Headscratchers / Deadpool (2016)

New entries on the bottom.

Looting guns

• In the climax, Deadpool leaves his ammo bag in the taxi, and is visibly pissed. So why didn't he take the guns off of the mooks that he killed?
  • He's clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, so maybe he just didn't think of it.
  • Because that's too much like a video game, and Deadpool isn't playing around (okay, but it makes about as much sense as anything else in the movie).
  • Most likely it's because Deadpool doesn't know how much ammo they have left in their guns, and he's been shown to count bullets. He also shot a mook after he ran out of bullets saying "someone's not counting." So it's probably because he doesn't want to take the risk.
  • Also, he's trained military; only in incredibly desperate situations would soldiers pick up an enemy weapon, and so he'd follow that if only out deference to his past training.
    • A soldier with zero bullets will absolutely pick up an enemy weapon if one is available.
  • And he'd already committed to "Two swords and maximum effort."

Swords

• How the hell did Wade learn how to swordfight? In X-Men Origins it made sense because Wade obviously enjoyed the memorability and personal nature of killing with a sword, but is that really something they teach you in Special Forces?
  • I presume it was after he got his superpowers, and on the big manhunt for Ajax, he kept running out of bullets. The healing factor took care of any learning curve issues.
• Probably for the same reason than in origin, Wade's way to deal with the stalker is not special forces either he is just an asshole who probably wanted to show off with ninja swords.

Safety Capsule

• How exactly did putting Vanessa in the capsule save her? It did protect her from debris, but not from the huge fall.
  • Presumably the capsule had some sort of momentum-absorbing mechanism (that or Wade was betting on the capsule simply absorbing the blunt force of the fall, at least minimizing the damage caused to Vanessa).
  • It's been some time since Wade "died". Given it worked on Wade, Angel's strength, and the unknown factor; it may be strong enough to hold just about anything that might come out.
  • In the comics, Vanessa is a mutant with Power Copying abilities. The adrenaline rush of the fight could have triggered her mutation, which then copied Wade's Healing Factor, allowing her to survive the fall.
  • Well, it's possible that the legs and frame around the capsule would crumple and absorb some of the impact, and the plexiglass would definitely protect her from being impaled by debris. She probably still should have been more injured than she was by the fall, but in Deadpool's defense that capsule was really the only option they had to protect her.
  • The same way that Tony Stark doesn't get pulped inside of his Iron Man suit: Artistic License – Physics.
• Wasn't that capsule still in relatively good shape after Wade blew it up from the inside? That thing might be quite absorbent for blow, make sense if the mutant awakening power is flight or Neosonic variety, you need to prepare for that type of thing.
  • Or you know, they had more than one.
  • WMG, but given that it's a asphyxiation tank intended to torture potential mutants until they unlock their powers that are then intended to be made into super slaves, it's probably designed to be resilient enough to keep a royally pissed off mutant from simply breaking out of it and going on a rampage once they get super strength or whatever. It took a massive explosion and later an Absurdly Sharp Blade to break it in both cases, so it's a fair chance for Vanessa unless the whole Helicarrier falls on it.
  • Is it even necessarily the same capsule? For all we know, Francis had already had a second capsule in storage or on back order at the time the lab got destroyed. With the experiments on hold, he'd have had no use for the second capsule until he learned about Vanessa and thought it'd make a great prop to screw with Wade.

