The Lessons From Deadpool: A Little Trouble Can Go A Long Way

The Civil Rights Activist and Congressman, John Lewis, talked about getting into ‘good trouble’. The idea was that to make meaningful change, it would require disruption, confrontation, and a willingness to challenge unjust systems. 

Now the Deadpool movies aren’t nearly as important as the Civil Rights movements but let me explain. 

The star of Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds had tried to get the movie off the ground for years. The powers that be didn’t think the public would want a meta, fourth wall breaking, merc with a mouth.

Now I am not saying Reynolds leaked the footage, but somehow…mysteriously…in 2014 some trial footage got leaked and the portrayal of the character was an honest, caring, and accurate representation of the comic book character.

Both the comic readers and the general audience loved it and this little act of disobedience has now spawned three films, with the latest being Deadpool & Wolverine (dir. Shawn Levy).

R Rated

The big knock on the idea of Deadpool was that it would have to be R-rated. This immediately limits your potential viewers, and that limits the money you can make. Therefore, bad.

Film companies want to make four-quadrant films. Males over 25 is one, males under 25 is another. The same with females, over and under 25. This makes your four quadrants.

The big hits are the films that appeal to all four quadrants, think Jurassic Park. Having elements that all of the quadrants can enjoy is difficult but if you nail it then you got yourself some sweet sweet cash money.

With Deadpool being crass and violent, the studios didn’t think it would have the appeal to get people into seats and thus money in their pockets.

Getting Into Trouble

This is where Reynolds, allegedly, didn’t listen and leaked the footage.

People loved it. Then he used many clever and non-traditional marketing messages to get the word out.

And he made himself a hit.

As of writing Deadpool and Wolverine is the highest-opening R-Rated film with $205 million and is the 8th biggest opening ever.

Thinking Forward or Thinking Back

The reason why the film studios didn’t believe it could work is that they thought forward. Obscure comic character, ultra-violent, overly meta so people would have to know lots of references, lots of swearing and sexual references, they just saw the potential audience get smaller and smaller and smaller.

And it makes sense, you can rationally see what they were thinking.

Add to this the fact that most comic book movies had massive budgets and even bigger marketing budgets, on paper it made no sense.

We often pre-rationalise things, and in this case, you can understand how if you were giving the money to fund the film you would not be confident of getting any of the money back.

With the little leak, people saw the possibility and that groundswell pushed the studio to give a little money for the film to be made and with a budget of US$58 million it made US$782.6 million. Not a bad return.

Testing

This teaches us that you never know.

Sometimes you have to try things and figure out how it worked afterwards.

Post-rationalisation is very hard and very scary. If you can’t figure out why it will work before you start you can see the mental mountain you have to climb to convince yourself to try this thing that appears to be set up to fail.

Sometimes you gotta get into some good trouble and try some things.