DEADPOOL 2: Where Tone Meets Genre in Screenwriting

This week, we are going to be looking at Deadpool 2 by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and a new addition to the writing team, Ryan Reynolds.

If you missed my podcast on the original Deadpool, you might want to check that out as well, because one of the things that is exciting about Deadpool 2 is the way it manages to maintain a consistent tone, even over the course of a very different film.

If you’ve studied TV writing in our  TV Drama Classes, TV Comedy Classes or Web Series Classes, you know that every episode of a TV show should feel the same, and also feel different. that it should deliver the same genre experience to the audience, the same tone, the same feeling, the same experience while taking them through a story that also feels very new, and very fresh, and very different.

But now, we’re seeing the same phenomenon in big action movie franchises, like Deadpool or Guardians of the Galaxy or The Avengers, where each installment needs deliver on those expectations of the audience.

So, setting aside the questions all over the internet about “which is better, Deadpool 1 or Deadpool 2?” -- rather than comparing these films in terms of which is a more successful movie, instead, what I want to do is I want to look at this question, which will be valuable for any writer, whether you’re working in features or TV.

How do you maintain that consistent tone?

How do you create one screenplay after another that has the same feeling that feels entirely fresh and also entirely consistent?”

Learning how to control tone in your screenplay will be valuable for you in many different ways.

If you are writing a TV Drama or a TV Comedy, or a Web Series, understanding how tone is handled in a script, how different elements can be brought together to replicate the same feeling for the audience, will be extraordinarily valuable for you, whether working on your own pilot, or replicating the voice of a showrunner as a staff writer on a series.

If you are writing for feature films this will help you in a couple of different ways.

First, a lot of the writing work out there right now is work-for-hire writing or rewriting, and to be a great work-for-hire writer, or to be a great rewriter or a great polisher of scripts, we need to do more than just create great stories and great characters-- that is just a given of the basics of what we need to be able to do.

We also need to be able to write characters that didn’t originate from us, we need to be able to create characters that fit effortlessly into a universe or a world created by other people, We need to be able to emulate the voices of other characters.

So learning to control tone will help you in your career if you are interested in rewriting, if you are interested in being able to take notes from a producer and adapt your work, if you are interested in having control over your gift rather than just letting anything that comes out onto the page be what you end up with.

And it will also be valuable for you even if you’re just working on your own script.

Oftentimes, there is a big gap between what we imagine our screenplay is going to be and what actually comes out on the page.

Many years ago, one of my very talented students was working on his first foray into comedy. He pulled me aside at one point and he said, “Jake, what do I do if I do all this work, and it comes out, and it isn't funny?”

And I said, “Well Bill, then you will have a really great drama.”

And ultimately that is still the answer I believe in.

As screenwriters, we really should worry a hell of a lot less about tone.

We should really worry a whole lot less about where we are going to end up, and we should really focus on what it is that we are writing, what the script wants to be.

At the same time, as writers, we often freak ourselves out, because we will write something that feels like it isn't coming out right.