The Deadpool & Wolverine jokes Disney blocked are as crucial as the ones it allowed

polygon.com:

Deadpool was created in 1990, so he’s technically a millennial — but his wry, self-aware, pointedly irreverent humor is pure Gen X. While Deadpool & Wolverineis the first film in the Deadpoolfranchise to be produced under the traditionally family-friendly auspices of the Walt Disney Company, the director and writers (all Gen Xers themselves) clearly wanted to retain at least the appearance of the previous movies’ transgressive edge.

Deadpool & Wolverine contains a few jokes that likely would have made Walt Disney blush. “Pegging isn’t new for me, friendo,” Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) quips in the film’s first trailer. “But it is for Disney.” The sly glance at the camera that follows that joke felt like a statement of intent, implying that the character would remain uncompromised in his transition to Disney’s stewardship. Still, as the film goes on, it’s obvious that there are very clear limits to what director Shawn Levy and the screenwriters (Reynolds among them) were and were not allowed to do.

[Ed. note: Spoilers for a lot of specific gags from the whole Deadpool trilogy follow.]

The film makes a strong opening argument for its transgressiveness, with an opening-credits sequence where Deadpool beats a bunch of Time Variance Authority henchmen to death with the adamantium remains of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) from Logan, literally desecrating the mutant hero’s grave while metaphorically tarnishing that movie’s bittersweet ending. “I’m not proud of any of this,” Deadpool tells the audience. But that seems disingenuous. Reynolds, Levy, and the rest of the writers take pride in the movie’s provocations.

A large part of Deadpool’s appeal— as a movie franchise, a character, and a brand —is the sense that nothing is sacred. In an era where comic book movies sometimes take themselves far too seriously, the character’s brand of irreverence is a breath of fresh air. In 2016, the first Deadpool felt a little like an act of guerilla filmmaking within the world of mega-franchises,