For all the raunchy jokes, club drugs, buckets of blood and meta punchlines, “Deadpool & Wolverine” may be the most sentimental movie of the summer. Hollywood insiders and superhero film fans were stunned to discover that last weekend’s Marvel blockbuster basically amounts to a big, sobbing, “Steel Magnolias”-grade sendoff to 20th Century Fox.
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After all, it was at that defunct studio, founded in 1935 and sold by Rupert Murdoch to Disney in 2019, that “Deadpool” first shimmied on-screen in a skintight bondage suit and pistols. It’s also where two decades’ worth of Marvel films were made, most notably the “X-Men” series, which catapulted Hugh Jackman to stardom. These characters first appeared in Marvel Comics but were licensed to Fox, leaving them operating outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the moniker for Disney’s film and TV Marvel adaptations). The merger with Disney changed all that.
Prominent amid the slapstick violence and fourth wall-breaking of “Deadpool & Wolverine” is an earnest tribute to the creatives who powered Fox’s Marvel machine. On a desert set meant to spoof “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” a skyscraper-sized statue of the 20th Century Fox logo is seen half-buried in the sand (it’s all very “Ozymandias,” at least if Shelley were more concerned with studio lots than pharaonic monuments).
And to salute those spandexed heroes whose cinematic exploits were cut short by corporate mergers or dwindling box office results, director Shawn Levy recruited a who’s who of discarded Marvel characters — including Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, Chris Evans’ Human Torch (of “Fantastic Four”) and Wesley Snipes’ Blade — for cameos. This pack of leftovers also boasts Channing Tatum as Gambit, a supernatural card shark whose greatest adversary was Fox’s greenlight committee. That project spent 10 years in development hell without a movie to show for it. But cue the waterworks during the end credits of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” when a montage of behind-the- scenes footage from this library of titles plays over Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” And that look back is resonating strongly with many of those projects’ filmmakers, actors and executives, who weren’t expecting to get all choked up watching a bawdy adventure.
Simon Kinberg, a prolific writer-director from the Fox Marvel world and executive producer of the “Deadpool” franchise, tells Variety that “all those guys grew up together in and around Fox movies and, later, Marvel Fox movies. I can’t imagine that specific group not addressing the lineage of the films they’re leaving behind.”
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Though fans may carry a torch for many of these films, even their biggest admirers would probably concede that quality control wasn’t one of Fox’s superpowers. After all, for every critical success like “X2” or “Logan,” there’s a much less beloved entry in the studio’s universe of costumed heroes — the less said about “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” the better.
Even more surprising is that a creative force like Reynolds — holding a blank check from Disney and Marvel — would use his first appearance in the MCU to eulogize 20th Century Fox, which was swallowed whole by Disney five years ago. That $71.3 billion transaction may have made the Murdoch family very rich, but it left Hollywood with one less studio to produce movies and purged thousands of jobs. But the relative merits of M&As aside, Reynolds seemed to sense that the fans needed to close one chapter before a new one could be written.
“There’s a lot of trust in Ryan, who is also a brilliant marketer. He’s got a profound understanding of the audience for these R-rated superhero movies,” Kinberg says of Reynolds, who now holds the record for the biggest opening weekend of all time for an R-rated film in the U.S. and around the world.
20th Century Fox pumped out Marvel films at an impressive clip for two decades, averaging a new installment every two to three years for the “X- Men” franchise (with lots of spinoffs interspersed throughout). The studio gave us indelible culture icons, with Jackman’s Wolverine carving out the most staying power. But Halle Berry’s Storm, Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and the blue-tinted Mystique (portrayed early on by Rebecca Romijn, then rebooted by Jennifer Lawrence) are immortalized in Halloween costumes and TikTok makeup tutorials to this day.
However, it wasn’t always a victory march, with critics or at the box office. Yes, “X-Men” kicked things off in 2000 with an 82% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a $300 million gross on a budget of $75 million. But Ben Affleck’s Daredevil and Garner’s Elektra (who had crowds screaming for her cameo in “Deadpool & Wolverine”) sputtered out in the early aughts. An early Fantastic Four attempt with Evans and Jessica Alba managed two movies with decent returns, but a 2015 reboot with a whole new cast was a financial disaster. Marvel will try again with 2025’s “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” this time enlisting the likes of Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby as it tries to finally deliver a super-team movie that lives up to the adjective in its name.
Reynolds himself embraced the mixed track record after last weekend’s blockbuster opening, posting on social media that the film was a “farewell to a place and an era that literally made us. We are forever grateful to the fun, weird, uneven and risky world of 20th Century Fox.”
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