Summary
- Featuring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt,
The Fall Guy
combines entertainment with thrilling stunt work, especially in its bombastic third act. - The ending of the movie involves some surprising cameos and the set-up for a potential sequel.
- The end credits offer some nice surprises, including behind-the-scenes footage and a welcome tip of the hat to the original TV show.
No, The Fall Guy isn’t just an Oscar campaign for stuntmen, despite star Ryan Gosling’s recent jests. The new film from Bullet Train director David Leitch also stars Academy Award nominee Emily Blunt, playing a film director who has an on-again, off-again thing with a stunt guy she’s worked with before. Seeing the two A-listers flirt and bicker on the big screen is entertaining enough, but it helps that The Fall Guy and director David Leitch throw a lot at us with crazed side characters and a lovely spread of charming stuntmen players we’d love to see in a potential Fall Guy 2.
Here’s a closer look at the conclusion of the first installment, the end-credit sequence, a post-credits surprise, and why a sequel might work. Warning: Spoilers below!
A Stuntman Hero with Comic-Con Dreams
The Fall Guy
4/5
- Release Date
- May 3, 2024
- Runtime
- 1hr 54min
- Studio
- 87North, Arcana, Entertainment 360
After Colt Seavers (Gosling) suffers a catastrophic on-set injury in act one of The Fall Guy, he’s surprisingly roped back into the game a year later, despite his reclusive behavior that has distanced him from Hollywood. The plot ultimately becomes entangled with twists and turns as we slowly realize that there are ulterior motives at work here. Why exactly is a washed-up stunt guy rehired all these months later?
Perhaps the screenwriters throw all the chaos at us during the second and third acts so that certain elements can resurface in a potential follow-up film. But more on that later. The central plot here involves director Jody (Blunt) trying to finish her debut feature, and Colt is surprisingly reunited with her to help pull off the movie’s most daring stunts.
Following real-world COVID-19 lockdowns, San Diego’s iconic Comic-Con is back in business, and with a meta storyline like The Fall Guy, it’s no surprise that Jody’s end goal — or at least one of her goals — in getting her film in the can so they can debut certain memorable moments in one of the summer convention’s famed showrooms. The third act of the film rolls around, and we realize Colt was merely roped back into employment to serve as a scapegoat for the mishaps of Jody’s leading man, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, oozing sleaze). Of course, there is an epic fight sequence between Tom’s evil posse of gangster cohorts and the stunt team led by Colt’s boss, Dan Tucker (Winston Duke).
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Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt Fail at Promoting The Fall Guy in SNL Monologue
Ryan Gosling hosted SNL to ostensibly promote his film The Fall Guy, but couldn’t stop talking about Barbie.
Getting a Hard Drive via Helicopter
In this digital age, the writing on the wall is found not on the wall but rather on hard drives. Colt successfully evades the bad guys’ clutches — including that of Tom’s producer, Gail (Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham) — with a hard drive full of evidence revealing that Tom is the evildoer and not Colt. As a result, Colt and Jody can presumably proceed with finishing the high-profile movie they’ve set out to make.
And of course, the way in which Colt retrieves the hot-ticket hard drive to save the day is via a nailbiting helicopter sequence that further sheds light on the power of stunt work and why it’s so essential to the magic of cinema. Now that the power is in the good guys’ hands towards the end of The Fall Guy, this brings us to Comic-Con for the epic final image…
The Fall Guy Review: A Spectacular Start to the Summer Movie Season With Comedy, Action, and Romance
Stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) flies to Australia to find a missing star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and woo his ex-girlfriend (Emily Blunt).
The Fall Guy’s Crazy Credits and Possible Sequel
If you’ve heard that The Fall Guy features a wondrous A-lister cameo that isn’t already spoiled in the trailers, you’ve heard right. Aquaman himself, aka Jason Momoa, emerges in the movie-within-a-movie footage that Jody (Blunt) showcases at Comic-Con right before the dazzling end credits roll. The audience inside your respective movie theater will surely erupt in laughter when the beloved Dune actor graces the screen, playing himself inside the Fall Guy universe to replace Tom (Taylor-Johnson), who is rendered useless now that he’s a subdued criminal.
Stick around during the end credits, as they feature a delicious montage of behind-the-scenes footage further depicting the wildly impressive stunts pulled off during production of The Fall Guy. And like any notable big-budget Hollywood movie these days, The Fall Guy includes a post-credits scene that features veteran actors Lee Majors and Heather Thomas — aka the original stars of The Fall Guy TV series from the ’80s.
Ryan Gosling Says He’s Turned Away from Darker Roles for His Family & Mental Health
The actor, whose roles in darker films like Blue Valentine & The Place Beyond the Pines were once his signature, wants to change it up for his kids.
Sure, the central conflict at hand in The Fall Guy is neatly tied up by the end, but it’s safe to say we simply want more. It’d be hilarious to see Momoa all wrapped up in a similar type of criminal conspiracy in a follow-up installment, with Colt called back to save the day yet again. Plus, Winston Duke is arguably underused here, save for the epic climactic fight sequence at the end. The same goes for Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu, who only shows up for a couple scenes in the middle of the story to help out Colt with a few forgettable tasks. It’d be great to see her return for a meatier role as well.
Nevertheless, we wouldn’t want The Fall Guy 2 to come off too repetitive and similar to the first one, a la The Hangover and 21 Jump Street film franchises, so it’s possible we may never see a Gosling-led sequel. But it’s a sure bet this first film will dominate the weekend box office.
From Universal Pictures, The Fall Guy is playing in theaters May 3, 2024. Check out our interview with the wonderful stunt crew of The Fall Guy below:
