The New Deadpool 2 Trailer: All The Small Details You Missed
Our national nightmare is over — Deadpool's back, baby.
20th Century Fox has dropped the third official trailer for the upcoming Deadpool sequel, which is now officially titled Deadpool 2. The NSFW trailer sees the Merc with a Mouth at his absolute mouthiest as he meets up with old friends and puts together a whole new crew for his new adventure.
The story of the sequel follows Ryan Reynolds' Wade Wilson (a.k.a. Deadpool) and the time travelling mutant warrior Nathan Summers (a.k.a. Cable, played by Josh Brolin) as they do — speaking broadly — some action hero comic book stuff or whatever. Cable's on a mission to defend a kid or something. In our considered opinion as professional pop culture analysts, this movie looks insanely sick, so if the final product is half as much fun as this trailer, it doesn't even need a story.
Though the plot of Deadpool 2 may be secondary to the fourth-wall-breaking humor, there's still a lot in this trailer to get excited about. To put it simply, there's way more going on here than there was in the original Deadpool, a relatively lean origin story about two small groups of people fighting. The sequel looks to really up the stakes, with new mutants, a crazy cast, tons of fight scene set pieces, and style to spare. It's a lot to take in, so take a breath, sip some chamomile, and follow along as we serve up all the small details you missed in the trailer for Deadpool 2.
Protect your neck
Previous trailers for the Deadpool sequel played it cute with the marketing strategy, going with a Bob Ross riff for the reveal and following it up with an action-figure take on Toy Story. But while those teasers for the film were cute, serving the purpose of keeping Mr. Pool's name in your mind, this third trailer finally brings all the goods, with curse words for days and violence galore.
The trailer also offers the first glimpse at the story for the movie, which still remains a little vague. In the comics, the time-travelling Cable spent a lot of his time protecting his adopted daughter Hope, and Deadpool 2 appears to have the Askani'son travelling through time to save a mysterious mutant child from captivity. We'll get more into that in a minute, but for now, take note that it appears that Deadpool will end up captured at some point in the movie, outfitted with a glowing-red collar that doesn't seem to be there just for kink.
The trailer initially positions Cable and Deadpool as enemies, with both heroes adopting a "punch first, ask questions later" approach. Could Deadpool end up in the custody of the same people holding Cable's target captive? From the looks of the flaming wreckage behind Wade, it doesn't look like it works out well for the bad guys.
Sick kicks
The original Deadpool was a relatively lean affair, a lower-budget lark that trimmed down its action set pieces and let the humor stand up front. After the massive and unprecedented success of the game-changing, R-rated original movie, however, Fox has let the money flow, and from the looks of things, it all ended up on screen in a variety of sick action sequences.
While a lot of the original Deadpool's action focused on a budget-friendly highway and junkyard site for its fight scenes, Deadpool 2 has a lot more variety.
The trailer shows off action sequences in a dark and cavernous prison facility, in the streets, in the air, and at some sort of samurai sauna, but there's also a blink-and-you'll miss it shot of Deadpool strutting his stuff on stage at a strip club, doing a front flip and sticking the landing in the sexy high-heeled boots you see here. They sort of look like a dominatrix's custom-ordered pair of Louboutins, which would make sense. We're not exactly sure why it makes sense, but for Deadpool, it totally does.
It's Terry Crews!!!!! :D
A big chunk of the new Deadpool trailer is given over to showing off the new mutants of the X-Force, the highly-trained squad of mutants that Cable ends up leading in the comics for awhile.
The team was first stealthily revealed in a quick shot in the movie's second trailer, to which many reacted with a double-take and the question, "Was that Terry Crews?" It certainly looked like him from afar, and the new trailer totally confirms it — America's sweetheart, Terry Crews, is thoroughly in this dang movie. It's perfect.
One thing the trailer doesn't serve up so readily is the identities of all the X-Force members, who seem to be composed of the obscure. A number of theories have come out as to identities of Crews' character, but we've narrowed our guesses down to two. Based on his look and the movie's context, Crews is possibly playing either a mutant named Bedlam or a mutant named — wait for it — George Washington Bridge.
The Bedlam guess is based on Crews' outfit, as well as Bedlam's proximity to Domino, played in this movie by Zazie Beetz. That seems to be the likeliest possibility, although it would be perfect if Crews were playing George Washington Bridge, for no other reason than the fact that it's one of the funniest superhero names we've ever heard. It would go along perfectly with Negasonic Teenage Warhead, after all.
Who is this kid?