Police

• There don't appear to be any police or emergency services in the X-Men Cinematic Universe anymore. An entire stretch of highway gets filled with wrecked cars and various body parts and a long time is spent still on the highway after most of the action is over with characters talking, but there is no sign of the police.
  • Maybe Ajax (or his Nebulous Evil Organization) paid them off? He's certainly a man of means, given his organization seems to sell super-slaves (to quote his own description) to the rich and powerful at the highest bidder, they might just have paid the police and other government bodies to summarily ignore their activities.
    • There is never complete certainty that a bribe will be successful, no matter how large it is. While there are doubtlessly cops who would pocket the money, it's hard to believe such a tactic would have a 100% success rate; these are human beings, not vending machines.
    • Heck, even vending machines don't take money 100% of the time.
  • That is, of course, assuming that he isn't simply providing government bodies with some of those super slaves. If you were a government agency forced to deal with a world of super-powered people, you might look the other way when the guy who provides you the firepower to do that commits crimes.
  • The accident probably blocked the highway for miles going both ways, not to mention the numerous people hurt or killed by the accidents. It's probably likely the police simply couldn't make it to the scene in time.
  • It's mentioned by the news at the start that the police can't get to the action thanks to all the wreckage. They probably should have flown a chopper out, but ground units not showing up is justified in that timespan.
    • It's easy to miss, but you can see the Blackbird Colossus flew to the bridge. We don't know how big the X-Men are in this universe, so the police either saw the stealth jet and gave up or realized that this was a mutant matter that they should stay away from.
  • Depending on how mutants and the X-Men are viewed (since they altered the timeline in DOFP) the X-Men might very well be considered mutant "police," since Colossus implied that Xavier would be dealing with Ajax and Deadpool when they were both arrested. Probably Colossus radioed ahead to tell the police that they would go in first to deal with it, and the cops were fine with letting mutant fight mutant instead of risking their lives against an unknown like Deadpool.

Helicarrier

• The final set piece of the movie is very obviously a Helicarrier of some kind in the process of being reclaimed for scrap, but no one acknowledges it as such or otherwise points it out as anything out of the ordinary. Is there some connection that I've missed out on or is it just a completely out-of the blue reference?
  • For that matter, the presence of a Helicarrier sorta implies the existence of S.H.I.E.L.D. within Fox's X-Men universe. And since Agent Bob appears in the film as a henchman for the unnamed private interest that Ajax/Francis runs or works for, the bad guys might be working for an unnamed stand-in of HYDRA instead of an adapted version of the Weapon X program. All of it is done in a way to reference Marvel Studios' intellectual property, but stay just shy of crossing the line of being sued by Disney's lawyers.
  • It's a disused aircraft carrier.
  • Nope. It's definitely a Helicarrier. When it begins tipping to one side, the thrusters/turbines are visible on its sides.
  • Even if it is a Helicarrier, they might be common enough in this universe. Besides three of the people who would say anything are pretty abnormal anyway. Why acknowledge it.
  • The Helicarrier is there because the filmmakers originally wanted Deadpool to tie in to the MCU. However, due to budget constraints, this was no longer possible so rather than reshoot the whole scene they just filed off all off the SHIELD logos.
  • Deadpool was never meant to tie in to the MCU. The idea from the start was merely to use it as an Easter Egg, and removing explicit reference had nothing to do with the budget, simply that they couldn't secure the rights/permissions to do so. All of this happened during the concept stage, so any reference was removed well before filming actually began.

X-Mansion security

• Rule of Funny may well apply here, but logically, how exactly was Deadpool just able to walk up to the front door of the X-Mansion, in full costume? Were there no security systems? No alarms? Absolutely no one on guard?
  • Colossus has been trying to get Deadpool to join for a while. If there are guards, they wouldn't think he was a threat if they were trying to recruit him.
  • Unless this timeline made Xavier more paranoid, the X-Mansion has never had guards. They have the fence. Any threat would normally have to face the senior X-men. Xavier is usually there and could shut down nearly any mind. It's a school and not a prison. Say a students parent wanted to visit? Besides Deadpool is still a very skilled man. He can sneak into places without setting off alarms if he cares enough.
  • You have a school full of some of the most powerful mutants in existence, why do you need more than cameras? Anyway, Negasonic Teenage Warhead opened the door before he could knock. They watched him come up and didn't view him as a threat.
  • Not to mention, there's be instances where runaway, lost, and even injured, mutants have showed up at the mansion in the comics. There's probably no fence or security system because Charles wants to make sure such mutants get to the front door, alive and well, and make their arrival a welcoming and friendly one, not to scare them off.
  • Deadpool said it himself: Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead are the only two people there, due to the movie's budget. Don't think too hard about it.

