Are you ready for the nichest of niche complaints? The end credits for Deadpool & Wolverine are weird. And no, I’m not talking about the Deadpool & Wolverine end-credits scene. I mean literally the way the movie delivers the credits to the film is exceedingly strange, to the point where I thought there was a mistake in the projection of the movie.
Here’s what happens in the film, and spoilers past this point. In the closing minutes of Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) are sitting around and having beers with all of their friends. While Deadpool talks about the moral of the movie, the camera slowly pans down to Wolverine’s cowl, and Deadpool’s mask sitting on a table, while everyone else talks and laughs in the background.
That’s the final shot of the movie, at which point it immediately and abruptly cuts to the closing, white text on black credits. And not the main cast, nor the director, nor the writers, but it starts with a few of the below-the-line folks.
I initially saw the movie on Monday evening (July 22) at a critics screening essentially across the street from the world premiere of the movie at Lincoln Center (the theater I was in was a few blocks down Broadway, but let’s not split hairs here). So my assumption when we went straight from that mask shot to the 1st AD, or whoever it was — I was a little too thrown to make a mental note of the name — I assumed either something had been left out of the credits for the critics screening, or wasn’t ready in time.
This wouldn’t be the first time Marvel left things out of a screening. Famously, after the world premiere of Avengers, director Joss Whedon took the cast to a second location (and never follow Joss Whedon to a second location) to shoot the iconic post-credits shawarma scene which gets a shout out in Deadpool & Wolverine.
My assumption was that, as usual, there were animated main credits with the names of the cast, writers, producers, and director, leading up to the title of the movie. Then we would get to the white-on-black credits. That’s how pretty much every major movie rolls out credits, and many minor ones, too. And certainly, that’s what happens in both Deadpool and Deadpool 2.
Both those movies, of note, also have opening credits sequences, as does Deadpool & Wolverine. However, the previous movies play the opening credits as jokes; Deadpool 3 includes the actual names of the director, writer, and cast while Wade murders a bunch of TVA soldiers with Logan’s skeleton.
While I haven’t yet gone to see the movie again now that it’s in theaters, having checked with a few trusty sources who have, the same thing happens in the theatrical cut that happened in the critics screening: the movie goes directly from the mask shot to the credit roll, with nothing in between.
Is this a big deal? Clearly enough for me to publish a whole article about it, but not actually a big deal in terms of the scheme of things. Perhaps director/co-writer Shawn Levy felt there was enough closure with that final scene. Or maybe they wanted to get to the behind-the-scenes montage from the Fox X-Men and Fantastic Four movies in the mid-credits, while Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” plays. Or perhaps they felt it would be repetitive of the opening dance sequence to “Bye Bye Bye.”
It’s just a strange choice that changes the rhythm of the end of the movie and breaks with theatrical tradition. But hey, that’s Deadpool for you! That guy breaks all the rules.
Listen to MarvelVision:
Discover more from Comic Book Club
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.