As far as origins and motivations go, the comic book adventures of Cable are pretty complex, so much so that we've got a whole feature devoted to sorting out what his deal is. To put it simply, the telekinetic strongman is the techno-organic son of Cyclops and Jean Grey who was born in the present and raised in an apocalyptic future.
As an adult, Cable took an orphaned girl named Hope under his wing, eventually adopting her and keeping her safe throughout time. Up until now, we've been operating under the assumption that Deadpool 2 would see Cable following a similar story. The teddy bear Cable has with all of his guns and gear suggests a caretaker mission, and a teaser for the movie from a year ago contained graffiti Easter eggs referring to Nathan Summers and Hope.
But now that the full trailer has arrived, Hope is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the trailer heavily suggests that Cable is out to protect this kid, played by the New Zealand-born actor Julian Dennison.
While it's possible that Dennison is playing a gender-swapped Hope, it seems more likely that Dennison is playing a different, obscure mutant: Thunderbird, a.k.a. Neal Shaara.
The trailer shows Dennison's character standing in the center of an explosion, evidently a pyrokinetic mutant with potent powers. He's not a big deal in the comics, so a reinterpretation is likely. But if this is true, it begs some questions: Why does he need protection? And also, where's Hope?
Here come dat new mutant
Aside from Terry Crews and whomever he's playing, the trailer also gives a glimpse at Shioli Kutsuna as a mutant with electrical powers and distinctive hair. Unlike the situation with Crews, we've got a pretty good idea who this new kid is.
Our money for this role is on Surge, a.k.a. Noriko Ashida, who originally appeared in the comic book series New Mutants in 2004. Like Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Colossus, she's not generally a big name in the X-Men-adjacent roster, which makes her the perfect sort of choice for adaptation. You take a skillset, you take a cool look, and you build up a whole new character around them.
Whomever she's playing, it's bound to be a breakthrough role for Kutsuna, who hasn't previously had much of a presence in Western film and TV. In 2016, she provided voice work in both English and Japanese to the video game tie-in movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV. She'll also soon be seen in the Jared Leto-led mystery movie The Outsider.
The use-value of a metal man
The Deadpool 2 trailer also features a return to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which still appears from the glimpse we've gotten to be suspiciously empty. (Looks like the budget didn't go up that much.)
While the obvious money shot of this still is Wade getting a handful of that ice cold Russian beef, the real joke is in the background, with a framed portrait of Karl Marx placed in a position of prominence by one of the school's staircases. This is clearly not just Colossus' room, so it's not like this poster is for national pride. Instead, it looks like Xavier is teaching his students how to harness their powers and seize the means of production. It's going to be a good time, comrade.
Of course, it's not just the author of Capital getting some portrait love. The trailer also features an instant-classic shot of Deadpool commandeering Professor X's wheelchair, spinning around between two non sequitur portraits of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.
It: Chapter 1.5
We already knew all about Atlanta's Zazie Beetz taking on the role of Domino as a part of Deadpool and Cable's X-Force, but we had no idea that Pennywise himself was in the house.
The full Deadpool 2 trailer features our best look yet at It actor Bill Skarsgård as a member of the X-Force, but since he's always in the background, it's hard to discern just who he might be, mutant-wise.
Some guesses have him pegged as being Rictor, a mutant who once had a serious grudge against Cable due to believing the time traveler had killed his father. The look matches up somewhat, with Rictor in the comics sometimes being seen with a green cowl around his neck that you can sort of see in this shot and in the trailer.
Additionally, Rictor is in a relationship with the mutant Shatterstar, a sword-wielding mutant who can likely be seen standing behind Deadpool in the trailer's hangar shot. So our gut is telling us this is Rictor, if only because Including a romance between two men sounds like exactly the sort of thing Deadpool would do. Couching a socially progressive message in a movie full of four-letter-words and sex jokes is nothing if not the Deadpool way.
Purity schmurity
While the trailer doesn't get too into details on the movie's antagonists, it does look like a group of bad guys set on keeping humans and mutants segregated will figure into the movie's plot somehow.
In this still, you can see Domino delivering the beatdown to an enemy in a room that seems wallpapered with propaganda posters, with fascist-sounding slogans like "Purity, Humanity, Infinity" on the walls. Who this group is specifically almost doesn't matter — the X-Men universe is full of guys like these, whether they're the Orphans of X, the Friends of Humanity, or some other group of anti-mutant bigots.