Song choices

• "Careless Whisper" is a song about a man trying futilely to apologize to his lover for infidelity. What in the world would make Wade think this is an appropriate song to serenade his fiancee with? Or is this just further evidence that he's messed up in the head?
  • It's just a really good song and fun to dance to. It's also a call back to earlier in the movie when it mentioned it (and Wham!) was one of his favorites. No real deeper meaning there.
  • OP: I was referring to the original mention of the song, in which Wade (Who was not yet Deadpool) essentially told his fiancee "Someday I'll be outside your window serenading you with a song about cheating on you."
  • The "holding a boombox outside their window" trope tends to be a big gesture to make up for some wrongdoing. Plus, many people know it primarily for its sexy sax solo in the chorus
  • Also, it's not actually a Wham! Song, it's George Michael's first solo song, that kind of random minutiae seems like the thing Wade would randomly really care about.
  • The single was released under George Michael's name, but it was featured on the Wham! album Wade displays, and was co-written by Andrew Ridgeley.
  • Also, "Every Breath You Take" is a song about stalking someone, yet is often misinterpreted as a romantic ballad in Real Life, so it's not hard to imagine Wade (especially Wade) wouldn't put that together about "Careless Whisper."
  • More importantly, it's a song about a guy apologizing for deceiving his girlfriend. As songs about "I'm sorry I let you believe I deserted you to go die of cancer alone, while I was really off becoming a snarky anti-(super)hero" are a tad on the rare side, one with lyrics about infidelity is as good a substitute as any.

Ajax's other powers?

• Ajax (or Francis) states that his powers are simply incredibly heightened reflexes and the ability to feel no pain, and says to Angel at one point that he can't heal like Deadpool. But he's introduced pulling off a very impressive Neck Lift, and on the highway fight, gets Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and yet is up and about within a day later. Feel no pain or not, he should be hospitalized for that one. Surely this means he has other powers beyond what he stated, including a minor healing one. Maybe Required Secondary Powers, but definitely other powers, right?
  • I took it to mean "I may have the ability to heal better than humans do, but I can't heal like Deadpool can."
  • That's how I understood it. Ajax has super strength, reflexes and healing but the latter isn't as impressive as Deadpool's. That's why he was so jealous.
  • Technically speaking a person who feels no pain would be capable of incredible feats of strength. Human muscles are much more powerful then we think but our mind restricts our movements so we don't pop our own tendons or rip our muscles. Feeling no pain pretty much lets you push yourself harder. But with all the injuries and strength Francis shows it ready should have been mentioned that he heals fast or has great medical technology, since he really shouldn't be in a state to fight by the end. Even if you feel no pain your muscles can only get pushed so far before they won't work.
  • This actually helps explain why Deadpool is finally able to overpower Francis and break his arms after the carrier collapse when he was otherwise shown as being quite capable of taking Deadpool in hand-to-hand. Francis had already taken his muscles as far as they would go and they were starting to break down.
  • Also fairly standard fair for superheroes to have additional unmentioned superpowers. Angel is said to be super strong, but she's also clearly more resistant to pain than a normal human too. And similarly Deadpool's powers clearly go beyond the ability to heal.
  • Might be Charles Atlas Super Power added to the mix. Deadpool's healing factor does not explain how he can do a bunch of flip and he can shoot even with a clear hole in his muscle without much problem. So it's not like Ajax can't have an overestimated peak of human condition from not feeling pain and good reflex helping his training.
  • Well sure. That "explains" Deadpool overpowering Francis well enough. But let's not forget he had just been hit face first by a freaking steel shipping container. I don't care how immune you are to pain you will feel that!!
    • If you're immune to pain, you're immune to pain, simple as that. Just like how if you're deaf, you can't hear, simple as that. He said it severed or scorched the ends of his nerves. There is no up to eleven that can overpower a complete and total inability to feel or do something.
    • You don't have to feel pain to feel wobbly after a severe head injury, concussion and diffuse axonal injury will take care of that.
  • Marvel traditionally gives their characters with healing abilities abnormal strength; the Marvel wiki has an explanation in which lactic acid build-up and other fatigue toxins are healed immediately, so muscles can fire for a lot longer and harder, as well as push to the limit since their regeneration takes care of any muscle damage cause by overexertion. So people like Wolverine and Deadpool can push their body to borderline-superhuman levels without consequences.
  • It's also likely that Francis's immunity to pain is a bit different from the usual problem of nerves not responding, his body simply ignore injuries and he simply stitch himself like a frankenstein monster after his fight in the intro so it might be that as long as his head is intact his body still function.
  • There's definitely something weird about Ajax's physiology beyond reflexes and non-functioning nociceptors. Not least, because being impaled through the chest by Vanessa during the big concluding battle should've collapsed his freaking lung on that side: something that no amount of superior reflexes or pain-immunity will do squat to prevent.
  • I believe all mutants are meant to be better then humans evolutionary speaking, they probably have higher bone density, muscle mass and healing. So if you a standard mutant with fire powers you'd still be stonger then an average human.

