YouTuber A Drink With Crazy recently argued that Marvel Studios bringing in Hugh Jackman to reprise his role as Wolverine doesn’t matter because their writing talent has significantly declined over the last half decade.
At the end of September, Jackman confirmed he would be teaming up with Reynolds to reprise his role as Wolverine for the third Deadpool movie.
Reynolds shared a video to his social media platforms providing an update on Deadpool 3. He stated, “I’ve had to really search my soul on this one. His first appearance in the MCU obviously needs to feel special. We need to stay true to the character, find new depth, and motivation, new meaning.”
“Every Deadpool needs to stand out and stand apart,” he continued. “It’s been an incredible challenge that has forced me to reach down deep inside and I have nothing. Just completely empty up here. And terrifying. But we did have one idea.”
Jackman then walks behind him as Reynolds asks, “Hey, Hugh, you want to play Wolverine one more time?” Jackman replies, “Yeah, sure, Ryan.” It’s then revealed the film will arrive in theaters on September 6, 2024.
Hard keeping my mouth sewn shut about this one. ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/OdV7JmAkEu
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) September 27, 2022
RELATED: Hugh Jackman’s Wife Deborra-Lee Furness Responds To Rumors The Wolverine Actor Is Gay
Following this announcement, A Drink With Crazy recalled a discussion he had with one of his subscribers discussing actors aging out of their roles, “In one of my earlier videos or posts, I can’t remember which one it actually was, but I had… The Real Nerdy Review, he commented he was really excited to see guys like this come back. And I said, ‘No, I really don’t.’ I said, ‘I think they’re too old for the roles.’
He elaborated, “They’ve done their time. They’ve done their roles. I just think there comes a point when you age — and not everybody ages at the same rate so don’t go, ‘Well, this person who’s…’ Yes, it’s all on an individual basis, but you can see age affect people differently.”
The YouTuber continued, “Now, when age affects people differently some people can go longer, some people can’t. This is a highly intensive, physical role. Henry Cavill, although he might have to look good for some movies, Henry Cavill being Superman I do not think is going to be as intensive as Logan. I don’t believe that for a second and especially when you have to rely on VFX for a character like Superman. There’s a lot of things there where it doesn’t have to be as intensive.”
“Now, going to a guy who is absolutely physical in a lot of his roles, Tom Cruise has seemed to stand the test of time,” he notes. “I mean he’s well into his 60s now and still pulling off physical stunts. I mean if we really want to talk about the guy who just can do his own stunts and didn’t give up until he physically couldn’t do it anymore – Jackie Chan, right? So time affects everybody differently.
He then got to the meat of his argument, “But my point in what The Real Nerdy Review said in that I’m not really excited for these older actors to keep doing their roles is because we need to let the timeless stay timeless. And the only reason that they are doing this. The only reason that they are doing anything remotely close to bringing Hugh Jackman back for Deadpool 3 is because Disney needs money. They’ve had failure after failure. Yeah, they still bring in some coin here and there, but what they’ve been doing with the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t working.”
“To bring in an aging actor in is not the same as just to start hiring people who can write good stories again,” he asserted. “And these guys can’t do it forever. But for some reason, just like we have seen with them having to go back other comic book character that they can’t create, that they can’t make, Disney can’t make a new actor because they don’t have the writing chops to do it.”
“The reason Hugh Jackman is big, the reason Henry Cavill is big, the reason Robert Downey Jr. is big, the reason Johnny Depp is big, is because they had good writing behind them at least to some degree in their earlier careers,” he declared.
“You are not going to be able to sell these older actors who have these legacies behind them just like you can’t sell the comic books from the older characters that had legacies behind them because your writing is not good,” he said. “This is something that I absolutely love to see though because they’re going to make all the wrong moves. And by making all the wrong moves the way that they are making them they are granting the space to the new people who are coming up who are writing.”
After listing off a number of creators he stated, “They are making way for all these fantastic creators because the only thing that they can do is look back in the past to try to use that thing that they think that worked, which it wasn’t the thing that they think it was. So they go back in the past, they use that thing, they bring it to the present whether it’s characters from a comic book or actors who are aging out and they try to make them the thing for their movie not realizing it had nothing to do with that.
It’s all about the writing and it’s all about how good those characters are,” he concluded.
There’s already evidence to back up his point. One need look no further than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The film starred Jackman as Wolverine and also featured Reynolds as some kind of weird, twisted version of Deadpool with his mouth sewn shut. It’s one of the worst comic book films to be made with a rotten audience score on Rotten Tomatoes of 58%
On Metacritic it has a user score of 5.4 out of 10. On IMDb it has a user rating of 6.5 out of 10. Just because Jackman and Reynolds happened to be in the film did not make the movie any good.
What do you make of his argument? Do you think Jackman reprising his role as Wolverine will improve the poor writing Marvel Studios has produced since Avengers: Infinity War?
NEXT: Rumor: Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine To Don Classic Yellow Suit In ‘Deadpool 3’