Warning: This post contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Deadpool 2!

Deadpool 2 co-writer Rhett Reese reveals how the filmmakers fooled audiences regarding the premature deaths of certain X-Force characters in the film. Fans have been waiting with burning anticipation for two years for the release of Deadpool 2, star and co-writer Ryan Reynolds’ follow-up to the R-rated superhero blockbuster that earned a stunning $363 million domestically and $420 million overseas for a whopping worldwide total of $783 million.

Throughout the film’s production, Reynolds and Deadpool 2 studio 20th Century Fox have been very crafty about not revealing any potential spoilers for the film, and in fact, made normal procedures such as casting announcements - like the addition of Cable (Josh Brolin) and Domino (Zazie Beetz) to the film - feel like pop culture events. Despite the excitement the production helped generate for the film, though, it’s hard to prevent press outlets from getting the inside scoop, so 20th Century Fox went to extreme measures to preserve some of the biggest surprises in Deadpool 2.

One particular way to preserve one of the film’s laugh-out-loud yet shocking moments came with the misdirect the studio created when it came to the introduction of some X-Force members in the film’s second trailer. But for anyone who has already seen the film, either in preview screenings or at Thursday night’s record-breaking opening across the country, they were knocked on their behinds to learn that such X-Force team members as Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgard) and Bedlam (Terry Crews) were all killed off after only a few minutes of screen time.

So, to give the illusion that the team members actually played a bigger part in the movie, Reese revealed in an interview with CBR, Fox actually had some of the cast members film extra footage solely for the trailers knowing full well that it would never make the final cut. Reese said:

People did buy it, which makes the scenes where the X-Force members biting the dust prematurely so shocking yet laugh-out-loud hilarious. Hopefully fans won’t blame Fox for pulling a bait-and-switch on them, because clearly the move was more about preserving the surprises for the film than it was a move to pull people into theaters.

“We had actors who were really generous, and they were willing to shoot footage that they knew and we knew wasn’t going to end up in the movie, but was only going to be in marketing material. So we had Terry Crews out there fighting stunt guys, knowing that it was only going to be in commercials — and we did use it, it’s in commercials and it’s in trailers. It was all to help mislead the audience on this big gag. It was very elaborately constructed to make sure people bought it.”

Besides, it’s not unusual for a film to excise footage used in trailers from the final product, or in other ways, edit footage to create misdirects to protect the core of the narrative. On top of that, no character is really dead in a superhero movie, which is something fans will come to realize as they see Deadpool 2 play out in its entirety.

Source: CBR

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