Deadpool is still a few months away, but publicity is ramping up with the release of set interviews from production earlier this year, and in one such interview Ryan Reynolds and director Tim Miller state that Deadpool is pansexual, which makes him the first major non-heteronormative movie superhero. When asked about the possibility of a “hypersexualized” Deadpool, director Miller says, “Pansexual! I want that quoted. Pansexual Deadpool,” and Reynolds elaborates, “There is some sexuality in this movie for sure.”
Deadpool is rated R, so we can naturally expect a little more of everything, including sexuality, which is not hard to do since most comic book movies are virtually sexless anyway. But will we really see a pansexual superhero? Saying a superhero is pansexual is not the same as actually including scenes in a movie of a character romancing a same-sex partner, or multiple partners, or anything else on the spectrum. Knowing how Deadpool is as a character, I’m sure we’ll get plenty of ribald comments, which I hope extends to equal opportunity hitting on people. We talk a lot about representation in superhero movies and LGBTQ representation is virtually non-existent. Even if it’s just limited to flirting—which I think it probably will be—and not a committed representation of pansexuality, it would at least be an acknowledgment that the LGBTQ community has a place in these worlds, too.
There’s also a bit in this interview that Blake Lively weighed in on the Deadpool suit. Miller says, “Ryan sent me this note about the costume when we had it and he’s like, ‘I love it except for the whiskering in the crotch.’ […] And then, like two weeks later Ryan was like ‘Did you think that note was from me? That was my wife.’” Maybe this will be Blake’s bigger and better—a site critiquing movie costumes. …I might actually read that.
Attached- Ryan on set in Vancouver last week for Deadpool reshoots.
