Somewhere, in a parallel universe, Marvel fans are all dancing to Kenny Loggins while his 46-year-old country classic climbs the streaming charts. That’s because, before the opening scene of Deadpool & Wolverine was set to the tune of NSYNC’s iconic earworm “Bye Bye Bye,” Ryan Reynolds was dead set on opening the Marvel movie to the soulful strumming of “The Gambler.”
Pop music lovers have one person to thank for this change: editor Shane Reid.
“Ryan had a song by Kenny Loggins called ‘The Gambler’ that he’s been trying to get in a Deadpool movie since the first one,” Reid tells Inverse. “And somehow, it's such a great track, it just never fits.”
“A bone would hit this person, it would land in this person, you'd see a credit.”
When Reid joined production on the Marvel movie, the team had already choreographed an ambitious opening fight scene in which Deadpool wields Wolverine’s Adamantium skeleton as a deadly weapon. It was similar to the final version, but with some notable differences.
“The idea was that every credit was in a bone,” Reid says. “A bone would hit this person, it would land in this person, you'd see a credit.” Pulling this off meant a series of ambitious shots with the camera constantly moving, swooping, and spinning in different directions. “I was a like: Do we like all these moves?”
The biggest issue, however, was that the music choice wasn’t working. So Reid took it upon himself to fix the scene. “I don't really follow rules,” he says. Reid swapped out “The Gambler” for ZZ Top’s 1980s rock anthem “Sharp Dressed Man” and everything clicked into place.
“We got rid of some of the camera moves,” Reid says. “Seeing Deadpool pop around to people was more fun than sort of following them through a fight.”
There was just one problem: they still needed the right song. Kenny Loggins was out, but ZZ Top felt like “more of a Guardians tone,” so everyone combed through their playlists for ideas. The final list of options included Britney Spears and Ricky Martin, but ultimately it came down to a battle of the boy bands: Backstreet Boys vs. NSYNC.
“‘Bye Bye Bye’ was just perfect. It's in our bones.”
“‘Bye Bye Bye’ was just perfect,” Reid says. “It's in our bones. It's in our DNA. We all love it. We knew the song would play almost in its entirety, so people would just really have a lot of joy in the theater. It contrasted so well.”
That’s just the story behind one memorable scene in Deadpool & Wolverine, but Shane Reid is chock-full of them. As picture editor, he touched the film from beginning to end, from using CGI to visualize entire scenes before they were even filmed to “chiseling” away at the film until it was ready for release. Inverse caught up with Reid to break down some of our favorite (and least favorite) moments in the movie. Here’s what we learned.
Warning: Huge spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine ahead!
The Wolverine montage and “Cavill-Rine”
One of Deadpool & Wolverine’s most memorable scenes has almost nothing to do with combat. Once Wade Wilson learns that his universe is dying due to its lack of a Wolverine, he sets out to find a new one in a montage across the multiverse. The scene features Hugh Jackman as various versions of the superhero inspired by some iconic comic book moments (including his first-ever appearance in The Incredible Hulk #180 and “Old Man Logan’), but the biggest surprise is a Wolvie variant played by none other than Henry Cavill, aka Cavill-Rine.
“For Cavill-Rine, the idea was actually that he [Deadpool] would step through the portal where he had finished fighting all the TV agents and he would be there with Cavill-Rine, and that was it,” Reid says.
“Ryan was really convinced the audience was going to really want to get to Hugh as quick as possible.”
The original montage was much smaller in scope, featuring just Cavill-Rine and Jackman as a comics-accurate short Wolverine and eyepatch-wearing version known as “Patch.” But before they could film it, Hollywood actors went on strike, bringing production on the movie to a screeching halt.
“We shut down midway through production, and instead of just stopping, we went to New York for five weeks and edited just refined what we had,” Reid says.
During that process, he and his co-editor Dean Zimmerman realized the scene was missing something, so they went to Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy with and pitched something more ambitious. At first, the filmmakers didn’t go for it.
“We had the first third of the movie done, maybe even close to half, and we were like, all right, well, let's just keep working this stuff until we feel really good about it,” Reid says. “We know exactly. We got rid of a few things going back into production, but one of the ones was Dean and I were just like, we went to Shawn and Ryan and we were like, this search for Wolverine, it can be so fun.”
“Ryan was really convinced the audience was going to really want to get to Hugh as quick as possible,” Reid recalls. “We kept saying, ‘But this is Hugh. This is a more fun version of Hugh, and we get to see many versions of Hugh.’”
Eventually, Reynolds gave in and the editors teamed up with a storyboard artist to pitch 10 iconic Wolverine moments based on comic book covers and iconic moments. From that process, they added Old Man Logan, crucified Wolverine, and the original Wolverine in the brown suit — which meant “we could throw the Hulk in,” too.
Chris Evans’ Cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine
Perhaps the biggest casting surprise in Deadpool & Wolverine is Chris Evans. Not only does the Captain America actor return to the MCU, but in a second twist, it’s revealed that he’s actually playing his previous Marvel role: Fantastic Four member Johnny Storm (aka, the Human Torch).
Reid didn’t have anything to do with casting Evans in the movie, but he did help create one of the actor’s funniest moments.
“Johnny Storm landing on the tower and crushing his balls and falling to his demise in humility was all built in the edit,” Reid says.
