Marvel fans’ most desired team-up is a disaster

Pa Chris Snellgrove
| Published 25 seconds ago

For longtime comic book nerds, half the fun of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is seeing some of our favorite teams from our favorite issues brought to life on the big screen. With the release of Deadpool and Wolverineboth of our main characters are now part of the MCU, and fans can’t stop speculating about who the Merc With the Mouth will team up with next on screen. The most popular request has been to create a movie that combines Spider-Man and Deadpool, but despite the long history of comics together, such a combination will be completely cinematic disaster.

Spider-Man and Deadpool

Even if you’ve never opened a Marvel comic, you can probably guess why the writers like to team up Spider-Man and Deadpool. Both of them are very funny characters, who are famous for making amazing jokes in the midst of even the most dangerous battles. Their big personalities differ from each other in funny and unexpected ways, as well as vast differences in their morals (Deadpool kills and Spider-Man doesn’t) often gives them something to argue about when they’re not busy saving the world.

In short, Spider-Man and Deadpool have had countless comic team-ups that provide serious entertainment value, so why would I argue that they shouldn’t have theirs? MCU team? First, the significant age difference between the characters would make for an amazing on-screen collaboration, Ryan Reynolds is a full two decades older than Tom Holland (48 vs. 28, respectively), which will inevitably make this look less like a team of equals and more like a really weird hero/sidekick story in the vein of Batman and Robin.

Also, one of the weird things about comics is that most characters get stuck at a certain age over time. Peter Parker was a teenage crime fighter who now eternally exists as a man in his late 20s. Through decades of publishing history, Spider-Man still has life experiences that help him work with and, at times, even bond with Deadpool. Even though Holland is in his 30s in real life, the MCU still has a Spider-Man so encoded in his youth that it wouldn’t make sense for him to spend time around a middle-aged mass murderer.

The problem of morality

This brings us to the vexing problem of morality. It’s a great gag in Deadpool’s solo movies that he doesn’t suffer from murder, and our main character leaves a small graveyard after every big action scene. That’s why his on-screen team consists of other characters who have no problem killing, including Cable and Wolverine. After the mishaps with these merciless mutants, it would be easy whimsical to have Deadpool put in maximum kills alongside Peter Parker, the moral backbone of the MCU.

At this point some may say Marvel can change either Spider-Man or Deadpool; make the latter less violent, perhaps, or somehow make the former cool (perhaps via a Variant) with chaos and carnage. However, this would arguably cheapen these characters and ultimately fail to give viewers what they want: an authentic version of the characters they know and love united on screen. Anything less would betray the audience, and anything more would betray the characters.

The solution is simple: As much as fans claim to want it, the Spider-Man/Deadpool MCU team-up should be off the table. At least with this version of these characters. Considering Marvel will probably reboot the entire universe afterwards Secret warseventually we might see a very different Spider-Man and a very different Deadpool teaming up. Whether anyone wants to see it after years of agonizing superhero fatigue is another matter entirely.