The hotly anticipated film Deadpool & Wolverine will hit cinemas this week, and rumours continue to swirl about the surprises the film has in store.
But who exactly from Marvel’s past, present and future is set to cameo in the film? According to director Shawn Levy, no one at all. “We don’t call them cameos,” Levy tells The National. “Well, with maybe one exception.”
Wait, no cameos? How can that be? Surprise appearances have been a constant feature of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the beginning, starting in 2008 with Samuel L Jackson’s oft-imitated end-credits appearance as Nick Fury in Iron Man, not to mention the many cameos of famed Marvel writer Stan Lee.
And of any film Marvel Studios has produced, Deadpool & Wolverine seems the best suited for surprises, for several reasons. Both titular characters enter the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe; it is a goodbye to the decades of continuity of Marvel’s many 20th Century Fox films before Disney bought the studio; and the fourth-wall breaking character opens up many possible nods to the real world as well.
According to Levy, shunning traditional cameos was a limitation that he placed on himself and his creative team to stop his film from losing focus.
The film has many surprises, but as they placed potential names on the drawing board one rule was written above them: “Never let temptation supersede storytelling.”
“When you have an unlimited database of available weaponry, it's exciting, and it's overwhelming,” Levy explains. “You need some discipline. You need to only integrate things or characters that serve this story. And that’s why we don't call them cameos. They're more surprises – they’re characters that are surprising.”
According to the film’s executive producer, Wendy Jacobson, that means that every character who appears in Deadpool & Wolverine serves an essential function, rather than just a fun distraction.
“They’re there to serve a crucial story purpose and have a very strong beginning, middle and end arc.”
Jacobson adds that the film’s creative team had a “war room at Marvel Studios where we had a lot of characters up on the wall,” and that Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios, was integral to deciding who would be best suited to appear in the film.
“There was a lot of research done on who could potentially be in this movie, and there was no one better suited to help us figure that out than Kevin,” Jacobson adds, saying that the team didn’t want any appearance to be for “shock value or look who just showed up.”
For Levy, it was important that the characters did not just have their own full story arcs, but that they served the wider themes of the film.
“They all connect to the central theme of wanting to matter, of legacy, and of redemption,” Levy says.
While many of the rumours – Taylor Swift as Dazzler, Jennifer Garner as Electra, and Wesley Snipes as Blade – have yet to be confirmed, one surprise character was revealed in a new trailer for the film released on Friday: X-23, or Laura Kinney, played by actress Dafne Keen previously in the 2017 film Logan.
Keen has been long speculated to be in the film, and has denied being a part in previous interview, telling The National in May: “I wish!” before adding in a joking tone: “see you in Deadpool!”
But the now-confirmed appearance of X-23 is a helpful example of explaining exactly what Levy is talking about.
In the film, as laid out in the trailer, the Wolverine is not the same man who appeared in the previous X-Men films. Rather, he is a version of Wolverine from a dimension in which he was not the beloved hero, but rather a failure.
Now, Deadpool has teamed up with the fail-Wolverine to save the world, recruiting his protege, played by Keen, to help him fulfil his potential by becoming more like the man audiences last saw in Logan.
Is this a cameo, then? No – in Levy’s words, it’s a surprise character, and a hint of the many that will be revealed when the film is released in cinemas on July 25 in the Middle East.
Until then, the hardest thing for both the actors and the filmmakers is keeping them a secret.
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