This summer will bring us one of the most highly-anticipated superhero team-ups in the form of Deadpool & Wolverine. Directed by Shawn Levy, the movie will see Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) making his official debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a trippy multiverse tale that finds the Merc With a Mouth tangled up with the Time Variance Authority, and eventually teaming up with a variant of everyone’s favorite surly mutant, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Despite the comedic tone of much of the film’s advertising, the final trailer released for the movie teases that this will be an emotional adventure for the pair of heroes, as Deadpool enlists Wolverine to help him save the only family he knows.

In a new interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, stars Reynolds and Jackman, and director, writer and producer Shawn Levy sat down to talk about how Deadpool & Wolverine subverts audience expectations of a superhero movie. They also talk about how they landed on the idea of Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), how each of the movie’s fight scenes were designed, and Jackman’s emotional reaction to an early stunt video.

COLLIDER: I think this movie might do okay at the box office. I think you’re gonna land on your feet. So, I’m gonna ask the most important question up front. If you guys don’t mind, it’s a question for Ryan. Would Deadpool use Mint Mobile or a more traditional carrier?

RYAN REYNOLDS: I think Deadpool’s pretty sensible about his mobile needs. So, I think, no, he would definitely stay away from Big Wireless. That’s a curse. Nobody needs that. Anyway, Mint Mobile is just $15 for unlimited…

SHAWN LEVY: He does enough commercials! Why do you gotta bring him that?

REYNOLDS: Yeah, you gotta do that? This was the first guy I told Deadpool1 was rated R. I remember that. It was at Sundance.

LEVY: He was the first guy who introduced me to Twitter on the set of Real Steel. True.

HUGH JACKMAN: I don’t want to tell you all the deals we’ve had over the years. [Laughs]

REYNOLDS: He introduced you to meth.

LEVY: Next question!

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Almost Brought on This Soul-Snatching Marvel Villain

I don’t want to do spoilers, but there are obviously a lot of choices that you can make in a movie like this. For all three of you, if you could have put a villain in this that you didn’t get to include, is there one that’s right there at the top of your head?

REYNOLDS: I don’t know about a character, specifically.

[Laughs] Right.

LEVY: What was the name of the villain we flirted with?

REYNOLDS: Mephisto.

LEVY: That’s who it was. We went through a lot of “almost” versions of this story before we landed. Frankly, it was the infamous call from Hugh, but then it was this idea of Cassandra Nova as a sibling to Charles because Cassandra’s link to Professor X creates an interesting dynamic and fascination in Cassandra about you [to Jackman].

REYNOLDS: And also just the imagery in the comics of Cassandra.

LEVY: Which I brought on an iPad to London when I first met Emma Corrin. It was the panels of Cassandra with her hands in someone’s skull. It was so gross and cool, and we were like, “That’s our villain.”

REYNOLDS: Early on, we didn’t even know what it would be, but we wanted Jordan Peele just to do anything. And he came back with nothing. Final offer.

LEVY: That was true. Hard pass.

Will Deadpool and Wolverine Reunite in the MCU Again?

I know everyone at Marvel is incredibly happy with how this turned out. I know you guys are having the time of your life because I’ve been watching you on the world tour at this point. Now that the film’s been done for a few weeks, how much are you guys actually talking about, “This was a lot of fun. Maybe there’s something else we might want to do together in the MCU?”

LEVY: Look at that collective inhale. It’s like when women spend a lot of time together.

REYNOLDS: Are you calling us men?

LEVY: Well, very effeminate men.

REYNOLDS: I live with women and I consider myself one.

LEVY: As do I. How would you answer that question, Ryan Reynolds?

REYNOLDS: The movie was not meant to be a commercial for another movie.

LEVY: Refreshingly.

REYNOLDS: It was really, genuinely meant to be a true one-off. Life is hard for a lot of people out there, and it’s been that way for a long time. For people to walk out of the movie theater feeling like they just had the best two hours of their entire life, something that is unexpectedly moving, but still retains all that audacity and wild subversion that you come to expect with this character and this world– And then there’s just an enormous wrestling match with expectations and stuff like that. It’s always a wild thing to see. I’m so thrilled Marvel is as thrilled as they are. We are our hardest critics, so for me, this is the best movie I’ve ever been a part of.

LEVY: Wow, I’ll take that. I can’t believe I chose that moment to interrupt you.

REYNOLDS: Well, I was just gonna say the greatest written villain in cinema history is Expectation and her bitchy twin brother Tracking.

LEVY: Oh, wow! [Laughs] To answer the question you did ask, we had a blast. I feel like we not only had fun, but it was so creatively fulfilling. Anything’s possible.

