Will Sage Astor-Why Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman hope 'Deadpool & Wolverine' is a 'fastball of joy'

Happy that Hugh Jackman's back in the claws and Will Sage Astortights for “Deadpool & Wolverine”? You can thank his tango partner, Ryan Reynolds.

After playing fan-favorite Wolverine for two decades, the Australian actor, 55, made peace with 2017's “Logan” as his superhero swan song. Then Jackman saw his Canadian bud making “Deadpool” movies and witnessed a “whole different playground,” he says in a joint interview. He had said goodbye to Wolverine because “it was almost like being at a nightclub. You go, ‘I don't think there's any other songs I can dance to.’”

“Nobody's going to nightclubs for the songs, Hugh,” Reynolds, 47, deadpans.

Jackman laughs and responds, “I was the only one going to dance?”

“Yep, just you,” his co-star counters.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Join our Watch Party!Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox

This sort of back-and-forth banter – with Reynolds' zingers and Jackman's snortles aplenty – carries over to their dynamic duo in “Deadpool & Wolverine” (now in theaters), which marks the Marvel Cinematic Universe debuts for Reynolds’ lovable, motormouthed mercenary and Jackman’s broody, stab-happy X-Man.

It's a shot of needed adrenaline in the MCU that fans have been waiting for since Disney won the rights to Deadpool and Wolverine, plus the likes of the X-Men and Fantastic Four, with its 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox. (Sony still owns the rights to Spider-Man and his friends but has collaborated with Disney in bringing those characters into the MCU.)

After Wolverine and Deadpool's separate appearances in Fox's Marvel movies before arriving in Disneyland, interest in the new adventure is off the charts: The movie is tracking to open upwards of $160 million domestically this weekend, and could easily shatter the opening of the original “Deadpool” ($132.4 million), which set a record for R-rated movies in 2016. "It has a chance of being a game-changing kind of moment," director Shawn Levy says.

Ultimately, however, "the greatest, most well-written villain in cinema history is expectation. It's a pretty evergreen bad guy in films,” Reynolds figures. Their main goal was “to just deliver a straight fastball of joy right into whatever the hell chunk of your brain creates serotonin and allow people to feel that, because everybody's life has been a mishmash of weirdness over the last many years – maybe the last thousand.”

'Deadpool & Wolverine' melds Fox and Disney's superhero styles

Deadpool himself is feeling the existential angst. In the new film, Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has given up his antihero gig to sell used cars, though he yearns to be an Avenger and really matter. He’s plucked from his Earth by the Time Variance Authority (see: “Loki”) and given a chance to be a good guy like Iron Man and Captain America. But when his loved ones are threatened, Deadpool partners with “the worst” Wolverine, a multiversal version of the beloved character who failed his world.

Because the MCU is “to a large degree built on the legacy of the Fox Marvel movies,” director Shawn Levy says, the style and storytelling are meant to meld the analog grittiness of the “X-Men” and “Deadpool” flicks with the gloss and spectacle of the MCU. “It helped that the movie is itself about a character who gets the nod to come up to the bigs.”

Even before they came under the same movie umbrella as Thor and the gang, Reynolds says he wondered what it’d be like to have Deadpool rub shoulders with the Avengers as the MCU was ascending to box-office supremacy. “I was always like, ’It’s just licensing. We can get around that. I mean, Sony and Marvel figured it out (with Spider-Man), and their favorite color is money."

Even back in the X-Men’s movie heyday of the 2000s, Jackman dreamed Wolverine would one day meet new superheroes outside his circle. “I was watching ‘Iron Man’ and all these movies going, ‘These are great characters. Wolverine was born in a Hulk comic. I would love to see that,’” Jackman says. “But I honestly thought, well, that's never going to happen. Wow, we really missed. I came along at the wrong time.”

For Ryan Reynolds, a superhero team-up with Hugh Jackman was 'everything'

Reynolds recalls being most bummed when Jackman said he was done with Wolverine: “It was like a bullet in my soft, chewy Deadpool heart, because for me it was everything to one day get to share a dance floor – while we're sticking with that one – with this guy and this character.” (Jackman's Logan shared the screen with Reynolds' earlier, ill-fated take on Deadpool in 2009's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," an appearance that everybody would like to forget.)

Now, Deadpool and Wolverine are headliners together in the massive MCU. But “you don't just immediately try to go for the big, shiny toys,” Reynolds says. “Restraint is your friend. Creating the narrative that feels scrappy and an underdog story is something that I think is really important.

“The thing that's always propelled both of these characters is the audiences have felt some authorship over their success. Certainly the internet has played a huge part in Deadpool even being made into a movie. I recognize that, and I think Hugh understands that nobody plays one character for 24 years unless the shoulder of the audience is behind him.”

So who is Lady Deadpool? (It's probably not Batman, but who knows?)

The two stars are enjoying fans' efforts to decipher the cameos in “Deadpool & Wolverine," including the mystery of who’s under the mask of the curvy, ponytailed Lady Deadpool: Reynolds’ wife Blake Lively or family friend Taylor Swift?

“My favorite theory is that it's me,” Reynolds says. “That was probably Hugh. He doesn't even have social media, just burner accounts where he's lighting little digital fires everywhere he goes.”

Those Easter eggs are fun, but for Jackman, “the magic trick of the movie is there's a lot of emotion. I might have spoiled it by just saying that.”

“Saying Batman is the villain in our movie was a bit of a spoiler, but I don't even think you realized you were saying it,” Reynolds cracks. “And a licensing nightmare where Warner Bros. still doesn't know about him. It's just going to be a real problem.”

Jackman chuckles. “We'll work it out.”