11 Comic Book Movie Characters Who Were Killed Way Too Quickly

11. "Deadpool" - X-Men Origins: Wolverine

In truth, Deadpool died a long time before Victor and Logan teamed up to chop his ugly, mutated head off, and even before Ryan Reynolds' motor-mouth Wade Wilson disappeared off screen in his first guise in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

He died the minute some probably neck-bearded studio executive woke up with the half-formed, bastardised concept of a needlessly shirtless Weapon XI with swords coming out of his knuckles and an abdominal V to soak every seat in the house. For all of the crimes of that first Wolverine movie - and they were multiple and varied - what they did to Deadpool was a damn disgrace to crown them all.

And it probably wouldn't have been all that bad had they not cast Ryan Reynolds - about as good a choice for Wilson as you're likely to find - and allowed him to give everyone a delightful glimpse of what could have been were it not for a lunatic script and a barrel-load of silliness.

The decision not only to kill off that version of the character, but also to totally reinvent Deadpool as a Universal Soldier rip-off with the WORST control system in the history of sci-fi (press Go to start, press kill to Kill) was the bad brand choice to end all bad brand choices. But then, it's not all that surprising: the film-makers were already making a rod for their own back in under-using Gambit, and they probably knew that killing off a fan favourite character - with untold potential for a spin-off of his own - wouldn't ultimately matter because of how God-awful the film was in the first place.

But putting that aside for a moment, Deadpool could have been the next big thing, with spin-offs and wider universe appearances, and even with the new Deadpool films properly up and running, there'll always be the sad trumpet sound of that film in the background distracting everyone.