Learning the Wrong Message

Deadpool recently debuted and became a smash hit. Hollywood was completely surprised by how successful, and many studio executives are left scratching their heads. So far, however, it appears they are all coming to the wrong conclusion: that Deadpool is a hit because it is R-rated. Warner Bros has announced that they will release an R-rated cut of Batman v. Superman and the studio behind the upcoming third Wolverine movie have announced they will plan on it being R-rated.

The R-rating is not why Deadpool was successful. It was successful for a couple of reasons:

• The marriage of actor with source material. Deadpool was created as a wise-cracking, 4th-wall breaking, madman. He is the only comic book character who KNOWS he is a comic book character. He's called the Merc with a Mouth for a reason. Ryan Reynolds' career is based on being a wise-cracking, smart-assed, but ultimately good-hearted guy. All he ever really needed was the costume, and he would be Deadpool.

We saw the same thing happen when Robert Downy, Jr. was cast as Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie. He became a franchise, and created the "Marvel" way of making movies and minting money. Getting a guy or gal that everyone agrees is exactly right for the role can push your movie over the top.

• Staying true to the source material. So often the studio says "we must have X, Y, or Z" in this movie. They dictate that a "big name" must be cast to draw in audiences. And they insist on making changes to the source material to make the material "more" something and "less" something else. In essence, they say, 'We want to use the name of the source material, but let's change it so that it is completely something else because we don't think the source material will sell.' And then they wonder why it flops. Deadpool kept close to the source material, treated it with respect, and simply updated it for a different genre (movies vs. comic books).

There have been quite a few comic book movies that kept close to the source material (while updating it for the movie genre) that have done quite well: The Dark Knight; Avengers; Spider-Man 2 (2004); Captain America and CA: Winter Soldier; Hellboy; Iron Man; Guardian of the Galaxy; etc.

There is an equal (maybe longer) list of comic book movies that the studios destroyed with their "vision," and that drove the target audience away, let alone casual viewers: Catwoman; Batman Forever and Batman and Robin; Daredevil; Fantastic 4 (pretty much every version); Ghost Rider (both movies); Punisher War Zone; Spider-Man 3; Green Lantern; Elektra; etc.

• Story. I can't say this enough, the story rules over everything. If you have a good story, people of all races and genders will go watch it. If you have a bad story, the best you can hope for is a big opening before it goes belly-up. Frankly, all of the comic book genre movies (and most movies in general) can be fairly easily processed into those with a good story told well and those with a crappy story, and the results will fall neatly into line with either the box office results, or the box office expectations of the studios.

Others have done the research and shown that most of the successful movies throughout history have been R-rated. Hell, you can go to BoxOfficeMojo.com and see how many on the list were R-rated vs. PG-13. The PG-13 designation was not meant to be what it has become for the last twenty years (see here for a great explanation). But the R-rating by itself isn't the determining factor here; it is the quality of the story, the quality of the source material, and the marriage of the actor with the role.

In other words, Deadpool wasn't successful because it was R-rated. It was successful because it defied expectations, had a great leading man, told a good story, and stayed close to the source material. Now, if we can just convince the studios of this fact.