Hey guys! This video is a little different from the
usual, given I’m not talking about Venice and I’m back here in the library room. That's because this video is about movies,
and we’re gonna be talking about one marvelous scene from Deadpool. You might have seen something like this last
year, where our friend Nando v Movies assembled a whole bunch of youtubers to dish on the
best scenes in the MCU. And this is the same idea, but with the X-Men
movies! So once you wrap up here, take a peruse through
this playlist to watch some other great videos — Red’s got a breakdown on Magneto’s
most gut-punching scene in First Class, and our pal Hello Future Me is diving into another
scene from the same movie. So uh, if you like First Class then you’re
in luck! So, to appreciate the best scene in 2016’s
Deadpool, let's do some cinema! Now, to make sure this video doesn’t get
too off-track from my usual fare, we’re going to start out with a little history of
the character. Deadpool was created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian
Nicieza in 1991 and immediately went off the rails. Because his original concept art looked a
lot like Slade Wilson, his writers figured the appropriate course of action was to make
Deadpool’s real name Wade Wilson, and things only got more irreverent from there. Soon enough, Deadpool’s nonstop snarking
and asinine wisecracks earned him the nickname of “The Merc With A Mouth”, and before
long our boy became self-aware and started breaking the 4th wall. So with that established, let’s wind our
clocks to a distant era, beyond anything I’ve covered on this channel: 2009. Now, I personally had never seen the X-Men
movies as a kiddo —in fact, my favorite superhero movie was Spiderman 3 because I
saw it at 11 and I’m a tasteless scrublord. But, point being, my first experience with
the X-Men movies was Wolverine, (I know, not better) where Deadpool was first brought to
life on screen, as this. This thing was Deadpool in name only, and
most people would sooner describe it as “Hot Garbàge”. But behind this mess of CGI and broken dreams
was a gem of a man, Canada’s National Treasure Ryan Reynolds. And the thing is, earlier in the movie we
did get a little taste of what this character is supposed to be. He’s funny, he’s irreverent, and he’s
cutting bullets in half with the power of cartoon logic. This was so clearly on the right track but
still so woefully Not Deadpool, and this seemed to convince 20th Century Fox to store all
talk of future Deadpool content at the bottom of the Challenger Deep. [3] Fast forward to mid 2014, and a two-minute
clip leaks online. It’s rough CGI —albeit no rougher than
the other deadpool —and it appears to be test-footage from months or years earlier
of a potential Deadpool movie, again with Ryan Reynolds. This is the kind of footage that gets mocked
up when a studio is deciding whether to make a movie or not, and they need to test out
what it’ll actually look like. For Marvel’s Ant Man, the footage was testing
the visual mechanics of Dude Who Goes Small And Gets Big Again. But in Deadpool’s case, the focus wasn’t
testing mechanics or an art style, it was testing Character. Now, this being an unauthorized leak of Fox’s
precious intellectual property, they start ripping it off of websites as fast as humanly
possible to stop people from seeing the unfinished footage. But in no time flat people were all over this,
so movie channels and social media started excitedly talking about this secret stash
of Good Deadpool Movie that had been hidden all these years. Before this footage dropped, nobody had ever
dreamed of Fox daring to make a Deadpool movie after the monumental flop of Wolverine, but
suddenly everybody could picture exactly what a full, awesome Deadpool movie would be like,
just from this little clip. So let’s walk through what’s actually
happening here. The clip opens on Deadpool, sitting on a bridge,
doodling to the lyrical stylings of Gwen Stefani as all winners do, talking straight to the
camera through an animated mask with zero pretense of a 4th wall. Immediately it’s clear that this is not
the same character established by the Wolverine movie. After this intro, he jumps down through the
sunroof of a moving car, starts speaking Spanish as if he’s in a telenovela, and proceeds
to demolish everybody inside while joking mercilessly and not giving a care in the world. The ultimate action shot comes as the car
is cartwheeling through the air towards one of the baddies in slow motion, and Deadpool
shows off the fruits his earlier doodling, which is him cutting the mook’s head off,
and then it ends with him cracking more jokes to camera while yoricking with the newly-decapitated
mook. And it’s not hard to see why this scene
made such a splash, as if gracefully crashing through the sunroof of a moving SUV. This came just after the Dark Knight trilogy
wrapped up, and right in the middle of MCU Phase 2. So just when it seemed that the only three
styles of making a superhero movie were Christopher Nolan, Joss Whedon, and Yikes, here was a
breath of fresh air in the comicbook movie world that everybody wanted. So in a rare display of good sense, Fox listened
to the popular discourse (and the fervent pleas of Ryan Reynolds who maybe probably
leaked the footage) and greenlit the project. Two years later we got the hilarious treasure
of a Deadpool movie we all know and love, and in an uncommon but ultimately unsurprising
twist, that very test scene became nearly the opening sequence of the movie. So after we got a few glimpses of the fancy
and remastered version of this scene in the movie’s trailer — which, by the way, exquisite
matching of action to music — let’s now take a look at the final piece. It starts, auspiciously enough, with Deadpool
in disbelief over the fact that his movie is real, but truly only a character like Deadpool
could will his own film into existence. After our favorite merc interrupts a perfectly
innocent jam session of Angel of the Morning, the fight choreography is similar but much
more complex and more physically comedic in this version — Deadpool is crawling around