Whatever the bad guys are up to exactly, we wouldn't be surprised if it was the start of something bigger. After all, X-Force is going to need some kind of cause to fight, and human-mutant separatists sound like just the ticket. As of right now, we're not entirely sure what their angle is. All we know is that whoever they are, they're probably bigots, and they deserve the worst that Domino can do to them.
Techno-organik
Cable is a kind of confusing-looking character, with a metallic look that at times makes him appear to be something other than human. This shot provides a closeup of the hero's metal arm, showing what appears to be something like a skeletal structure inside of the metal casing.
Would you believe that this is no high-tech machinery from the future, but rather Cable's actual body? As a part of his convoluted origin story, Cable was infected as a baby with an insidious disease called the techno-organic virus, which turns all living material into machinery.
The disease does a lot more than just make Cable look cool. In the comics, the virus plays a huge role in limiting Cable's power set, with the telekinetic mutant having to use a large amount of his psychic energy just staving off the effects of the virus.
The severity of the sickness depends on which comic arc you're reading, but as you look at the sadness in Josh Brolin's eyes as he runs and guns his way through these action sequences, keep in mind that he didn't turn cyborg in order to look cool. You're watching a man who's suffering, but getting the job done anyway. In that regard, he's not so different from Deadpool. Both of them have had bad luck with their bodies, but where others might just mope, these two go kick ass.
Devil may cry
Another set of antagonists who may or may not have anything to do with the more fascistic human-mutant separatists are these guys from the "DMC," which appears to be some sort of paramilitary organization with no obvious analogue in the comics.
Theories about the identity of the organization have basically revolved around trying to crack the acronym, which some have interpreted to mean "Division of Mutant Containment" (or "Division of Mutant Control").
The DMC's presence, whoever they are, looks to be localized to one fight scene that was filmed on the streets of Vancouver, apparently the same sequence that tragically resulted in the death of Zazie Beetz' stuntwoman, Joi "S.J." Harris.
Considering the Cable angle, it's possible that this group of mercenaries is seeking to capture Julian Dennison's character, who may be a mutant who's too destructive for his own good. If Dennison's mutant is incapable of controlling his pyrotechnic powers, as some shots in the trailer suggest, then the movie could be a race between several parties to capture the kid for either his safety, or the so-called greater good.
We'll call you
At some point, Cable and Deadpool team up to try and put a team together, and go about it in much the same way that director Drew Goddard probably did for his upcoming X-Force movie — headshots and auditions.
This shot shows Deadpool paging through the headshots, resumes, and curriculum vitae of a whole gaggle of mutant mercenary hopefuls, with the trailer pausing pointedly on a photo of one Rob Delaney as "Peter."
Delaney is a comedian best known for his super-popular Twitter account and the television series Catastrophe, and seeing him pop up here for what appears to be no real reason is totally in keeping with the Deadpool school of "random, but intelligently random" humor. Whether or not Delaney (or rather, Peter) will actually play a part in the proceedings, we're not quite sure — but it's pretty doubtful he makes it to the X-Force. We know one thing for sure, though — we definitely want to see the rest of those headshots. This iteration of the X-Force is off-the-wall enough already — the "rejected" pile for this project must really be something else.
From the studio that brought you...
If your eyes tend to glaze over the promotional text that makes up a movie trailer, you might have missed this amusing moment. In a bit of meta-marketing, the trailer for the action-comedy calls out a couple of romantic comedies, advertising the movie as coming from the studio that brought you 27 Dresses and The Devil Wears Prada.
Usually, this spot of the trailer would be reserved for shouting out a critically acclaimed movie in the same genre that the financiers produced — "the studio that brought you Logan," etc. Considering Deadpool's towering success over the rest of the X-Men franchise, this isn't really necessary — why try to sell cars when you can make a quick joke instead?
It's not even a joke that's all that off-the-wall. With the original film having its startlingly successful opening on Valentine's Day weekend, Deadpool has a well-established relationship with romance. A decent chunk of the original movie focusing on just Reynolds and Morena Baccarin played out like a quite cute, relatively twisted romantic comedy. Besides, it's probably better to remind the viewer of quality movies like The Devil Wears Prada than play up a relationship with the likes of X-Men: Apocalypse and Fantastic Four.
My sexy travelin' pants
At one point in the trailer, Deadpool wraps up a winding conversation with Dopinder by referring to the 2005 movie The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants as a piece of "pure pornography."
While this might seem like an amusing non sequitur joke that's funny just for being unexpected, there's actually a little bit more of a personal connection going on behind the scenes here. The movie Deadpool's referencing focused on a quartet of female friends played by Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, and Blake Lively — also known as Ryan Reynolds' modern-day real-life wife.
