Movie Casting Gossip Is Scary, Right?

So Tim Miller, who directed Deadpool, won't be directing Deadpool 2. He had been having creative differences with both the writers, and perhaps more crucially, Ryan Reynolds, and it all came to a head.

The final straw seemed to have been Miller wanting Kyle Chandler for the role of Cable. My first reaction was to not have any idea who that was, though I suspected some generic, bland, big guy action type. Jai Courtney or someone like that. But no, Chandler was the head coach on Friday Night Lights, or more relevantly to me, he was the main character in Early Edition, the show about the guy who got tomorrow's newspaper and tried to change the bad stuff he saw in it. And he was in Wolf of Wall Street, but neither of those roles exactly screams, "Cable!" at me.

But I don't know who does, really. He's supposed to be a big, old guy, though I guess also reasonably attractive, at least by whatever standards Deadpool has. He usually carries huge firearms and shoots a lot of stuff. And he's supposed to be playing it serious, so you need someone who can maintain their dignity while running around with a glowy eye and a metal arm, so Wade can jab at him.

At the same time, Cable's whole deal is he's come back from an awful future to try and avert it. Sometimes this involves trying to shoot people in the face so they can't do bad shit, but other times it involves trying to do things to make the world better. Encourage the sharing of ideas, offer up what future technology he thinks he can without getting the planet blown up, help a struggling country establish a democracy and care for its citizens to show it can be done. So he has to be a somewhat hopeful character (or a self-deluding one), to try and do all that. To believe people can change, or listen to their better impulses. Deadpool is kind of the perfect test case, really.

And being a time traveler, Cable will sometimes play that game of manipulating people because he's convinced he knows what's best for them, rather than just trying to convince them to do it willingly. Either because he doesn't figure he has the time, or simply because he's thinking big picture, and manipulating them is a necessary evil. And despite being this seemingly big grumpy guy, he has a sense of humor. A lot of it seems to stem from watching people try to outmaneuver someone who already knows what they're doing, but some of it seems to come from people who genuinely surprise him.

So, an actor capable of playing a hardass, stereotypical grim action hero, but also sort of messianic, but also kind of a sneaky jerk. I have absolutely no idea who fits that, assuming they even try to cram all that in there. Might not be room for it all, since Cable is still likely to be a supporting character in Deadpool's movie. But as I think I said back in May, I am actually curious to see Cable in a movie, which is not something I would ever have expected.

If I find myself excited at the prospect of Venom appearing in another Spider-Man movie, that's when we should get really concerned. I may be having a seizure at that point.