the car with all the energy and vigor of a toddler in a playpen, but with way more bodily
harm being inflicted. And there’s nobody else in comics who fights
like this, it’s the simultaneous peak of slapstick comedy and visceral brutality, there’s
a violent irreverent glee to the way Deadpool beats people up. Then there’s some more fighting and a joke
that would not fly in a PG-13 rated movie, oh yeah, did I blow past how they got clearance
for an R-Rated movie? It’s a testament to the team assembling
this movie that they knew an R-rating was necessary for authentic Deadpool, and that
the success of the original test footage gave them the carte blanche to actually make it
happen. Finally, all the action culminates in a freeze-frame
of pure wound-up chaos that explodes in a gory mess all over the highway, and the scene
ends. So now that I’ve explained this at you,
let’s talk about precisely why it works so well. The first reason is great action. The space in which the fight happens is extremely
simple and easy to keep track of, just the inside of a car, but the choreography makes
full use of that space, from the sunroof to the seatbelts and doors to the pedals, steering
wheel, and even the cigarette lighter. It’s not just some dudes punching at each
other on a boring rooftop cough cough Batman, this is interesting because the choreography
of the fight is intricately linked to the space they’re in. It’s similar to why Jackie Chan fights are
so exciting to watch. And whereas a lot of movie fights can be complicated
to visually follow, Deadpool makes it easier for us by using its title card to show the
end result of all this carnage, so that we as viewers can follow each beat of the fight
with an understanding of what it’s building towards. It’s a zoomed-out case of Setup-Payoff,
and it’s no accident that this visual gag is also in service to the fight choreography. Just like in Jackie Chan movies, action is
intricately linked with comedy via a series of setups and payoffs, or setups and punchlines. It’s a rules-based system. Action without setup is just people hitting
each other, and comedy without setup is just empty quips. And where Deadpool thrives in particular is
in Setup-Callback-Subversion, where an action or a comedic rule is first established and
then deliberately broken to have a greater effect. Rules and clear information are so important
because they lift the audience up from passively viewing a scene to actively engaging with
it. So that’s what makes the fight cool, but
the fight is also so fun because the movie dumps a gallon of cartoon logic into the mix. Deadpool isn’t winning because he’s stronger
than the baddies, but because he’s using Bugs Bunny physics. Forget super strength or a healing factor,
nothing short of being the protagonist could make Deadpool land that sunroof jump. And in another case of effective Setup, the
cartooniness of the movie is conveyed through Deadpool’s eyes. Both Deadpool and Spiderman are known for
wearing masks yet being fantastically expressive through the movements of their mask-eye-thingies. For spiderman, this was actually a big hindrance
to his first two outings, but for his appearance in the MCU, they made sure to justify his
articulating, spider-sense-dampening, eye-lens shutter things so that they could make Spiderman
express emotion through his eyes without breaking the logic of the world. But Deadpool says F*ck all that, the eyes
just move, because it’s funnier that way. And from the second we see Deadpool, his eyes
convey that cartooniness to us, even if we don’t realize it’s because his mask is
impossibly articulating like a human face. Jumping back to jumping through sunroofs,
point number 3 is sound. Deadpool is always talking, singing, and yelping
throughout the fight, and the use of music makes for hilarious juxtaposition for moments
like the rising tension of the highway jump cutting to Angel of the Morning before the
smash of shattering glass makes all hell break loose, or when everything fades out and slows
to a pause for Deadpool’s stove joke and then comes violently careening back to full
volume. Another point for the comedic brilliance of
this scene, which goes hand in hand with the cartoon slapstick, is that Deadpool demonstrates
zero regard for his personal safety. Maybe it’s something about having a healing
factor and being functionally immortal, but he allows himself to get beaten up for comedy
at multiple points. If he was just Cool Guy McSwordsandGuns the
scene would eventually get dull, but Deadpool’s complete lack of concern for the situation
around him is strangely charming. And of course all of these great qualities
about the scene are in service to one thing above all else, and that’s Characterization. From the animated mask and 4th wall breaking
to the cartoonish irreverence and slapstick brutality, everything about this scene conveys
the pure, unfiltered essence of Deadpool. There’s no other character who could glue
all these disparate elements together in such an entertaining way. The test footage sold people on Deadpool in
two minutes flat, and the final scene atypically cribbed a lot of those same elements because
it worked so damn well, so it can rope people in to what makes Deadpool Deadpool in the
first minutes of the movie. This scene is a testament to how strong characterization
can not only carry a film, but can literally will it into existence. The character we got in Wolverine was so jarring
and, well, bad, because it wasn’t Deadpool in any meaningful way — But it may well
be because that first outing was so disastrous that Reynolds and crew went all in on pure
Deadpool, and it worked. Not just this scene, but the whole entire
movie, worked specifically because it was so bold and so Deadpool. Let that serve as a lesson for any big Hollywood
blockbusters you might be working on in your free time: focus on character and use every
tool in your arsenal to highlight what makes them so great. And that’s my take on this X-cellent scene. If you enjoyed that, check out some of the
other videos in the playlist, and have a wonderful day!
