The ‘Deadpool 2’ Writers Tell Us What Makes A Perfect Ironic Fighting Song

Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s new film, Life, opens this weekend – a horror movie set on the International Space Station that’s quite a departure from the tone we usually expect from the duo, namely, movies with a more comedic flare, like Zombieland and Deadpool. (And we’ll have much more with them about Life later in the week.)

As for the upcoming Deadpool 2, Reese and Wernick will dodge your question about behind the scenes strife that they might have experienced from the departure of Deadpool director Tim Miller. (And they will admit they are dodging the question.)

“Without getting into too much detail about it, we love Tim,” says Wernick. He continues, “We all had a wonderful experience creating something that audiences seemed to really embrace on the first one. We’re so very excited to move forward with Dave Leitch on the second one. So again, not to dodge the question, but we’re kind of dodging the question.”

Before Logan, we saw a teaser for the new Deadpool film that starts out with Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson listening to Jon Parr’s 1985 hit, “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” – a song that fits in with Deadpool’s ever-growing list of ironic music cues that already included Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning” and Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration.” So, how do they come up with the perfect ironic Deadpool song (Reese and Wernick did not dodge this answer.)

“Ryan now has his playlist filed,” says Reese. “Whenever we come up with an idea, he puts it on there and we toss it around. But you know, the nice thing about Deadpool is it gives you the chance to do ironic music choices as well as appropriate ones. So sometimes it’s kickass songs and sometimes it’s the opposite of kickass songs that are funny because they’re not kickass songs.”

Wernick says, “I mean, we were sitting at a Bel Air hotel writing with Ryan on this one and Ryan had his computer set to the playlist. He was cranking it! We were all writing it in robes, you know. And if that doesn’t give you a terrifying visual, I don’t know what will.”

So what makes the perfect ironic Deadpool song Rhett Reese gives us a sneak of what we will probably hear in Deadpool 2.

“I’ll give you a preview of the one I’m going to get in there if it kills me,” says Reese. “John Denver. John Denver was originally in Deadpool 1. There’s this John Denver song called ‘I Want to Live.’ And ‘I Want to Live,’ we had playing over the torture montage where Wade was getting his cancer cure – and it was like the perfect song for it. The problem was that the tempo was too slow. So it was this slow tempo playing against sort of more visceral editing and it just didn’t quite work. But I’m going to get John Denver back in there if it kills me.”

Wernick also has a song he wants in Deadpool 2 that was cut from the first film, “‘The Gambler’ was another one. Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler.’ Ryan and I are desperate to get that into at least one of the next couple of Deadpool movies.”

“It was when he was beating up Ajax out on the freeway in his motorcycle helmet,” remembers Reese. “It didn’t get in just because it kind of played at a time when we needed to learn a little bit more about his hatred for Ajax. But yeah, we’re still looking to get that one in, too.”

“It wasn’t playing,” interjects Wernick. ”Ryan was singing it! And it was haunting and awesome.”

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