When exactly did Colossus and Deadpool meet?

• Colossus and Deadpool seem to be very familiar with each other, and Colossus implies that he's been trying to recruit Deadpool for awhile. But Deadpool's flashbacks seem to cover from the moment he gained his powers up until he finally tracks Ajax down. Those flashbacks do not show any hints of him having other adventures besides his quest for revenge, nor at him ever having run-ins with the X-Men. So how did Deadpool meet Colossus, and why is Colossus convinced that Deadpool has the potential to be a superhero?
  • At the end, I believe at the end, Deadpool says it has been a rough couple of years since he last saw Vanessa. It's not made clear how long any pieces of the process (especially working through all of the connections to Ajax) is, but plenty of time to meet Colossus while fighting some of them.
  • The flashback showing Wade's job with the pizza guy starts with "Two years ago." Going by the holiday/sex montage, Wade and Vanessa spend perhaps a little less than a year together (the first one is either Valentine's Day or Chinese New Year, the last is Christmas), which leaves about a year for Wade's enrollment in superhero camp, breaking the place and finding Francis. Presumably, given Colossus instantly recognizes all the destruction as being Deadpool's handiwork, they were tracking his revenge spree and Piotr was always just offscreen and hadn't caught up to him yet during the "Where is Francis?" montage.
  • Deadpool describes his hunting down of Francis as a "year long plan" when he's complaining about how the encounter on the bridge went wrong, so that all adds up.
  • I think at the start of the film Deadpool states it's been one year, seven months plus that he's been looking for Francis. During that time he's been hunting down and killing the members and customers of an international mutant slaving ring: Exactly the kind of thing the X-Men was formed to stop. It's really no surprise they may have come into contact. Note Colossus was happy to arrest Francis too. It was just the high collateral damage Deadpool's behaviour tends to cause that he took issue with.

