musubitime

It is 100% worth losing that pen for the story you get to tell. The future President of the United States stole your graduation pen? Pure gold.

Was an NC-17 rating ever on the table?

Fair enough, and I'm sure most fans appreciate that it is even R-rated. I just thought if any movie could mainstream NC-17 it would be Deadpool.

Just the fact that TJ Miller couldn't do his full throttle SV schtick would make a PG-13 version feel wrong.

You might be right about my ignorance. But I remember watching Henry and June way back then, one of the first NC-17 rated movies, and found it quite tame. It was hard to notice what it was that pushed it over. But standards change, and that movie would probably be R nowadays. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much further you could push violence to surpass an R rating. Game of Thrones is way more graphic in both sex and violence, I wonder if it would earn an NC-17 if rated by the same system. Actually, this recent article makes it sound easy to just push it into NC-17 territory: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-thrusts-get-you-an-772118