While the first Deadpool film was an undeniable success both in of properly introducing fans to one of the most popular antiheroes in Marvel Comics history and delivering a wildly entertaining superhero movie in the process, there is one aspect to Deadpool that suffered a significant downgrade during the transition from the comics to live-action: the villain.
Deadpool is the origin story of Wade Wilson’s career as an antihero (or superhero, if one were to ask him). The movie begins with Deadpool tracking down a mysterious villain who wronged him in the past, but thanks to the unwanted intervention of the X-Men, Deadpool is unsuccessful in killing his target. As the movie progresses, fans are told that this person Deadpool is trying so desperately to kill is named Francis aka Ajax, and he was the man responsible for turning Deadpool into a mutate. While Wade Wilson signed up for the experimental procedure after learning that he had terminal cancer, Ajax went above and beyond to ensure Deadpool’s ‘treatment’ was as excruciating as possible which resulted in extensive scarring all over Deadpool’s body. Come to find out, Ajax isn’t just a generic scientist, but a mutate himself who had super strength, and the inability to feel pain. These abilities made Ajax a worthy adversary of Deadpool, but in the end, his powers weren’t nearly powerful enough to match the Merc with a Mouth.
In Deadpool #14 by Joe Kelly and Walter McDaniel, readers are introduced to Francis Freeman aka Ajax who was an enforcer for The Workshop which was essentially a hospice center for failed Weapon X experiments. In the comics, both Wade and Francis were products of Weapon X experimentation, but unlike Wade who suffered extreme mutilation both in mind and body, Ajax was the perfect weapon–and a few issues following his introduction, he proves exactly why.
While in the movie, Ajax’s main power is his lack of pain receptors mixed with his super strength, the comics highlighted a power that the character didn’t have in the film as the key feature to his effectiveness as a weapon: super speed. With his super speed–mixed with his extremely sadistic nature–Ajax was able to tear people in half in the blink of an eye, but he didn’t stop there. Francis even got creative with his kills with sonic booms that he’d create with the snap of his fingers and rubbing his hands together to create immense friction then weaponizing the heat that followed. Not only were his powers superior in the comics compared to the film, but he had better equipment, too. Since he was Weapon X’s golden child, Ajax had access to all the organization’s technology–equipment that gave him X-Ray vision, titanium armor, a weaponized shield, and even tactical information on how and where to strike a specific enemy.
The live-action version of Ajax was indeed a perfect first villain for Deadpool who was more-or-less comic accurate in nearly every regard. However, with the additional powers and tech in the Marvel Comics version of the character, it is clear to see that Deadpool’s first movie nemesis was originally way, way more powerful.
