At that moment, Gambit becomes an awesome hero without sacrificing any of the elements that made him a punchline for so many years.
Timeless Cool
Initially, Gambit’s Deadpool & Wolverine appearance seems ready to set back the Cool-O-Meter. The movie gets a lot of mileage out of Tatum’s garbled Cajun accent and his stylish, if impractical, tendency to throw charged playing cards at enemies.”Your power’s close-up magic. That’s good,” Deadpool observes, with typical snark. Even in that scene, however, Tatum begins to bring a bit of charm to the joke.
As the heroes rouse themselves out of a defeated stupor by admitting their place in the world, both fictional and real, Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, a character we haven’t seen in 19 years, laments, “Our worlds forgot about us.” Yet it is Tatum’s Gambit who earns the laugh by adding, “Or never learned about us.” Yet as the heroes continue to commiserate, there is no irony to Gambit’s observation about the lives they saved… “or wanted to save.” There is a genuine sadness to Gambit’s line deliveries that cuts through all of the self-aware winking, a sadness that can’t even be undercut by the extended description of conception that Gambit is about to offer.
That richness marks Tatum’s take on Gambit throughout the movie. As demonstrated in Logan Lucky and the Magic Mike films, Tatum excels at grafting affable charm onto a movie star body. He doesn’t have the aggressive charisma of, say, a Tom Cruise or even Dwayne Johnson. Rather his charisma is derived from a laid back personality that draws people closer toward him. And crucially, as demonstrated by his surprise cameos in This is the End, The Lego Movie, and The Hateful Eight, he’s happy to be the butt of the joke.
Tatum’s effortless charm allows Gambit to be both laughable and cool, especially as the movie progresses. After spending several minutes laughing at Gambit, we viewers feel compelled to cut him some slack when he gets to charge a whole deck in slow-motion. It’s unnecessarily flashy, especially in the middle of a battle that director Shawn Levy mostly shoots with chaotic handheld cameras and lots of cuts. In an action sequence that is tediously directed, we’ve got to admit this moment looks cool.
So cool, in fact, that star Ryan Reynolds released a deleted scene to grateful and excited fans. The scene finds Gambit’s body in the wreckage of the battle on Cassandra Nova’s hordes. His eyes begin to glow, suggesting that he has not died, teasing more Gambit adventures in one universe or another.