DEADPOOL 2: Where Tone Meets Genre in Screenwriting

DEADPOOL 2: Where Tone Meets Genre in Screenwriting This week, we are going to be looking at Deadpool 2 by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and a new addition to the writing team, Ryan Reynolds. If you missed my podcast on the original Deadpool, you might want to check that out as well, because one of the things that is exciting about Deadpool 2 is the way it manages to maintain a consistent tone, even over the course of a very different film. If you’ve studied TV writing in our  TV Drama Classes, TV Comedy Classes or Web Series Classes, you know that every episode of a TV show should feel the same, and also feel different. that it should deliver the same genre experience to the audience, the same tone, the same feeling, the same experience while taking them through a story that also feels very new, and very fresh, and very different. But now, we’re seeing the same phenomenon in big action movie franchises, like Deadpool or Guardians of the Galaxy or The Avengers, where each installment needs deliver on those expectations of the audience. So, setting aside the questions all over the internet about “which is better, Deadpool 1 or Deadpool 2?” -- rather than comparing these films in terms of which is a more successful movie, instead, what I want to do is I want to look at this question, which will be valuable for any writer, whether you’re working in features or TV. How do you maintain that consistent tone? How do you create one screenplay after another that has the same feeling that feels entirely fresh and also entirely consistent?” Learning how to control tone in your screenplay will be valuable for you in many different ways. If you are writing a TV Drama or a TV Comedy, or a Web Series, understanding how tone is handled in a script, how different elements can be brought together to replicate the same feeling for the audience, will be extraordinarily valuable for you, whether working on your own pilot, or replicating the voice of a showrunner as a staff writer on a series. If you are writing for feature films this will help you in a couple of different ways. First, a lot of the writing work out there right now is work-for-hire writing or rewriting, and to be a great work-for-hire writer, or to be a great rewriter or a great polisher of scripts, we need to do more than just create great stories and great characters-- that is just a given of the basics of what we need to be able to do. We also need to be able to write characters that didn’t originate from us, we need to be able to create characters that fit effortlessly into a universe or a world created by other people, We need to be able to emulate the voices of other characters. So learning to control tone will help you in your career if you are interested in rewriting, if you are interested in being able to take notes from a producer and adapt your work, if you are interested in having control over your gift rather than just letting anything that comes out onto the page be what you end up with. And it will also be valuable for you even if you’re just working on your own script. Oftentimes, there is a big gap between what we imagine our screenplay is going to be and what actually comes out on the page. Many years ago, one of my very talented students was working on his first foray into comedy. He pulled me aside at one point and he said, “Jake, what do I do if I do all this work, and it comes out, and it isn't funny?” And I said, “Well Bill, then you will have a really great drama.” And ultimately that is still the answer I believe in. As screenwriters, we really should worry a hell of a lot less about tone. We should really worry a whole lot less about where we are going to end up, and we should really focus on what it is that we are writing, what the script wants to be. At the same time, as writers, we often freak ourselves out, because we will write something that feels like it isn't coming out right. We are writing a wonderful comedy and everything is really funny, and then here is this incredibly dark scene. Or we are writing something that is incredibly dark, and then, suddenly, here is this goofy thing that dropped in. Or, we are writing something that is set in a totally natural world, and then, suddenly, we see some expressionistic, or magical, or fantasy element comes in-- something that feels like it is from a different genre. And oftentimes what we want to do when that happens is just shut it down! “Oh my God what is wrong with me,? Why am I going off on this crazy tangent, or at this crazy angle?” When really what we need to do is bring ourselves back to where we are, and say, “Okay let’s start by noticing what comes up, and then let’s start to adapt it to turn it into what it needs to be.” Jerry Perzigian, who teaches our TV Comedy Classes here has a quote that I really love. Jerry says, “first write it true, and then write it funny.” But if you are studying TV Drama with Stephen Molton he would say the same thing, “first write it true, and then find the drama.” If you are writing an action movie, I would say the same thing, “first write it true, and then find the action and the spectacle to build around it.” As writers, our ultimate job is to tell the truth. But in our final drafts, we need that truth to take a form that fits with all the stuff around it. If we are working on a film like Deadpool 2, where we are working with a character who is supposed to feel, and look, and be, and act a certain way, we need to fulfill the expectations that our audience had set up for them in the first episode, just like we need to fulfill the expectations that we set up for our audience on the first page, or the first act, or the first half of our script. We have to give them what we promised, and then we have to outdo it. If you look at Deadpool 2, it is an exciting film because, just like the original Deadpool, it deals with a lot of stuff that you aren't supposed to deal with in a comedy: suicide, death of a lover, child obesity and anger, child abuse, sexual abuse, murder. And one of the fabulous things about Deadpool and Deadpool 2 is that even though the films are both chock full of violence, Deadpool the character shows a lot of awareness that those bullets hurt, that the actions he is taking aren't necessarily right, that the violence that we see in these films isn't really the society that we want to create for ourselves. So you have this completely immoral character (or mostly immoral) character in a film that actually has a relatively moral message. You have a completely irreverent action comedy that is actually dealing with some very, very, real issues. And although you have a wise-cracking character who never seems to break a sweat, or never seems at loss for a joke, you also have a couple of moments of truly moving character-driven drama between him and his wife. What’s really beautiful about Deadpool 2 that it is able to wrestle with very real, truthful, dark issues without losing that constant comic fun tone that categorizes who Deadpool is and how the series works.   In the original Deadpool this was already hard to do, but in Episode 2 this was actually harder. In the original Deadpool what we have is a creation myth. We have the journey of Wade Wilson to becoming Deadpool, and in that story, we have the story of a guy learning what really matters in life. And even though, as I commented in my first podcast on Deadpool, it doesn’t draw to the traditional moralistic conclusion that you would expect in a superhero movie, Wade Wilson does go on a character-driven journey where he learns that it really isn't all about materialism, it really isn't all about looking good-- that he can actually believe in love. A really beautiful love story grows between Deadpool and Vanessa--his stripper prostitute girlfriend--where these two very flawed people actually find real love together. What that means is that by the beginning of Deadpool 2, we need a completely different kind of journey for the Deadpool character. The first Deadpool is a journey about discovering that love can be real. But, you can’t just go do that again in Deadpool 2, because the character has already gone on that journey! At the same time, if you have studied any TV writing-- and these big-budget action movies do work like TV in that each installment needs to feel the same but also be different-- you know that for the formula of Deadpool, for the engine to work, Deadpool has to go on another morality versus lack of morality kind of journey! It can’t be the same as the first one because he has already learned what love it, it has to be something new. So, Deadpool 2 hones in on a different theme. If the first Deadpool was about appearance versus reality, about a character dealing with the ugliness of his face and learning that he can still be loved for who he is rather than what he looks like, Deadpool 2 is about something different. Deadpool 2 is about family. And Deadpool 2 starts, just like the first Deadpool, with a really beautifully shot, fun, funny action sequence. Deadpool 1 begins with a visually spectacular sequence, but while in Deadpool 1 this was a fun action-fight sequence, in Deadpool 2 it is a suicide sequence. What we watch is a guy who can’t die, doing his best to blow himself up. We meet a Deadpool who is starting the film at a place of total despair. And though he is still wisecracking and fun, we can feel the despair underneath his actions and we can feel the lengths he is going to, to try to end his life. We then flashback to find out why. And what we flashback to is a sequence between Deadpool and Vanessa that is a little bit surprising emotionally and tonally, if you are used to the Vanessa from the previous movie and the Deadpool from the previous movie, because,