The couple met on the set of the 2011 DC movie Green Lantern, marrying in 2012. Some commentators are treating the shoutout moment as some sort of shady comment, as though the coming-of-age dramedy (77 percent on Rotten Tomatoes!) is something to be embarrassed of. That wouldn't really make any sense, though. If he wanted to rib his wife for a crappy movie in her filmography, he could have called out... well, Green Lantern.
I'm so lost without you
Deadpool 2 continues the charming tradition of taking the piss out of Ryan Reynolds' past career choices, poking fun at prior projects in some occasionally subtle ways.
The amusing opening of the trailer, showing Dopinder having a little moment of respite behind the wheel of his taxi cab while relaxing to the strains of Air Supply's "All Out of Love," didn't just pluck its choice of music out of thin air.
The choice of music is seemingly a reference to one of Reynolds' breakthrough film roles as an adult actor, National Lampoon's Van Wilder. That movie, which followed Reynolds as a hard-partying college student who sticks around in school for seven years before his tuition is finally cut off, is a bit of frat boy kitsch that Reynolds' charismatic performance single-handedly elevates. In one low moment of heartbreak in that movie, Van chills out on campus with an acoustic guitar that he can't really play while listening to the song, taking solace from its lyrics.
The reference to a past film role of Reynolds' that maybe hasn't aged all that well is a big part of what gives these Deadpool movies their appeal. The filmmakers aren't using comedy to punch down; instead, they're hitting themselves, taking pratfalls for your amusement. It's a highly endearing way to get in the audience's good graces — and catching the references makes you feel like you're in on the joke.
Deadmobile
While the trailer for the sequel opens with a focus on Dopinder's cab, which has seemingly become Deadpool's most reliable mode of transportation, it also makes it clear that the car might not make it out of this movie alive.
The background of one scene shows the cab up on a curb, at an angle, dinged up and apparently weaponized, jutting into the side of a tipped over bus. With smoke in the air and soot all over Deadpool, it's clear that the site is ground zero for some mayhem, but the damage to the cab doesn't look beyond repair — not this time, at least.
The most amusing thing about the return of Dopinder and his cab is that what felt like a silly conceit of the original is now becoming a baked-in Deadpool trait. Batman has his Batmobile, Wonder Woman has her invisible jet, but Deadpool has this taxi cab. Apparently, in the sequel, he's using it to get to just about every fight scene — much to the apparent dismay of Dopinder, who, unlike Deadpool, is very vulnerable and extremely killable.
Locked in here with me
In the trailer, both Deadpool and the mysterious young mutant he's tasked with protecting have one thing in common: their outfits. The ill-fitting coveralls (not to mention the steely surroundings and high-tech collars on the characters) suggest the duo are at one point wearing prison uniforms of some sort, meaning it's likely that our hero will either be bested at one point by his opponents and taken into custody, or will roll the dice on going undercover as a ploy to get a sightline on this kid.
This cavernous setting also appears to be the spot where Deadpool meets Cable, leaving the duo briefly at odds with each other as they tangle over custody of the kid. According to the trailer, Deadpool seems to think Cable is here to kill the young mutant, but we wouldn't be so sure about that. It's not clear what circumstances lead Deadpool to get captured without his suit; he's usually so capable in a fight that you almost feel he had to have done it on purpose. Whatever got the two into this predicament, they definitely won't stay locked up for long.
Concussive cannon
One moment from the trailer shows Cable being blasted back by the concussive force of some kind of cannon, wielded by a bad guy that you can't really see. This is clearly from the same scene where Deadpool and Cable converge on the whereabouts of the kid, who can be seen sitting it out to the side of the frame while a figure who looks like Deadpool, hooked up to one of those weird red-button collars, flees the blast zone.
In a trailer full of mutants, it's not clear that this is someone's innate ability being used to sweep the formidable Cable off his feet. Instead, it looks like whoever these bad guys are have access to some tricked-out tech — and this doesn't look like a weapon designed to bat back puny, squishy humans. Instead, these guys seem prepared for mutant intervention, which makes one wonder what their angle is. The original movie's villains wanted to create an army of super-slaves; do these jerks want the same, or do they want to go even further and just eradicate all mutants instead? If they've got weapons strong enough to blow away a guy as clearly strong and driven as Cable, they certainly mean some kind of business. Man, it's gonna be so much fun to watch 'em all die.