Ryan Reynolds was shocked at the Easter eggs Disney let him slip into Free Guy
When Fox merged with Disney, it opened up a whole new world of cross-promotional opportunities within movies
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It might just be a persona, but it seems like Ryan Reynolds is always trying to get one over on his cinematic overlords. As Deadpool, he threw jabs at Fox, Disney, and Marvel—and often, especially in promotional material, the lines of what’s be said by Reynolds’ character and what’s being said by Reynolds himself can get a little blurry. He seems to like it that way.
That hasn’t changed with Free Guy, Reynolds’ long-delayed new movie that our review said “is a Truman Show for the Fortnite age.” (You can read A.A. Dowd’s brilliant summation here.) There’s always a wink at what’s happening in the story, and considering the movie is one of the last produced under the Fox banner as it was absorbed by Disney, sometimes that wink is directed at the ridiculousness of corporate mergers.
We sat down with Reynolds for a video interview recently to talk about just that. You can watch that directly below, or read the transcript provided, for those who just aren’t into the whole “watching moving pictures” thing.
The A.V. Club: This movie was meant to come out right when the pandemic began and had a sort of ping-ponging release day. We’ve been waiting for it for what seems like forever, and you’ve been producing content around it for what seems like forever. What is it like to have it finally out in the world?
Ryan Reynolds: You know, I think it’s just right on time. It’s sort of weird how these things happen and you’re like, “oh, no!” When we first had to delay the movie, we were all living in that moment where you have no idea what’s right around the corner. Releasing movies was quite literally the last thing we needed to be worrying about. So for it to be showing up now, I’m pretty thrilled about it.
AVC: You manage to get some existing IP in the movie, beyond just what you created for Free Guy. Since you had the time, did you make any tweaks? Did you have an extra phone call with Hugh Jackman to convince him to come on board, let’s say?
RR: We didn’t have any desire to change a frame of the movie once it was delayed. We were already locked pretty much at that point, but all those Easter eggs, those were all kind of in there from the jump. Disney bought Fox, which availed us to some pretty weird requests that we threw in to Disney. For some weird and to this day inexplicable reason, Disney allowed us to do some things and use some toys of Disney’s that we would never have thought they would have said yes to or agreed to, but they did. So we ain’t complaining. To us that was really, really appealing, and especially to do it in the context of leaving audiences just filled with joy and allowing audiences to walk out of a movie theater with a big smile on their face without an ending that says “Next movie, we’re going to answer this question or that question.” It was just meant to give you everything that you loved when you went to see Back To The Future as a kid or something like that.
AVC: Speaking of being a kid, what was the first video game you ever got super into? I thought I was the best Dr. Mario player in the world, for instance.
RR: As a kid, we didn’t have video games in my house. I wish we did. But I would go over to my friend Mike Moody’s house and play Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, which I loved. I would walk across the park near where I lived in Vancouver, Canada, and go to this old video store called Pot Of Gold. In the back of that video store, they had Double Dragon, and I would just spend all my paper route money plugging quarters into that game just to keep it going.
Free Guy drops this Friday, exclusively in theaters.
26 Comments
Oh man, I spent so much on Double Dragon in my youth as well…surpassed only by Gauntlet.
Golden Axe…
Ice Hippo needs food, badly!
Elf shot the food.(Yes, I always played the elf, and yes, I was triggerbutton-happy. C’mon, I was a kid.)
In junior high, my mom would give me enough money on Monday to buy lunch at school for that week. On my way home from school on Monday, I’d drop everything into Pac Man, Frogger or Zaxon at a local mexican food restaurant. And then I’d starve for lunch Tuesday through Friday.
I loved arcade Zaxxon. One of the most disappointing purchases I’ve made in my life was the Atari 2600 version, which was even worst than their version of Pac-Man.
Zaxxon on Apple IIc
I’d like to say Rolling Thunder but sometimes your quarter lasts less than 30 seconds in that game
Gyruss
Four Player Gauntlet was just THE BEST.
Oh lord, the rolls of quarters I fed Gauntlet. I was assistant manager at a bar and a buddy and me would sit there after closing and drink beer and feed money into the damned game for hours.
Elf needs food badly.
They had a gauntlet machine at the pool…um park, I don’t know what to call it in NJ, and man did I love playing that game.
I loved Double Dragon as well. I loved Ninja Gaiden as well to. My brother loved Gauntlet so much but I prefered Rygar.
Black (Dragon / Tiger), Rastan, Double Dragon, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Xenophobe, Yie Ar Kung Fuand Sinistar
Gauntlet sucked soooo much of my money. “Valkyrie is hungry. Valkyrie is about to die. Aaaaargh!” Insert coins to continue…
Oof. I have to say the marketing on this 15-years-too-late movie is relentless. (Thankfully) It must not be taking. You missed the Wreck-it Ralph window. Let it go.
Double Dragon, eh? Did the convenience store replace it with Ms. Pac Man?This guy is so full of shit – apparently someone told him to rehab his “nerd cred” in the last decade and start liking videogames.
Here’s what he said in 2009:
I don’t really play video games. Is there a way to waste more f—ing time? The Internet’s enough. The last videogame I played was Ms. Pacman[sic].
That statement still holds up, especially when the alternative is becoming a world famous superstar
Not really sure what the issue is. The 2009 answer was his (at the time) current status: doesn’t really play video games. The 2021 answer was about a much earlier status: played a few video games as a kid in Canada.Is it that he said in 2009 that the last game he played was Ms. Pac-Man, and not Double Dragon, which came out several years later? That’s just a matter of availability: Ms. Pac-Man machines has continued to be all over the place, whereas DD machines have just gotten more and more uncommon out in the wild. Mathematically speaking, you’re far more likely to be able to play Ms. Pac than DD.
Yeah I’m pretty sure I can go in to town, find the right bar and then claim the last game I played was Ms PacManI realise he was likely saying it’d be a while since he’d played anything but I don’t think worrying about when games were at their peak is quite the thing when it comes to a very ubiquitous arcade machine.
Well…double dragon was out in 1987 or so; ms. pacman was earlier, the time period matches, though
You won’t believe the Disney product placement in new Disney movie. Number 17 will shock you!
ah.. so Kingdom Hearts references are in the movie? curious.
About two years ago, a parking lot near my office was converted into a construction site. Looking down from my office window, I had this weird feeling that the people milling around around in construction outfits were a film crew. I’m used to seeing construction crews in Boston, and something just seemed off about this one. After work, I asked a guy standing near the gate and found out what it really was. The picture above, in the header, is the fake construction site! I went into the office on Saturday just to watch them film.
The only one I was genuinely shocked to see was Captain America’s shield — the rest was background stuff for the most part, but to see his character actually pull a major Marvel I.P. into his game world reality and have it be the decisive factor in a “final boss battle” was way over the line I assumed they would set.
Overall, I thought the film was just fine. Not ultra-great, but you left amused and feeling like you’d gotten your money’s worth.
I have now seen this, and I agree with your impression- amused and worth the ticket. An enjoyable movie. I really love that cameo, though – fit the moment perfectly and was just a hilarious quick take.