Colossus recruiting Deadpool

• Why is Colossus so gung-ho on forcing Deadpool to join the X-Men, even going as far as taking him prisoner? Xavier has always been pretty strict about how prospective X-Men should join of their own free will or not at all, and if Colossus were as Lawful Good as he claimed to be, he would have respected Deadpool's wishes the first time he said no.
  • It probably has something to do with all the collateral damage Deadpool is prone to cause.
  • Colossus's desire to make Deadpool an X-men seems to be two-fold. First, he genuinely believes Deadpool is capable of good (though from the way Colossus talks, he quite probably believes that for everyone), and the X-Men would provide him an opportunity to do genuine good. The second part (and also why he ends up taking Pool against his will) is because Deadpool is a loose cannon causing death and destruction, he needs to be contained. So all in all he's basically acting like a stern parent with a particularly rowdy (heavily armed) child, trying to knock some sense onto him.
  • In addition to the previous points, maybe Colossus wanted to get Wade in front of Xavier so the professor could give him some sort of You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech that could bring Wade around, or a least give Wade a proper offer to join.
• Why would a peaceful old man like Xavier want an unpredictable, immature, perverted, and violent loose cannon on his team? Not to mention Deadpool would be around his younger students. He would probably end up decapitating Magneto, who is...you know, Xavier's closest friend.
  • He's not just going to slap an X on his uniform and set him loose. He probably wants to help Wade's sanity and give him guidance. You know, like he does to every other troubled person he takes on.
  • And there's no rule that every mutant Xavier knows or recruits has to live or work at the school, let alone hang around the younger students.

Blind Al

• How on earth did Blind Al know what Wade was trying to wash out in the laundromat? If you remember clearly, he's furiously scrubbing and she advises him to 'wear red'. I thought she was blind.
  • She could smell it.
  • She was already his roommate by then. Presumably he mentioned that he had some bloody clothes to wash before they headed out to the laundromat together.

Mutant Gene

• So was this confirmation, at least for the X-Men movie universe, that EVERYONE has the mutant gene, it is just dormant or recessive for most of the population?
  • Not really. It's implied that the reason the lab scouted Wade and the others was because they had discovered their latent mutant gene. Furthermore, the first thing Ajax does is inject Wade with something supposed to help activate the gene. Presumably it was buried deeper in Wade than in Colossus or Negasonic Teenage Warhead , so it didn't activate during his time in the service.
  • It could be that whatever he was injected with is related to the machine that Magneto created in the original X-Men film. Both can create mutants out of ordinary people but both are unstable in different ways - the machine will quickly have an effect on anyone but will leave the subject too unstable to survive long whereas the drug is much harder to get results from but will not cause the subjects to quickly dissolve into goo afterwards.
  • There's a theory that Marvel mutants express their powers in relation to the stressor that triggered them. For example, Colossus turned to steel because he had to stop a runaway tractor from killing Ilyana. When he was put into a truly life-or-death scenario, the adrenaline triggered Wade's mutation of a Healing Factor in response to the presence of cancer and severe physical trauma.
  • Francis makes it clear that he tortures his "clients" until they express some superpower or they die. Presumably, there's a large stack of corpses somewhere of those that didn't have the mutant gene.
    • Or it could be that the torture kills them before the serum has a chance to work.If they went too far too fast, their body might fail before the adrenaline kicks in.

Trying to kill an unkillable guy

• Francis is fully aware of Deadpool's immortality and powers. He can recover from serious injuries. Unless you have indestructible skin, messing with Deadpool is suicidal. If you have an unkillable man murdering thousands of your goons, wouldn't the smart thing to do is flee the country and change your name?
  • He's not magically immortal, he just heals really well. If you take off his head or reduce him to ashes, he's still dead. Or you can bury him. Or chain him down somewhere.
  • Francis himself says that Deadpool can't come back if there's nothing left to regenerate. He knew that Wade could be incapacitated; he was able to pin him in place in the Weapon X facility, after all. His plan was almost certainly to trap or disable Deadpool temporarily as before, except this time he'd stick around the make sure to destroy Deadpool's body while he's immobilized.
  • Also keep in mind this version of Deadpool is not the comic version that has been cursed by Thanos to be unkillable so he cannot bang Death, that Thanos also has the hots for.

Reference to the 'Taken' movies

• This troper is confused about the reference to Liam Neeson's character from the 'Taken' movies. Was Wade making some kind of meta joke? Was Ryan Reynolds in one of those movies? I have not seen them. What do they have to do with Deadpool or Mr. Reynolds?
  • Nothing. It's just a random joke.
  • Liam Neeson was in a movie called The Dead Pool. It's the last in the Dirty Harry franchise, and has Liam Neeson as the villain.

