The way the media has been treating Ryan Reynolds and Josh Brolin’s dynamic during the Deadpool 2 promotion tour is giving me an insight into how all these homophobic fanboys can look past how blatantly queer the film is:
They think it’s all a fucking joke.
Josh Brolin has said repeatedly that he’s had a crush on Ryan Reynolds for a long time. That he admires him, that he finds him attractive, that his feelings for Ryan are complicated and unrequited but real.
And yet all I’m seeing are articles and youtube compilations about Josh’s “hilarious” “man crush” and how “funny” it is every time Josh talks about Ryan or they interact.
And I would suspect it was intentionally meant to be part joking and part queerbaiting for the purpose of fanning the movie’s hype except that:
Josh is out there correcting people who call it a bromance – saying “It’s a real romance”.
He’s having to tell people that “It’s not a joke”.
He’s calling interviewers out for laughing.
He’s saying that the only reason he feels weird admitting it is because people are treating his crush as funny.
And this audience attitude is the same one that allows Deadpool to come onto Colossus with the exact same context and tone he came onto Vanessa in the first film, and still lets straight fuckboys think it’s a joke.
It’s why Cable and Deadpool can explicitly flirt, and even have Cable do something as hugely self-sacrificing and romantic for the other man as he does, but there will still be people hypothesising that their strong connection is because Cable’s wife is Deadpool’s daughter or something.
At first I was annoyed that the film was too chicken to end with the two characters getting together, even though (without spoiling it for you) it wouldn’t have felt quite right for the plot so soon.
But now I’m suspecting that even if we’d had a passionate, candle-lit sex scene between Cable and Deadpool, these douchebags would still think it was some hilarious joke.
The franchise can capitalise on that homophobia to get more queerness into the movies, and to be honest it probably already has.
But I’m doubtful that they can do anything that’ll get through the thick skulls of these fuckboy-fanboys.
I haven’t seen the movie just yet, and i don’t doubt what you’re saying! H o w e v e r, I’d really like some sources or at least a point in the direction to find those specific interviews with Josh Brolin!
Sure! There’s so many interview videos out there right now, some with only a couple hundred views, and I wish I’d bookmarked all the relevant ones for now but alas I didn’t. Here are a few which hopefully get my point across, but there’s more like it:
Josh: I mean he’s tall, he’s ha- … Why am I talking about Ryan Reynolds so much? Jimmy: You have a man crush on Ryan Reynolds? Josh: I do! I don’t- [Jimmy laughs] Josh: I feel weird admitting it in front of you because you’re laughing at me right now, but I feel… I feel confidence in my- [Josh gets awkward and hides behind a magazine]
Will Njobvu: Now, I’m seeing this bromance blossoming between you and Ryan Reynolds, even a bit on screen, and- Josh: I think it’s more of a romance. Will: A romance? Josh: Like, a real romance. Will: Really!? Josh: I like him, man. What’s not to like? I like not liking him. It’s a lot of fun to have friction and tension between Ryan Reynolds and myself. Y’know, we can talk about the characters, and the Deadpool and Cable thing, but it has nothing to do with that; it’s him and me.
Lmao I love how jack answers this like “what do you mean it’s weird I went to the supermarket after I won THE Stanley cup?? bitty needed flour and eggs so I went” Like it was never even a question about it I love him so much
Capheus wins the election, of course he does. He wins re-election, too…but probably not the one after that. It’s difficult, you see, to be the face of anti-corruption when your father-in-law is a drug lord.
He stays in politics, though. Zakia needs someone to drive her tour bus.
Wolfgang and Felix go with the India Plan, and the story is that, after the scare of Kala being shot, she and Rajan hired this scary-looking Germans as bodyguards. After a year or so, Kala’s parents suspect something but would rather not think about it and Rajan’s father is oblivious.
They’re all pretty good at keeping up the act – Felix is surprisingly fantastic at covering for the three of them – but now and then, someone will approach Rajan and suggest, sometimes genuinely sympathetically, that his wife might, just maybe, be…
Rajan is amazing at looking shocked and offended that you would even imply this about his beautiful wife. Of course she is perfectly honest, and their marriage has never been steadier! How dare you!
They have two daughters. The second is conspicuously light-skinned. People have almost given up commenting.
Lito has like two weeks in the middle of filming where he’s half-convinced that Hernando is going to leave him for Blake Huntington, because Blake can talk about Kant and metaphor and all those things that make Lito love Hernando so much but he Does Not understand. Hernando, of course, is stifling completely irrational spikes of rage every time he watches Lito kiss Blake, because…it never bothered him when it was women, you know, because he knew Lito wasn’t really interested. That it could never be real. But not only is Blake Huntington, well, Blake fucking Huntington, 3-time Academy Award winner, hot as a steaming griddle, and clever and educated to boot, but he’s male and Lito is out, and playing this role that is 50% his own story anyway, and here’s Blake being the love of his life… Meanwhile, Lito is off crying on a pillow somewhere because Hernando and Blake were talking about Proust…
Dani sorts this out by
a) shutting them in the bedroom until they talk to each other, and
b) sleeping with Blake Huntington and claiming dibs by right of First Bang.
she also, incidentally, prints cards for herself as an agent, and gets a lot of calls
The whole cluster, plus friends and family, flies to LA for the opening night of Iberian Dreams. Lito spends half of it full-on sobbing, at his own acting and more importantly because his dream is coming true.
The only one crying harder is Bug.
Nomi and Amanita stay in San Francisco, for the most part. They take a lot of romantic vacations to visit their family around the world, and take turns bringing each other coffee and pastries while they co-write a fictionalized, urban fantasy version of their story. Because even if the details need to stay secret, there are some things you need to say loud and proud.
Sun and Mun probably get married eventually, but they never have biological human children. They have a lot of dogs, and eventually Mun gets shot one too many times and she convinces him to quit the force and go work in a dojo. He loves it. Sun, meanwhile, is back at Bak, rebuilding her family name and doing finance by day and fistfights by night. The other fighters know her now, though. As do the kids Mun trains. It’s a really great extended family.
Will does not move to Iceland so much as move to Riley, and Riley’s home is Iceland but she cannot stay there, not always. Fortunately, there are clubs all over Europe that will open the doors and vive la resistance for Riley Blue.
In only a few years, she is pregnant again – though not with a child this time. With eight.
They go home for this. She has nightmares, of the car and the frozen hill and the empty church in equal parts.
It is nothing like that. They are on the beach, because it felt right, righter than her living room. Will holds her hands, as do Nomi, Lito, Sun, Capheus, Kala, Wolfgang. The sun is setting, but it is summer in Iceland; it is warm. Around the world, eight other people open their eyes and see the sunset as well, and their mother exhausted but smiling.
