel comes up with Scaredevil, which is a nod to Daredevil. Once Wade decides on Deadpool (after his eyes fall on the Dead Pool at Weasel’s bar), he calls himself Captain Deadpool before saying that plain Deadpool sounds better. It’s a jab we presume, at Captain America and the numerous other Captain somethings in Marvel Universe.
Post-credit pay off
The post-credit scene pays homage to one of the best post-credits scenes — the one from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with the same setting, the same striped bathrobe and starting with the same line “You are still here?”
Oh and it confirmed Cable for Deadpool 2!
Hat tip to the creators
The movie acknowledges Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld first in the opening montage where we see a coffee cup floating in the air as the van tumbles with Rob L. written on the outside of the cup. Again, when Wade walks into Sister Margaret’s (the bar), he greets two people — one is ‘Buck’, the other ‘Liefeld’.
The Blade shoutout
The reference to Ryan Reynolds’s second comic-book movie outing, Blade Trinity, was referred to indirectly by Weasel who says “don’t miss the midnight showing of Blade II” to Ajax and Angel as they leave after hassling him at the bar.
A tease for copycat
In the comics, Vanessa Carlysle (played by Morena Baccarin in the film) had the power to shapeshift and went by the name, Copycat. Maybe we will see Copycat in Deadpool 2, as we also want more of Morena, a cult favourite for her role in Joss Whedon’s Firefly (you also couldn’t have missed her as Nicholas Brody’s wife in Homeland)!
Hello Bob!
You must have have heard some people at the cinema go “no way” when Deadpool greets one of the soldiers of Ajax as Bob and leaves him alive, even though he knocks the soldier unconscious. Well, that is because it was a canny way to reference Bob, Agent of Hydra, Deadpool’s sometimes oddball sidekick.
Shoop shoop ba-doop
Salt N Peppa’s hit single Shoop that plays as Deadpool waits on the flyover for the bad guys to pass beneath him was released in 1993, the same year that Deadpool got his own comic book.
‘Taken’ with Liam Neeson
When Wade says he had a nightmare that he had stolen Liam Neeson’s daughter, in response to Vanessa finding him weeping at night after he finds out about the cancer, is a reference to the Taken series. But did you know that Liam Neeson was also a supporting actor in the 1988 film, Mr Dead Pool?
Getting over Ripley
We don’t think Deadpool calling Negasonic Teenage Warhead (we need to see more of this awesome character) Ripley from Alien 3 was just because of the same hairstyle as Sigourney Weaver’s. Not when Negasonic responds with “you’re old”. That’s Fox’s way of telling the audience to get over the disaster that was Alien 3 20 years since it had been made.