Is Hugh Jackman Done Playing Wolverine… Again?

“It literally does not matter how I answer this.”

Hugh, you have famously said in the past, “I’m done playing Wolverine.” So, are you done playing Wolverine?

REYNOLDS: That’s just his safe word. That doesn’t mean anything.

JACKMAN: It literally does not matter how I answer this, Steve, because I’m clearly a liar. But what’s so great about my lie is I believed it. Fully. I fully believed it.

REYNOLDS: That’s the best liar.

JACKMAN: So, I’m a borderline sociopath.

REYNOLDS: Just a symphony of red flags.

JACKMAN: So, it doesn’t matter what I say. But I can tell you, Steve, I’ve actually never had more fun, ever, playing Wolverine than I did in this movie with these guys.

REYNOLDS: That first day, when Hugh walked out in that suit, I’ve never seen a crew fall silent that way. That was one of the most amazing, emotional things I’ve ever seen.

How ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Avoids Action Fatigue

“The fun of it was to make each fight evolutionary.”

Fans have been waiting for literally decades to see Wolverine and Deadpool fight. For the three of you, what was it like figuring out what that first fight in the movie was gonna be? Talk about the design of that and what you wanted to accomplish, and the thought process that went into that.

LEVY: A really good question. I’ll say this: you know they’re gonna fight, so we didn’t want action fatigue. The fun of it, as we wrote the script, as we prepped the movie, as we rehearsed with the stunt team, was to make each fight evolutionary, so that every time there’s this collision of unkillable forces, it’s got a different visual language. It has a different premise, some are in wide open space the way you’ve seen in the Void in the trailer, and others are a little more confined. So, changing up the language and literally telling the whole team—storyboarders, stunt men and women, choreographers— “Best idea wins,” we got ideas from everyone.

REYNOLDS: Everyone. And that’s, I think, the greatest way. The worst leaders, and thank god you are the exact opposite, are the ones that will never say, “I don’t know.” The ones that just refuse and just hang on, and, “It’s my way or the highway.” A movie will talk to you, it will yell at you. If you listen to it, it’ll take you places that you weren’t expecting, that your script maybe isn’t telling you. If you can do that all in the framework of responsibility where you’re able to pivot in your storytelling without disrupting the schedule or the budget or any of those things, it’s hugely critical.

The first great lesson I ever learned, being that necessity is the mother of invention, in these kinds of movies is, if you can emphasize character over spectacle, no matter how grandiose the movie’s hype is or any of those things, character over spectacle is the thing that people are gonna remember much more than the stakes of the universe or something like that.

LEVY: And I think that’s where these movies are at their best—MCU/DC, Fox/Marvel, Disney/Marvel—when the character is foreground and something surprising is done rather than just throw spectacle at the audience.

JACKMAN: This is my tenth movie playing Wolverine, so one of the reasons that I did say, “I think I’m done,” is I was like, “I don’t know what else I can do. I think I’ve been in every situation.” These guys wrote and conceived of a scene, not the first scene, by the way, but it’s another action scene between the two of us, and they conceived and wrote it, and then they did a stunt pre-vis. The stunt guys rehearsed it, cut it together. There is a video of me watching that for the first time…

LEVY: It will be hitting social media.

JACKMAN: Here’s what I’m thinking, and you can shut me down, but right now it’s weird because we’re on camera, but I think we should give Steve a little peek at it.

REYNOLDS: I know! Come on, man. Just cough it up.

LEVY: Right now?

JACKMAN: Well, at some point. Whenever you’re ready for it to get out there.

LEVY: Wow, I feel like promises were just made.

JACKMAN: No, it was just a suggestion.

LEVY: I feel like publicists are waving hands.

REYNOLDS: Also, there’s only one line Disney asked me to take out of the movie. Hugh, tell them what the line is.

JACKMAN: [Laughs] “Hugh Jackman is a complete…”

You should say it. Would you like to say it?

JACKMAN: I just can’t. It hurts my soul to say it.

LEVY: But violence is a language in this movie, and so we wanted to mix it up constantly.

JACKMAN: Good pivot.

LEVY: Thank you.

REYNOLDS: That’s a great pivot. But that video of Hugh watching that pre-vis is the greatest.

JACKMAN: Steve is such a fan! He’s a genuine fan. He’s been such a support.

LEVY: Steve, it is amazing. It’s a moment where Hugh, even though he’s Wolverine, Hugh as a fan was watching this idea we had—proof of concept—and it’s pure joy.

REYNOLDS: He looked like he’d been huffing nitrous.