James Gunn and Ryan Reynolds sound off on the success of Deadpool

It's been a long and hard road, but DEADPOOL has fortunately found some financial success, and as you can imagine, Ryan Reynolds couldn't be happier. Ever the affable man, Reynolds took to Facebook to thank everyone for their support and to let them know he's on cloud f*ckin' 9. Well deserved, I'd say!

That ain't pavement he's walking on. It's sunshine. Thank you to the ‪#‎Deadpool‬ fans who took us from leaked test footage all the way to the main event. It's because of you, we got to make the real Deadpool. The right way.

Meanwhile, a director of another oddball comic film, James Gunn, had more than a few words to share with Deadline about why DEADPOOL has succeeded. You can check out the entire rant here, but I've included some of the highlights for you below.

James Gunn on the success of DEADPOOL:

The film has a self-deprecating tone that’s riotous. It’s never been done before. It’s poking fun at Marvel. That label takes itself so seriously, can you imagine them making fun of themselves in a movie? They’d rather stab themselves.

Let’s ignore Guardians for a moment, a movie that survives from moment to moment building itself up and cutting itself down – God knows I’m biased about that one. But what do you think Favreau and Downey did in Iron Man? What the f*ck was Ant-Man??!

After every movie smashes records people here in Hollywood love to throw out the definitive reasons why the movie was a hit. I saw it happen with Guardians. It “wasn’t afraid to be fun” or it “was colorful and funny” etc etc etc. And next thing I know I hear of a hundred film projects being set up “like Guardians,” and I start seeing dozens of trailers exactly like the Guardians trailer with a big pop song and a bunch of quips. Ugh.

Deadpool wasn’t that. Deadpool was its own thing. THAT’S what people are reacting to. It’s original, it’s damn good, it was made with love by the filmmakers, and it wasn’t afraid to take risks. But hopefully in the midst of all this there will be a studio or two that will take the right lesson from this – like Fox did with Guardians by green-lighting Deadpool – and say – “Boy, maybe we can give them something they don’t already have."

And that’s who is going to succeed.

Gunn has a point, of course, but that's not going stop studios from trying to mimic some of the success of DEADPOOL with their own iterations. With that said, if this success allows more R-rated comic book properties, and a DEADPOOL sequel, to come to fruition, so be it! I pay that price gladly!

DEADPOOL is now in theaters.