Spoilers ahead for “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
About a third of the way through Shawn Levy’s big Marvel cameo reel “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the two title heroes (Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman) find themselves in an alternate dimension nicknamed the Void. It’s a desert wasteland populated mostly by actors and characters from moribund superhero franchises that were once owned by 20th Century Fox, but are now operating under the auspices of Disney. In one of the film’s more fun cameos, a character played by actor Chris Evans steps forward to defend Deadpool and Wolverine from oncoming marauders. Deadpool recognizes him as Captain America, and is eager and giddy to hear him say his trademark Captain America phrase “Avengers, assemble!”
Instead, however, the Evans character shouts “Flame on!” He is, in fact, the Johnny Storm a.k.a. the Human Torch, the character Evans played in the Fox-owned “Fantastic Four” from 2005 (and its 2007 sequel “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer”).
Deadpool, perhaps less enamored of the Human Torch, playfully throws the character under the bus. When they are all captured by the powerful villainous psychic Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), Deadpool claims that the Johnny insulted her using a long string of filthy obscenities. The Human Torch denies this, but Cassandra skins him alive anyway. It won’t be until a post-credits scene that audiences will see Johnny actually did say all of it, word-for-word.
The monologue was so convoluted and colorful that Reynolds offered Evans off-screen cue cards. The monologue is only about 116 words, though, and Evans said — in an interview with People Magazine — that he was completely off-book for his performance. He memorized every last f-word and testicle reference himself.
Chris Evans’ filthy Deadpool & Wolverine roast in full
The monologue, perhaps skirting what my editors are comfortable with [We had to break open the emergency box of asterisks – Ed.], was as follows:
“Cassandra Nova. A megalomaniacal psychotic a**hole. A finger-licking, dead-inside pixie slab of third-rate dimestore n*tmilk. And I’ll tell you what she can do: she can lick my g****n cinnamon ring clean, and kick rocks all the way to bald hell. In fact, I don’t give a s**t if she removes all my skin and pops me like some nightmarish blood balloon. If the last thing I do in this godforsaken c**gutter existence is light that f***box on fire … I still won’t die happy. That’s right, Wade, I won’t be happy until I’ve urinated on her freshly barbecued corpse and husk-f***ed the charred remains while gargling Juggernaut’s juggern*ts.”
Evans bit into the monologue with glee and, as he revealed, didn’t want any cue cards. Evans is a professional, and came to the set with all his lines memorized. Indeed when playing superhero characters, Evans typically has to keep his mouth in the PG-13 range, so he considered it a great opportunity to get down and dirty. As he told People magazine:
“Ryan was like, ‘Listen, if we need cue cards …’ and I was like, ‘Cue cards? I’m showing up off-book,’ […] I don’t get to say dialogue like this. Trust me. I’m going to enjoy every second of this. Memorized.”
Evans, of course, has appeared in multiple R-rated films in the past, and had some wonderfully cuss-laden dialogue in the murder mystery “Knives Out,” but he never got to go quite as far as a gleefully adolescent sex-language rant like one might hear in a Deadpool movie. Although his character was eventually burst like a nightmarish blood balloon, Evans was clearly having a wonderful time reprising the Human Torch — even if keeping his cameo secret from the public was a massive to-do.