“Deadpool” dominated the box office again over the Leap Day weekend, making it the third consecutive week of box office domination for the Little Merc-with-the-Mouth That Could.
To be fair, “Deadpool” hasn’t had all that much competition. The Leap Day weekend brought “Gods of Egypt” with it, the famously whitewashed movie about Danish and Scottish Egyptian gods, and beating “The Witch” and “Kung-Fu Panda 3” in its second box-office weekend.
All of this has whet the appetites of the bigwigs at the movie studios. Something they didn’t think was marketable, an R-rated superhero movie, has become incredibly marketable in the weeks since, a missed chance of sponsorships and endorsements that has resulted in one of the only products with “Deadpool”’s now-famous black-and-red mask on it is a can of shoestring potato chips. Immediately following the movie’s surprise success, only a surprise to anyone who has never picked up a comic, director James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Slither”) tweeted his concern that movie studios were going to utterly miss what made “Deadpool” great and just usher in an era of pointlessly R-rated superhero movies.
He’s already been proven right, too. Within days of “Deadpool”’s smash success, Fox announced that the latest Wolverine movie would be rated R. Not to be outdone, Warner Bros/DC announced a special R-rated cut of “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” On the part of Fox, this is a hero they have spent the last 16 years making into the face of the X-Men. Wolverine, in the comics, is multi-tiered. He has issues that are appropriate for all ages and he has other books with a parental advisory on the UPC, or a T+ rating, because they use a rating system instead of sending everything through the Comic Code Authority now.
So, while there is precedent comic-wise to make a violent and R-rated Wolverine movie, the practicality of it is inexistent. Wolverine is a hero and main character in almost every X-related movie. The one he wasn’t in (First Class) he stole with 10 seconds of screen time. With DC, I don’t even have to give reasons. It’s Batman and Superman, the superheroes of childhood. Batman has darkness, but never so much so that an R-rating is the best fix. Restricting these movies just guarantees the same thing that happened with “Deadpool”: A bunch of little kids in a movie that they really don’t need to be in.
There is an easy way for them to have their proverbial cake and do whatever they’d like with it. Plenty of characters in Fox’s stable as well as the Warner/DC one that are 100 percent suited for an R-rating. Teams like X-Force and X-Statix, one of which gives them action and the other comedy, neither of which have cherished characters of childhood all over them. DC has folks like Lobo and the Suicide Squad, the latter of which is slated to release soon. For Marvel proper, they don’t really need to break into the R-rated movies when the Netflix fare is doing that job for them, but they have plenty to choose from and are all too aware of who they are.
So prepare yourselves for a bunch of kids to get traumatized and a bunch of parents to get mad. Prepare yourself for both the public backlash and the backlash from the studio, both of which are practically a guarantee.
What made “Deadpool” such a great movie had nothing to do with an excess of blood and brain matter or the F word. What made it good was the passion behind the project. Director Tim Miller and lead Ryan Reynolds have been trying to get this movie made for over a decade, and that drive and love for the work shows. That’s where Marvel has always gotten it right; casting people who have a love for the source material. Fox and DC are all so desperate to crack the code of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe success that they overlook all the reasoning for it in their desperation to get the next product out of the door.
Heroically R-Rated
Dane La Born
“Deadpool” dominated the box office again over the Leap Day weekend, making it the third consecutive week of box office domination for the Little Merc-with-the-Mouth That Could.
To be fair, “Deadpool” hasn’t had all that much competition. The Leap Day weekend brought “Gods of Egypt” with it, the famously whitewashed movie about Danish and Scottish Egyptian gods, and beating “The Witch” and “Kung-Fu Panda 3” in its second box-office weekend.
All of this has whet the appetites of the bigwigs at the movie studios. Something they didn’t think was marketable, an R-rated superhero movie, has become incredibly marketable in the weeks since, a missed chance of sponsorships and endorsements that has resulted in one of the only products with “Deadpool”’s now-famous black-and-red mask on it is a can of shoestring potato chips. Immediately following the movie’s surprise success, only a surprise to anyone who has never picked up a comic, director James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Slither”) tweeted his concern that movie studios were going to utterly miss what made “Deadpool” great and just usher in an era of pointlessly R-rated superhero movies.
He’s already been proven right, too. Within days of “Deadpool”’s smash success, Fox announced that the latest Wolverine movie would be rated R. Not to be outdone, Warner Bros/DC announced a special R-rated cut of “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” On the part of Fox, this is a hero they have spent the last 16 years making into the face of the X-Men. Wolverine, in the comics, is multi-tiered. He has issues that are appropriate for all ages and he has other books with a parental advisory on the UPC, or a T+ rating, because they use a rating system instead of sending everything through the Comic Code Authority now.
So, while there is precedent comic-wise to make a violent and R-rated Wolverine movie, the practicality of it is inexistent. Wolverine is a hero and main character in almost every X-related movie. The one he wasn’t in (First Class) he stole with 10 seconds of screen time. With DC, I don’t even have to give reasons. It’s Batman and Superman, the superheroes of childhood. Batman has darkness, but never so much so that an R-rating is the best fix. Restricting these movies just guarantees the same thing that happened with “Deadpool”: A bunch of little kids in a movie that they really don’t need to be in.
There is an easy way for them to have their proverbial cake and do whatever they’d like with it. Plenty of characters in Fox’s stable as well as the Warner/DC one that are 100 percent suited for an R-rating. Teams like X-Force and X-Statix, one of which gives them action and the other comedy, neither of which have cherished characters of childhood all over them. DC has folks like Lobo and the Suicide Squad, the latter of which is slated to release soon. For Marvel proper, they don’t really need to break into the R-rated movies when the Netflix fare is doing that job for them, but they have plenty to choose from and are all too aware of who they are.
So prepare yourselves for a bunch of kids to get traumatized and a bunch of parents to get mad. Prepare yourself for both the public backlash and the backlash from the studio, both of which are practically a guarantee.
What made “Deadpool” such a great movie had nothing to do with an excess of blood and brain matter or the F word. What made it good was the passion behind the project. Director Tim Miller and lead Ryan Reynolds have been trying to get this movie made for over a decade, and that drive and love for the work shows. That’s where Marvel has always gotten it right; casting people who have a love for the source material. Fox and DC are all so desperate to crack the code of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe success that they overlook all the reasoning for it in their desperation to get the next product out of the door.