The Lies Deadpool Tells Himself

Let’s get this out of the way first: Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t a piece of high art. It’s an entertaining popcorn movie with some twists and turns and some incredible cameos. For anyone who has been following superhero movies and comic books since the ‘90s, it’s going to be brimming with nostalgia that will make you absolutely giddy. At least that’s what it did for me. Knowing what I was getting into and judging the film based on what it set out to do rather than what I wanted it to do. You know you’re not getting Citizen Kane or a Tony Gilroy script here. But that doesn’t mean that a movie like Deadpool & Wolverine doesn’t pull some great moves and has things for us to learn.

Let’s talk about the merc with a mouth and the lies he tells himself, and how those lies help tell a pretty satisfying story.

(Note: this article will delve deeply into spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine, continue reading at your own risk if you haven’t seen it yet.)

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

One of the great character development techniques in storytelling is to have a character starting with a belief about themselves that is untrue. Over the course of the film, that belief is challenged through the course of the narrative and they have to make a choice that forces them to embrace the truth about themselves. 

In Deadpool & Wolverine, thanks to his misinterpretation of his girlfriends words, Deadpool—as his more normal alter-ego Wade Wilson—is under the the impression that he needs to find a way to give back and sacrifice himself because he’s too selfish. In this quest to cope with this mistaken belief, he approaches the Avengers and asks to join them. 

When they reject him, he quits the superhero life, believing these negative things about himself. Slowly, as he gets back into the superhero life, he puts himself in increasingly risky situations—even suicidal situations—thinking that his worth is tied to his ability to be part of something bigger and make a difference in the world. He starts to believe that only through his sacrifice will he earn the love of those around him.

It’s simply not true.

At the climax of the film, the title characters are given a chance to save the world. One of them has to go into a power control room and create a circuit between a power conductor full of matter and a conductor full of anti-matter. No matter how much their healing abilities will keep them safe in normal circumstances, it’s believed that this will kill them.

Wolverine volunteers to sacrifice himself. As a variant who has already lost his loved ones, he doesn’t see a point in continuing and wants Deadpool to have a chance to enjoy his loved ones again, explaining that Deadpool still has something to live for. But Deadpool feels that his worth as a person is tied to the size of the sacrifice he makes, and insists on snaking the hero’s sacrifice from Wolverine.

Throughout the film, Wolverine has told himself a lie, too. That he’s the worst Wolverine in the multiverse. And he will turn his back on his friends. Before Deadpool can complete the circuit, Wolverine bashes through the door and they confront the threat together, holding hands, preventing them both from dying and helping them see the truth about themselves.

Applying These Lessons

As you’re working on your screenplay and dealing with characters, what deep-seated lies could your characters be telling themselves down in the soil of their psyche? How can those lies help motivate them on their journey and the risks they take, and how can they realize by the end that they’ve been lying to themselves? You can see this story structure at work in many movies, even others in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

This is essentially the journey Thor goes on in the first film in his franchise. By the end, he overcomes the lies about himself and becomes once again worthy to wield the hammer. Pixar’s Onward—starring Marvel alums Chris Pratt and Tom Holland—is another great example of this. Holland’s character, Ian, is obsessed with his father who passed away before his birth and feels like his life is missing something because he never had a dad. A magical spell enables him and his older brother, Barley (Pratt), to meet their dad, but only after a long quest. By the end of the quest, Ian realizes that he had a father figure in the form of his older brother and is willing to give up the chance to meet his father in order to give Barley the chance he never had to say goodbye. It’s a touching, underrated moment in a Pixar movie that tends to get forgotten, but a perfect example of this sort of storytelling.

It helps subvert expectations for the audience and creates a ready-made character arc for your story. If you’re struggling with your character’s changing, chart at what they lie to themselves about and how it can affect the story and how they can see the truth by the end.

Even Han Solo does this. His lie is that he’s a heartless scoundrel, but by the end of A New Hope, he realizes he’s actually a hero with a heart of gold.

Go See it

If you read all of this without having seen the movie, I’m sorry. It’s a ripping popcorn yarn that utilizes this particular technique effectively and emotionally. It’s funny and moving in equal parts, too, which is something I didn’t expect from such an irreverent series. In fact, the fact that they were able to find the pathos in such an absurd film is some sort of miracle. It also serves as a lesson in knowing the source material. There is such a wealth of meta-text that rewards those who know all of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to this film and plagued the last 30 years of comic book movies put out by 20th Century Fox. On the other hand, it still works without all of the baggage of that extra context, which is another mark of good writing.

Like I said, it’s not the best Marvel has ever put out, but it’s clever and handles the character arc and multiverse concept in a novel way, which is refreshing, given how many multiverse movies we’ve had come out over the last few years.

See it. You’ll learn a thing or two and you’ll have a hell of a laugh.

Deadpool & Wolverine is currently in wide release in cinemas across the globe.