DEADPOOL and WOLVERINE editor talks about creating the final fight scene and which song was almost used instead

The details behind Deadpool and Wolverine They’ve been kept secret for so long, but now that the movie is out, we’re getting a lot of funny stories about how the movie was made and what almost made it into the movie before the final cut was made.

One of these stories is told to us by the film editor, Italian:Shane Reidwho was responsible for making sure the final fight scene had the perfect music and timing to make it great.

The scene was epically timed with Madonna classic, “Like a Prayer,” but it’s actually been a long road to get to where we’ve gotten to.

Reid spoke about the process in a recent interview with io9/Gizmodo, where he explained:

“I was pitching a bunch of ideas to these guys and I remembered I had this connection to Journey’s ‘Separate Ways’ and I really wanted to use that.

I thought, ‘Man, when you walked into that room and heard that song, I thought, ‘That’s what this scene is about.’ It’s so funny.

There are abs. It’s a throwback to ’80s action movies and we’re going to let loose. And this song makes us laugh.”

Reid proposed it to the powers that be and got a surprising response.

“I remember going up to Ryan and Shawn on set and they were like, ‘OK, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to do this. We’re going to do Madonna.

We’re going to do this and this and this.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, but I also started thinking about Journey’s ‘Separate Ways’ and they were like, ‘FUUUCK! Okay, you guys do that too. I want to see that, too.’ And that’s just the creative partners that they are.

“And so it went. I convinced everyone. It was undeniably fun. The VFX department came to watch it.

People could hear him pumping down the hall. Shawn was hooked. And then we cut the movie and actually everything that was shot for that [ending sequence] was that the guys would just band together and explode.

We showed the movie to Ryan and that scene… I’ve never been so disappointed in myself. It was like a music video that had nothing special. It was building to this great moment and then it just completely fell apart.

And so we really had to think about that scene again and start asking, “What’s the heart of this? What are we doing and what are the stakes and how are we going to show those stakes?”

This conversation happened as marketing for the film was starting to take off. Reid watched the Super Bowl at Reynolds’ house, where the film’s first trailer was released. On the way home, he realized.

“It hit me like a bolt from the blue. They had done such a great job in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, seeing time erasing itself through practical ideas.

So we started there. How can we build something visually where we can represent Wade losing his life? We talked about the Back to the Future photo. How can we sort of show that visually? And that became really interesting.”

Reid began digging up and manipulating footage from the previous two episodes Dead Pool film, as well as previous scenes from this film, to show the loss in Deadpool’s life and the scene began to take shape.

“We built this really cool moment with Deadpool. I found a choir online that Madonna had done, so we were able to kind of weave something together as a starting point and start figuring out the tone. We were like, ‘OK, yeah, it definitely sounds like he wants more of that.'”

The problem is that the film is not 3rd part. His Deadpool and Wolverine.

“I think it might have been Kevin Feige who, and definitely Shawn, but a combination of those guys, who were like, ‘If we’re doing this for Deadpool, we have to do this for Wolverine.’ This has to be a moment about these two guys. We have to build it equally and it has to feel like their journey is paying off.”

But while there are plenty of videos of Hugh Jackman While Wolverine is walking around, none of this is about THIS version of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

“Wolverine was more difficult because you can’t get into the last Logan movies. You can’t get into those movies because it’s not supposed to be him.

“There was nothing like Wade’s birthday party, where we could use these tricks and these dishes to build something that looked like Vanessa was disappearing or something.”

Where would the footage have come from? The answer was right in front of them.

“I did this big deep dive where I started thinking about all the words we’d heard throughout the movie. The touching moments like, ‘You’ll never matter’ or ‘You can finally matter’ or whatever it was.

I started putting them together and putting pictures on top of them. And then I realized, ‘Oh, well, there was this sequence on the cutting room floor where Wolverine finds the picture on the ground and looks at it. And that was in the movie, but we got rid of it for timing reasons.

And then to the fire Daphne [Keen as X-23] he says, “You were always the wrong person until you weren’t.” We cut that out, too. We wanted to leave it on a comma instead of a period.

“And so we had this and I started to think that if we as an audience are witnessing these moments in their lives, outside of what we’ve witnessed, it should continue.

We started finding moments that felt like they were beyond what the audience had seen. And then when Hugh said, “I am the X-Man,” it was originally in a scene with Cassandra and we decided to take her out and save her and make it a moment where he accepts his destiny.

And so it was all a construct of extracting what we felt was new information for the audience. It didn’t feel super redundant or repetitive, but it could allow us to get into their souls for a minute and it could leave us with something that felt powerful and emotional.”

They achieved their goal. Deadpool and Wolverine It’s a great film and has put the MCU in a fantastic new position, allowing fans to enjoy the cinema again, confident in what’s to come.