I Enjoyed Channing Tatum's Gambit As Much As Everyone, But Marvel Needs To Avoid Making A Big Mistake With The Character Moving Forward

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The latest Marvel Studios movie Deadpool and Wolverine was packed with inside jokes and Easter eggs that reference moments from the proper MCU, as well as the period in time when Marvel was making movies to be distributed by 20th Century Fox. There’s a moment in the movie where Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) literally speaks into the camera and tells Fox that he’s leaving to go to Disneyland, then he headbutts the imaginary lens. It’s all very meta. Not as meta, though, as the inclusion of Magic Mike and 21 Jump Street star Channing Tatum finally playing the card-throwing mutant Gambit, though. And unless you read superhero movie news over the years, you might not even understand the joke that Tatum was cast as Gambit years ago and promised a movie that just never materialized.

In the wake of Deadpool and Wolverine and the movie’s enormous financial success, there has been talk about what to do with these characters now that they have been “rescued” from the trash bin of Fox/Marvel purgatory. Ryan Reynolds himself has started the campaign for Marvel Studios to give Wesley Snipes a proper Blade sendoff – akin to Hugh Jackman’s Logan movie – instead of the Mahershala Ali-led movie that keeps running into production snafus.

And while there has been some fan interest in Channing Tatum’s Gambit continuing on in the MCU, I think that would be a mistake… at least, in a solo movie focused entirely on this version of the character. Let me try and explain why.

Gambit was fun… but also a punchline

For starters, let’s focus on the treatment of Gambit (Tatum) in this movie. The mutant member of the X-Men, named Remy LeBeau, comes with a distinct Cajun accent born of his New Orleans background. LeBeau was raised by a band of thieves, and portrays himself more as a rascal than a full-blown stoic hero. And that dialect was played for laughs in Deadpool and Wolverine. Our fourth-wall-breaking antihero jokes that Channing Tatum’s Gambit sounds like the recently stepped out of the Billy Bob Thornton movie Sling Blade, and that his English isn’t really English at all.

Beyond the jokes about Gambit’s regional dialect, a chunk of his dialogue references the running joke that he was supposed to be in a movie, and never quite got there. We revisit heroes such as Elektra and Blade, who appeared in movies that were good – or terrible – but at least got their chance to shine in live action. As close as Tatum got over the years, he never got the chance to play Gambit, and the character’s inclusion in this movie seemed to scratch the itch of, “What would Tatum’s Gambit have looked like?” In the context of this movie, it worked. I don’t think that we need more focus on Gambit that’s necessary in a solo movie. This felt like enough.

Gambit in live action looks kind of cheesy

Like any X-Men fan, I was curious to see what Gambit might look like in live-action. With all due respect to Taylor Kitsch, his portrayal of Remy LeBeau in the deeply flawed X-Men Origins: Wolverine was just another miscalculation – the worst of which being the way that Deadpool was portrayed in the movie.

Now that Channing Tatum played Gambit in Deadpool and Wolverine, in an extremely comic-accurate costume and a worthy representation of his powers, I walked away thinking that Gambit, as a live action character, looked fine. A little corny. Kind of cheesy. The costume is dated, as if it were appropriate for the early 2000s. The playing card bit that works well in the pages of a comic book doesn’t have the same impact in a movie. Tatum even seemed to be making fun of Gambit’s ability, defining it as “making the cards go boom.” This isn’t Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine unsheathing his adamantium claws, or Deadpool using Logan’s skeleton to decimate a crew of TVA agents. This is a mutant who charges up playing cards and throws them.

Cool. But limited. And I certainly don’t need to see it as the focal point of a solo Gambit movie.

As was proven in the spectacular (and animated) X-Men ‘97, Gambit works well when he’s part of a larger team. He has explosive chemistry with Rogue. His rebellious ways get under the skin of the straight-laced Cyclops, or the gruff Wolverine. I’m not opposed to Channing Tatum returning to play Gambit in either Avengers: Secret Wars or a possible future X-Men movie. Though, given how Deadpool and Wolverine ended, I don’t think that’s in the cards.

Did the MCU already shelve Channing Tatum’s Gambit?

A lot was made about Deadpool and Wolverine bringing Ryan Reynolds’ fast-talking mercenary into the MCU. But for all the use of the TVA, keeping the action of this sequel to The Void largely meant that this movie had standalone quality that didn’t impact the Sacred Timeline all that much. Deadpool (Reynolds) recruited Wolverine (Jackman) to help him save his timeline, Earth-10005. They succeed, and Logan returns to Earth-10005 with Wade and ONE other person: Dafne Keen’s Laura, aka X-23.

I believe that those three were deliberately parked in Earth-10005 so that the MCU could use them later, probably in Avengers: Secret Wars. That upcoming movie feels like it will be a massive team up film, and we now know where Deadpool, Wolverine and X-23 are, should Marvel need them again.

You know who wasn’t there? Gambit. And Elektra. And Blade. If Marvel had an inkling that they’d want to use those characters again, I think we would have seen some of them – if not all of them – in Wade’s apartment, ready to be tapped by Kevin Feige for a future adventure.

Weirdly, I agree with the idea that Wesley Snipes deserves a proper send off. He helped to launch the idea of a Marvel Comics movie with Blade back in 1998. Maybe the upcoming Blade reboot can use Snipes, and have him pass the sword to Mahershala Ali?

But trying to force more Chan-bit on the audience feels like a reach. The actor’s involvement in Deadpool and Wolverine feels, to me, like it accomplished what Reynolds and Shawn Levy set out to do. It gave Tatum the chance to play a character he dreamed of playing. Trying to continue the dream might be too much of a good thing.

The next Marvel Studios production will be the Disney+ series Agatha All Along. For the next MCU movie, you are going to have to wait all the way until February, when Anthony Mackie picks up the shield for Captain America: Brave New World.