Super-Mutants

• Mutations appear to be extremely random in the X-verse. What exactly do Ajax and company do if their process spawns a Xavier or Magneto? It seems like Ajax and company would have spawned their own destruction long before Wade came along unless they had really extensive and versatile precautions. Yet there is no sign of anything more than what's necessary to hold a normal human.
  • Slap the collar on or kill before newly made mutant can get a hold of his new powers? Besides, it's not like Ajax told every candidate that he's gonna make them slaves and not superheroes, he just told it to Wade to spite him. So I assume other newtants would be more cooperative.
  • Magneto and Xavier are extremely powerful mutants... but their powers also required years of practice and experimentation before they could become as potent as they are. Like the above says, Ajax would have plenty of time to get such a mutant under control before they learned to properly use their powers. (Note that Magneto was held in a concentration camp for a good long while despite his own mutation manifesting, and that was people who weren't even used to dealing with mutants.)

Francis' Survival

• Okay, so I may have missed a possible explanation, but is there any reason Francis survived all of what Wade put him through? He gets smacked around with a fire extinguisher, he gets stabbed by Wade, and he has a one-way ticket to falling off the totally-not-a-SHIELD-helicarrer and getting seemingly crushed by the rubble. Do his mutant powers (if he has any) allow him to shrug off deadly hits, or was it just a brush with luck?
  • Francis is immune to pain, not that he doesn't feel it it just doesn't affect his body, he is basically a zombie who can only be killed if you remove his head or shoot his brain.

Serum

Ajax states that the serum is activated by adrenaline. So why did they torture people instead of just injecting adrenaline in them? Even if you're an immoral sociopath, adrenaline injection is probably much less expensive since you can buy it in epi-pens and definitely kills less prospective mutants.

• Mutations seem to manifest based on the source of stress, not just stress occurring. Perhaps if you just inject them with adrenaline, the mental component is lacking. Without the desperate urge to cling to and rip past iron gates, for example, and you've got no Magneto. Just inject the subject with adrenaline, and maybe all you get is someone with a superhuman ability to deal with stress. Or something completely random, like the subject thinking about how much theyed prefer to be eating a waffle at this moment, and getting the ability to spawn waffles at will. Torture and trauma spawns something to deal with torture and trauma.

Where did Angel Dust go in the end?

• The last we see of her is that she gets carried away by Colossus from the explosion. But after this, she's nowhere to be seen at all. What happened to her from this point? Will she appear in the sequel at all? Are the producers of the movie even aware of this question about her?
  • So, didn't show up on-screen in Deadpool 2. Maybe she was deep in a prison somewhere?

Colossus’ Look

• So...this movie takes place in the New Timeline, right? The one that we saw in the future portion of DOFP at the end. So...why does Colossus look so different from how he did at the end of DOFP?
  • Broad Strokes. The new future scene in Days only gives us a general sense of the new status quo.

Photo of Francis

• Assuming that what we see isn't all happening in Deadpool's head, when he is looking for Francis, how did he have a photo to start with?

Beating, electrocuting, freezing... black slime?

• One of the things we see during the Cold-Blooded Torture montage is Wade being immersed in some sort of dark goo. What is that stuff, and what form of torture is that? If it's just meant for asphyxiation, why not just use water?

How did they know Deadpool would get healing powers?

That guy recruits Deadpool by telling him they can cure his cancer. But how did they know that Deadpool would get regeneration powers. They don't seem to have any way of choosing or predicting what powers he would get. Did they just lie to recruit him and he got healing powers by coincidence?

• they didn't I assumed mutants don't get human illnesses such as cancer and would magically be cured no matter his ability. But they also injected him with something with blood in which could be wolverines(like the comics) maybe he was the only one they wanted to test it on