Deadpool
Wade Wilson
Movie
Deadpool 2
2018 · 119 min
Vanessa is killed in the opening minutes and Wade fails to die about it, which leaves him a probationary X-Man on a callout to a mutant orphanage. The kid he meets there, Russell, will grow up to…
Fox X-MenDisney+84%Released
The story
Vanessa is killed in the opening minutes and Wade fails to die about it, which leaves him a probationary X-Man on a callout to a mutant orphanage. The kid he meets there, Russell, will grow up to murder Cable's family, which is why a cyborg from the future has come back to shoot a fourteen-year-old.
The film's structure is a prison-break comedy wrapped around a Cable time-travel plot, and its actual argument is that a violent child becomes what people tell him he is. It is also the film that assembles X-Force and kills all of them within ninety seconds of a parachute jump.
Key facts
- Release date
- 18 May 2018
- Status
- Released
- Phase
- Non-MCU
- Saga
- Fox X-Men
- Runtime
- 119 min
- Certificate
- R
- Director
- David Leitch
- Writers
- Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Ryan Reynolds
- Streaming
- Disney+
- Timeline placement
- 2018 on Earth-10005, the Fox X-Men timeline, with time-travel excursions
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Ryan Reynolds | Wade Wilson / Deadpool |
| Josh Brolin | Cable |
| Zazie Beetz | Domino |
| Julian Dennison | Russell Collins / Firefist |
| Morena Baccarin | Vanessa |
| Brianna Hildebrand | Negasonic Teenage Warhead |
Characters
Easter eggs
- Brad Pitt cameos uncredited and unmasked for roughly two seconds as the Vanisher, electrocuted on a power line.
- The X-Force parachute drop kills nearly the entire team on landing, a joke about superhero team-ups that took the film's biggest marketing push and destroyed it.
- Matt Damon and Alan Tudyk appear unrecognisable as two rednecks having a detailed argument about toilet paper.
- The post-credits scenes have Deadpool fix the timeline: he saves Vanessa, kills X-Men Origins: Wolverine's Weapon XI and shoots Ryan Reynolds as he reads the Green Lantern script.
- The original X-Men cast — James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters, Tye Sheridan and Kodi Smit-McPhee — cameo in the mansion, hiding from Wade.
- Cable's arm, eye and shoulder-mounted gun are all comic-accurate, and Wade calls him 'Thanos' as a joke about Josh Brolin's other 2018 role.
- Juggernaut is voiced by Ryan Reynolds himself and rendered at full comic scale, a deliberate correction of X-Men: The Last Stand's version.
- Peter, the ordinary man with no powers who joins X-Force because he saw the ad, survives — a running gag that carried into the marketing.
Trivia
- Tim Miller, who directed the first film, left over creative differences with Ryan Reynolds before David Leitch took over.
- Stuntwoman Joi 'SJ' Harris died in a motorcycle accident during production, and the film is dedicated to her.
- Josh Brolin played Cable and Thanos in films released eight weeks apart.
- Céline Dion recorded 'Ashes' for the opening credits and filmed a music video with Reynolds in the Deadpool suit.
- Reynolds co-wrote the screenplay and has said he rewrote extensively during shooting and reshoots.
- A re-edited PG-13 version, Once Upon a Deadpool, was released at Christmas 2018 with framing scenes featuring Fred Savage.
- It became the highest-grossing X-Men film until Deadpool & Wolverine surpassed it in 2024.
Box office
- Budget
- $110 million
- Worldwide
- $785.9 million
- Domestic
- $324.6 million
Reviews
Critics
84%
Deadpool 2 does exactly what a sequel should: it delivers more of what fans loved about the first film, with just enough embellishment to make it distinct.
The MarvelGossips verdict
Funnier than the original and more shapeless, which is the trade every Deadpool sequel makes. Zazie Beetz's Domino is the best new character in either film and the luck-power set pieces are genuinely inventive. Killing Vanessa to motivate Wade is exactly the lazy writing the film spends two hours mocking, and it never quite gets away with it.
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Frequently asked
Is Brad Pitt really in Deadpool 2?
Yes. He appears uncredited as the Vanisher, visible for about two seconds after being electrocuted, and reportedly took payment in coffee. It is the film's best-kept cameo.
Are the post-credits scenes canon?
The film treats them as a joke rather than a plot resolution, but Deadpool & Wolverine confirms Vanessa's survival, so the time-travel fix effectively stands within Earth-10005's continuity.
Why did X-Force die immediately?
It is the film's central joke: the team Marvel's marketing built up as the sequel's big draw is wiped out by wind conditions on their first jump. Only Domino and Peter survive.
Who voices Juggernaut?
Ryan Reynolds, uncredited in the role, layered under heavy processing. It is a deliberate correction of X-Men: The Last Stand's undersized Juggernaut, rendered here at full comic scale.