'Deadpool 2' Almost Had Something Change Its Opening Scene

The opening of Deadpool 2 depicted the Merc with a Mouth attempting to end his life due to some catastrophic events he suffered over the course of the film. The sequence saw star Ryan Reynolds smoking a cigarette, which he ultimately used to ignite barrels of gasoline he was resting on, though the filmmakers did, at one point, consider having the character smoking a joint instead.

"There was a debate. Should it be a joint or a cigarette? And we decided cigarette," director David Leitch confirmed on the film's commentary track.

Reynolds specified, "A cigarette, I think is far more like, 'I hate myself. I want to die.' A joint is, like, 'We're celebrating. Logan's finally dead.' People would have totally misinterpreted the scene."

While this specific reference was clearly thought out ahead of time, the film itself ultimately included a variety of improvised jokes and pieces of dialogue, with even the trailer including punchlines that never made the final cut. Earlier this year, Leitch detailed just how much footage ended up on the cutting room floor and how he decided on the different jokes.

"It's funny, there's so many. There's so many that are on the cutting room floor, because you do all this improvisation, and you might have three or four versions of one of these moments," Leitch shared with Fandango about the film's alternate bits of dialogue.

"You're like, 'Oh my God,' but you can only pick one to tell the story. I think it'll be a good thing for the Blu-ray extras, to see all the alts that we had and couldn't put in the movie. Some of them actually snuck into the trailers as Easter eggs. How about I leave it at that?"

The decision to use a cigarette in the opening scene instead of a joint was a deliberate decision that reflected the character's motivations, though many of the throwaway punchlines didn't have a big impact on the overall narrative.

"There might be one punchline that we had three versions for and we loved them all, and only one can live in the movie, so we might have snuck a couple in sort of additional materials that people can discover," the director admitted. "Like, 'Oh my God, he used to say this, but now he says this.' They're not plot-changing, they're just really punchlines to the jokes, or pop culture references that Ryan is a genius coming up with."

Fans can grab their copies Deadpool 2 on Blu-ray to witness its extended, alternate, and deleted scenes on Tuesday, Aug. 21.

Do you think this change to the opening scene made an impact on the final product? Let us know in the comments below!