Deadpool Creator Rob Liefeld Takes a Victory Lap

Rob Liefeld speaks on 'Deadpool' being the game-changer that he said it'd be.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

Back in January, I got to achieve something that me from 15 years ago never would've thought was possible: I got to talk to the brash comic book creator Rob Liefeld about Deadpool, a motion picture based on the character he created 25 years ago. What I loved about that conversation, which took place about a week before I saw the film, was how adamant Liefeld was about Deadpool being a gamechanger. “This year,” he professed, “is going to show, more than ever, that the product has to change.” He was right: the movie became the highest grossing R-rated film worldwide. Ever.

The seeds of this change to more adult superhero movies is already being sown, with everything from the animated feature Batman: The Killing Joke earning DC's first R-rating to talk of Suicide Squad 2 possibly being R-ratedDeadpool, the tiny superhero film that could, proved that all one really needs to do is know and understand your source, and find a way to recreate that.

I was lucky enough to get some more time with Liefeld about a day after Deadpool hit iTunes (and about two weeks before its May 10 Blu-ray / DVD release) to talk about the aftermath of Deadpool's box office run. During the conversation, he talked about everything from his Blu-ray commentary track with Deadpool director Tim Miller, to what you can expect from that deleted workshop fight between Francis and Wade, to his hopes for a Cable-filled Deadpool sequel.

You told me back in January that Deadpool was going to be a game-changer and you were 100 percent correct, so I guess congratulations are in order...
Yeah! I did say that.

That's what stuck out to me when I first talked to you, that's—
"Wow this Liefield he's a cocky dude. He said gamechanger."

You were right, though!
When I went to the first audience test screening in December, there was talk of changing stuff, but the score was so high—I gotta tell ya—I was like, "Why are we changing what's not broke?"

The reason I'm telling you this is because before we went in there, Tim goes, "Now Rob, remember this is a weird little film." And I said, "Tim, C'mon! I've been with this script for years. I've been watching you develop it." The part when the Chicago song ("You're the Inspiration") plays and the cartoon animals start falling around Vanessa's face, you go, "This is so brilliantly weird!" It's like there's this delirium occurring, and we're watching the delirium. But at that point, I started preaching the gospel: "This movie is a home run. It's like nothing you've seen. It's the right movie at the right time."

When I went to see it, there was a bunch of press and comic book movie guys there, so whenever a reference here or there would drop, the laughter in the audience was crazy, and I'm thinking, "Shit, I'm missing a lot of these jokes." So it's actually good that it has that replay value where you can go back and dissect some of those subtler things that were in there.
It's also the fact that they balance so many tones successfully. It is a cancer drama. It is a romance. It is a action film. It is a witty comedy. That's a really hard balance. And that's what I said to Tim, I go, "Tim! More seasoned hands could not have pulled that off, I'm confident."

I learned so much doing the Blu-ray commentary that I shot with him. And man, I'm a talker, as you know, and I was just silenced by all the cool stories he was telling. But the main thing that people are going to hear—it's part of the business, there were hard cuts that had to be made, hard decisions. Tim really kept purging the picture of excess and I think the movie just—look, Rhett [Reese] and Paul [Wernick] wrote a hell of a script. And you see it when you look down and you go, "Look at all this stuff that's already occurred in this movie and yet, we're only 28 minutes in."

I was able to see Captain America: Civil War recently and I was ridiculously impressed with the scale. I'm going, "Man, is that what having money looks like?" Because I know how much they had to be fiscally responsible. I loved Ryan's constant comments that we're on a cocaine budget. That's the other thing, watching it over and over—Ryan. I've seen every Ryan Reynolds movie. I'm a fan. [But] he's never thrown himself into a movie like this. 

It almost feels like it's the role he was born to play. 
He's so good at being Deadpool. At being the "I'm falling in love with you Vanessa," and "I'm desperate cancer survivor." Bottom line, here's my thing, give people the credit they deserve when something like that is achieved. It's not even like an act of kissing ass, it's just like mad respect, mad crazy respect knowing how much this movie had to go through. 

I remember sitting at home the weekend the movie came out and they were talking about how well it not only did, but what it was projected to do. I know Fox didn't expect that. But was any part of you expecting it to go as above and beyond in terms of the money it was drawing in?
In 2015, I had already been to the set and back and they probably had another month left, and I had seen some of the footage, and I said, "This movie is going to make $70 million. And it's going to do $400 million worldwide." And I remember one executive spit out his drink back into the glass and he goes, "Liefeld, you are not aware of how much $70 million dollars—how hard that is or how much $400 million is." And I just said, "I'm not going to be the jinx. I'm not gonna be the guy."

But the bottom line is that at no time did I believe that, what was it—$160 million for the four day weekend? At that point, I'm like, "Oh my gosh." It's not a giant budgeted blockbuster. And then you have the R-rating working against you. And it did work against us.

When we last spoke, there was the thought that there'd be considerations about other comic books/superhero films possibly going into the R-rated direction. How do you feel about the tide shifting that way?
It's the follow the leader mentality that this business has had. And I'm telling you that it doesn't surprise me. I knew that it was going to show everybody else, and it's so funny too because I've been using this metaphor at all our fan screenings. I told everybody, "This is mint chip! This is mint chip! You've been having vanilla." I saw one of the Russo brothers, who was at one of our screenings, use the "We're sherbert. Everyone was tired of vanilla" metaphor. And I was like, "C'mon man. That's mine." But this is a new flavor and I really feel like Deadpool was the pace car for the year, and I would not want to be the movie to follow it. 

I talked to Phil Silvera, who did stunts on the film, for Daredevil. He mentioned that the workshop fight between Ajax and Wade in the Blu-ray is more intense. 
We were at a fan event and in the Q&A afterwards, Tim was like, "I'm gonna tell ya, there's another level of violence in that fight."

He talks about it in the Blu-ray commentary, about how he had to cut that scene short because there was a question of the level of violence that it involved. And I think they took everything up to the line, and we all benefited from it because it made it fun and fresh. But when you see it, the scene played out uncut, it's brutal. The brutality of the violence and some of the stuff that they do to each other is even more exciting. And like you said, man, there's nothing more scary than a naked guy fighting you in a fire. I mean, how scary is that?

And you can barely hurt him. 
Yeah, yeah. One guy feels no pain and one guy can't be hurt. Whaaat? So that scene is fantastic. People are gonna dig that workshop battle. And you'll see why it was tough for Tim to cut it, and you'll see why they felt it had to go. 

Cable was such a fan favorite, and I know that's been the talk in terms of the sequel. And you've mentioned wanting to get Cable in there. Do you have any idea what the sequel is going to be?
[In sing-song yelling voice.] I HAVE TO PLEAD THE FIFTH. I CANNOT SPEAK OF THIS. All I'll say is that when people say, "Hey man, you think there's gonna be Cable [in the sequel]," I'm like, "Okay, did we not just come out of the same movie and Deadpool told us he was coming?!" There are days that I close my eyes and I imagine what that might look like. And I get so excited because, again, Tim brought a different aesthetic—Deadpool's costume looks so phenomenally awesome. So yeah, I'm wondering the level of the heart attack that I will have if I ever see a Tim Miller Cable dressed up on screen. I may have to have people standing by.

Latest in Pop Culture