Deadpool and Wolverine was a huge success for Marvel Studios and Disney, and rightfully deserved. It was awesome, epic, cool, and of course hilarious! That opening scene where Deadpool used the Adamantium skull and bones of Wolverine from Logan as weapons was the perfect way to start the film, and adding NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye" to the fight was a nice touch too.
However, after seeing the movie, that opening scene kept playing around in my head, and I couldn't understand why. Was it because it was just too good to be easily forgotten? Or was there another reason? About a month after seeing the movie, it finally came to me why that scene got stuck in my head, and it's probably not the reason you're thinking as you're reading this.
So read on to find out how the opening to Deadpool and Wolverine might have some connection to a famous DC Comics heroine, more specifically a classic Wonder Woman storyline!
Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, explained
Wonder Woman: Dead Earth was a 4-issue limited series that was published via the DC Black Label line, meaning stories from this imprint relied on darker themes and more violence than the regular line of DC Comics; most stories under this label also took place outside of the main line DC Comics continuity. The series was written and illustrated by the impeccable Daniel Warren Johnson and was released throughout 2020.
Without giving too much away, the story follows Wonder Woman waking up from a coma years in the future where the world she fought so hard to protect is nothing but a desolate wasteland. To add insult to injury, all of the world's heroes, her friends and her Amazon sisters, are dead or no where to be found. Along the way, she slowly uncovers what happened to the world, and sets out to redeem herself in her eyes for failing to protect the people of Earth. I don't want to breakdown the entire story because that's not what this article is about, rather, I want to give a general overview of the story so you guys can understand the basics of the story, how it might connect to Deadpool and Wolverine, and to also intrigue you enough to check out the comic for yourselves, if you so choose.
During the story, Wonder Woman ventures to the Fortress of Solitude where she finds the decaying corpse of Superman. Upon seeing her friends lifeless shell, she takes the skull and spine of her fallen comrade and uses it as a weapon to fight against the forces that destroyed the world they both cherished and fought numerous times to defend.
The potential connection between Wonder Woman and Deadpool
Both Wonder Woman from this comic and Deadpool used the skull and bones of their fallen comrades in various fight sequences, but was the opening of Deadpool and Wolverine taken from Wonder Woman: Dead Earth? Yes and no. Yes, because the comic came out before the movie, so it perhaps those involved in the movie took inspiration from it. However, the scenes from the DC comic and the Marvel movie couldn't be more different from each other.
Deadpool and Wolverine used the skull and bones of Wolverine as a joke, while the Wonder Woman story used the skull and bones of Superman in a more serious manner, where Diana wanted to have her friend fight beside her even if he wasn't there, so he could still uphold the values they both cherished in their lives.
The use of the skull and bones in and of themselves between the movie and the comic are very similar, but the similarities end there when the context of both are explored. Both are different from each other, but both are effective in their respective stories.