Deadpool and Wolverine director hopes Ryan Reynolds' hero will live up to his "Marvel Jesus" nickname and save the MCU

Jun. 17, 2024

Exclusive: Shawn Levy gets candid about superhero fatigue, as he promises that Deadpool & Wolverine “is not like any MCU movie”

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Director Shawn Levy isn’t too worried though, as he notes the amusing parallels between the film’s plot – Deadpool being drafted in by the Time Variance Authority to save the Sacred Timeline from ruin – and the questions being asked about the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“We had no idea it would be this unique moment where people are asking what the MCU means any more,” he tellsTotal Film in our new issue, which is out on Thursday, June 20 and features Deadpool & Wolverine on the cover. “Can it surprise us? Can it break molds in ways that we don’t expect? We certainly hope that this movie is an answer to those questions.”

“What Kevin Feige has built with the MCU is historic as far as a string of successes, but culture has its tide chart, culture has ebbs and flows, and one thing we do know is you can’t keep doing the same thing ad nauseum and expect people to greet it with the same excitement,” Levy explains. “And so it just worked out really fortuitously because our movie is not like any MCU movie. Yeah, and I say that as a fan of a lot of MCU movies.”

While Deadpool & Wolverine’s plot hasn’t been explicitly spelled out yet, the trailers that have been released so far have given us hints as to what the Merc with a Mouth and the mutant will be getting up to. In the first teaser that emerged online, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) had his birthday party interrupted by a bunch of TVA officers, before they dragged him back to headquarters and Matthew Macfadyen’s Paradox cryptically offers him a chance “to become a hero among heroes”.

SinceAvengers: Endgameracked up $2.79 billion at the global box office, MCU titles have struggled to even come close to the gargantuan figure.Spider-Man: No Way Homeearned $1.9 billion, but its follow-ups have been less than impressive.Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of MadnessandThor: Love and Thunderpulled in $955 million and $760.9 million, respectively, whileBlack Panther: Wakanda Foreverbagged $859 million andGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3pocketed $845 million. Which sounds like a lot, until you consider these movie’s enormous budgets…

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Despite largely positive reviews from critics,Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniabagged $476 million, withThe Marvelsearning just $206 million on an almost $300 million budget. So, it’s no wonder Marvel andDisneyare looking to shake things up a little bycutting its output to “two, maximum three films” a year.

Might Deadpool 3 get audiences excited about comic book fare again? Either way, Levy thinks the MCU will live on in some capacity. “I would love to take credit for those parallels,” he says. “Some we absolutely intend, but some are coincidences, and we came up with ‘Marvel Jesus’ two years ago. People love to get on bandwagons whether they’re positive, but frankly even more when they’re negative.”

Deadpool & Wolverine lands in UK cinemas on July 25 and in the US a day later. You can read more about it, and a whole lot else besides, in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, June 20.

Check out the covers below:

Pre-order the issue hereto bag your copy orclick here to subscribe to Total Filmand never miss another exclusive. You’ll get every issue before it’s in stores, and you’ll get subscriber-exclusive covers.

I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.

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