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I recently read that the Wade Wilson character was in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, before he became Deadpool. I had forgotten this because it has been a while since I saw that movie.
What other movies has the Wade Wilson character been in, and what is the brief synopsis of the cinematic back story of Wade Wilson? Are any of Wade Wilson's movie appearances in the MCU?
Character description:
Deadpool was depicted as a supervillain when he made his first appearance [...] but has since evolved into the role of an antihero. Deadpool is a disfigured and mentally unstable mercenary with the superhuman ability of an accelerated healing factor. He is known as the "Merc with a Mouth" because of his talkative nature and tendency to break the fourth wall, which is used by writers to create humorous effect.
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Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, was in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He was played by Ryan Reynolds.
He is getting a sort of reboot in his own film, Deadpool with Reynolds reprising the role. This film is part of the continuity of the X-Men films.
Deadpool is part of the continuity of the X-Men films. The X-Men films are not part of the MCU as the rights are owned by Twentieth Century Fox while Disney owns Marvel Studios. Therefore the X-Men film universe and and the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not share any continuity.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is actually not part of the MCU. It’s part of the X-Men film series, produced by 20th Century Fox.
Prior to Deadpool (2016), that was Wade Wilson/Deadpool’s only appearance on the silver screen, so no, we haven’t seen that character in the MCU. (In short, 20th Century Fox owns the movie rights to “mutants” from Marvel Comics, which includes Deadpool.)
In Origins, Wade Wilson is part of the mutant mercenary group including Wolverine, Sabretooth, and Will.i.am from the Black-Eyed Peas. Later in the movie, he is both imbued with the powers of several deal mutants by Major Stryker (making him “the dead pool”), and (as the Deadpool teaser trailer noted) inexplicably has his f—ing mouth sewed shut. He fights Wolverine on top of a cooling tower and gets his head chopped off, although because he has a healing power like Wolverine’s, this may not have mattered very much.
The upcoming Deadpool movie is also part of the X-Men film series (it has Colossus in it!), and so theoretically shares continuity with Origins, but it will essentially ignore that film entirely in relation to Wade Wilson/Deadpool’s character history.
Both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Deadpool feature characters named Wade Wilson who are played by Ryan Reynolds.
Quoting from CinemaBlend's review of the movie's script:
the character of Deadpool exists in a world where Wolverine is a movie that he’s seen, and hates
The character is owned by Fox and therefore had never appeared in the MCU (which is owned by Disney)