While the goal of the scene was always to humiliate Chris Evans, in the original version “he was extinguished in the sky and would hit a truck.” But Reid knew it could be funnier. The scene already featured a tower where Evans is standing when he first announces himself. Suddenly, everything clicked into place.
“We started to think, well, he's up high, so what if we just have him, in a very sort of Bugs Bunny way, land on the tower and crush his testicles,” Reid says.
Forgotten Marvel Heroes, Assemble
The movie’s most ambitious scene unites a team of forgotten superheroes against an army of post-apocalyptic soldiers. That team, which includes Deadpool and Wolverine along with X-23 (Dafne Keen), Gambit (Channing Tatum), Elektra (Jennifer Garner), and Blade (Wesley Snipes) come together like some sort of alternate-reality Avengers. Behind the scenes, figuring out how to make all these characters interact onscreen proved surprisingly difficult.
“When we first put that scene together, it was just like the film was telling us, this is nowhere near enough,” Reid says. “Ryan was very vocal that this isn't what was in his head. Not as in anyone did a bad job, the scope was just not there.”
Reid points to one moment in particular that came straight out of Reynold’s brain and onto the screen: “Ryan had ideas in his head of a lineup of people dropping all their guns in one shot — finding ways to feel like there was this army they were up against.”
One of the coolest moments in the scene, however, came directly from Reid: Blade’s iconic Glaive (the boomerang-like weapon made from two curved daggers attached at the handle).
“I was in my hotel room one night listening to a podcast about Deadpool,” Reid says, “just to keep my finger on the pulse of what people are asking for, and maybe I'd present those ideas.”
“I think we need a boomerang moment.”
He recalls one podcast in particular where the host complained for 30 minutes about the state of Marvel’s upcoming Blade movie starring Mahershela Ali, which has hit various production issues and delays since it was first announced in 2019.
“They started talking about his signature moves and his boomerang,” Reid says. “I remember texting Shawn that night. Here’s that text conversation, according to Reid.
Shane Reid: “I think we need a boomerang moment. I think it's going to be a crowd-pleasing moment. It's one of those Blade things that he does that people will love.”
Shawn Levy: “Look, you're probably not going to hear this on a giant action movie with big budget again, but do whatever you want, whatever's in your heart, whatever you feel like is going to work.”
While the scene certainly feels epic, it’s arguably missing the level of epicness that audiences have been trained to expect from a big Marvel team-up. Think back to the Avengers movies and their “splash page” moments when the entire team suddenly moves in perfect sync onscreen and you’ll get what I mean. By comparison, Deadpool & Wolverine’s big group fight feels more chaotic and frenzied, but Reid says that was always the intent.
“Shawn wanted to shoot action that felt different than those other movies,” he says. “These fight sequences are on real ground in real locations. That was a real pit with all the real barricades around it. You're watching them fight in the dirt with real weapons. You're watching Gambit do stuff as a person limited by gravity.”
“There isn’t a moment that felt as iconic as the Avengers getting together.”
Reid contrasts this with the Avengers, a more CGI-heavy group that includes characters like the Hulk and Iron Man, which frees those films to put the characters wherever they need in three dimensions to get the perfect shot. (Does blocking exist? Sure, but I also get what Reid is saying.)
He also rightfully points out that the focus of an Avengers movie is well, the Avengers, while characters like Blade and Gambit were important to, but not the focus of Deadpool & Wolverine.
“There isn’t a moment that felt as iconic as the Avengers getting together,” Reid says, “but this film wasn't centered around those people. So it just became about: How do we shoot this in a way that feels unique and different?”
Deadpool & Wolverine vs. the Deadpool Corps
Deadpool & Wolverine’s final fight scene pits our heroes against an entire army of Deadpool variants (including a floating, decapitated “Headpool” and a female variant voiced by Blake Lively). It’s a bloody rampage as our heroes violently mow down dozens of enemies to the sweet sound of Madonna in a mostly un-broken single shot.
“The stunt video is amazing,” Reid says. “I hope they release it one day. All those stunt guys doing it in the tracking shot.”
However, when they showed it to early test audiences, something wasn’t working. Ultimately, the problem was that the scene was too long. They came up with two solutions.
“We worked with our visual effects team to do subtle speed ramps.”
The first was to cut away from the action several times, weaving in shots of Blind Al (Leslie Uggams) as she comments on the action from her apartment window above. Shawn Levy had actually already filmed those moments on a hunch, and by stitching them into the scene they were able to remove “about a minute and a half out of the oner.”
The second solution? Simply hit fast forward on the scene.
“We worked with our visual effects team to do subtle speed ramps,” Reid says. “There were very little, you couldn't do too much or it would look very comical. So we sped up little tiny bits here and there.”
More behind the scenes photos, via Shane Reid and Marvel.
The scene ends with Wolverine and Deadpool fighting their way through a bus and busting out the back like a pair of murderous Kool-Aid Men. This was yet another idea that came together at the last minute.
“We had to design the sort of bullet-time camera that came behind the bus,” Reid says. “It was scary if that was even going to get done.”
On top of that, Reynolds decided that it would be funny if right after he and Jackman burst through the back of the bus, he tripped and fell over.
“He actually hijacked a crew and just shot a little bit of him doing that stunt and sent it to us in the final hours of that movie,” Reid says. “That was probably the last shot that we were working on. That was a massive thing that seems very easy but actually took all of everyone's brain power and talent to make work.”
