The Deadpool 2 movie has finally revealed Josh Brolin as Cable and he looks amazing. But… that character is a mess when it comes to his backstory, so how is director David Leitch going to handle it?
"The character of Cable is complex," Leitch told me when we sat down to talk about his new action movie Atomic Blonde. That's a slight understatement - he's actually the future son of Cyclops and a clone of Jean Grey sent back to the present day, and that's the easy bit. "I think in the Deadpool franchise, the writers are really good at distilling the good stuff and applying that to the material in this universe," he says cryptically, adding, "we're doing the same stuff to Cable. His back story is complicated but we're finding one that's reverent and special also for our film. So I think it's going to be great."
As for the rest of the movie, Leitch explains: "Once again I'm approaching this as I would approach any other movie as a choreographer - the action has to define the character, and that character is really well established in the first one." Let's not forget either that 'that character' is played by Ryan Reynolds, who's almost borderline obsessed with Deadpool. "Ryan lives and breathes that character," says Leitch, "He's an incredible collaborator and I'm having a blast. He does know it inside and out."
Most importantly, though, he says he and Reynolds have a "really good rapport with what we want to do with the action to maintain the DNA of the original, but also maybe elevate it a little bit for this new chapter." Plus, he thinks, we might "learn a little bit more about Deadpool" along the way. Interesting...
