Chris Evans’ depressing ‘Free Guy’ cameo is the worst you’ll ever see
In recent years, Chris Evans‘ career has experienced what can only be described as an alarming decline. In 2019, he starred in Avengers: Endgame, supposedly concluding his time playing Steve Rogers/Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Knives Out, which featured a delightful turn as the deranged ‘Ransom’ Drysdale. One of these films was the biggest movie of all time, and the other was an unexpected box office success. Crucially, though, both of them were good films.
Therefore, with Evans’ commitments to superheroics seemingly complete, the world of movies seemed to be his oyster. What cinematic delights did he have up his sleeve next? Surely, after nearly a decade of predominantly playing one character, he’d be champing at the bit to try all kinds of new, exciting, challenging projects? Wrong.
A dismal critical and commercial run, which included Lightyear, The Gray Man, Ghosted, Pain Hustlers, and Red One, saw his star plummet. Hopefully, Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t! and Celine Song’s Materialists can remind us all what a charming, fun, and refreshing screen presence Evans can be when he tries. However, they won’t be able to erase the worst sin from his dire post-Endgame period: a cynical cameo in 2021’s Free Guy.
For most of Free Guy, the movie is inoffensive and fitfully amusing. The concept of a non-playable character in a video game gaining sentience and going on his own adventure is pretty clever. However, the film was directed by Shawn Levy and starred Reynolds, so it was never going to be a classic. Still, when Evans turned up to utter a semi-amusing quip in reaction to Reynolds fighting a hulked-up CGI version of himself, my heart sank. The line itself wasn’t anything particularly terrible, but the implications of the cameo highlighted with crushing certainty that Hollywood had fully embraced its current status as an IP hellscape from which there is no escape.
Because Free Guy takes place in a video game world, nothing is theoretically off-limits to the title hero. So, when the giant, beefed-up version of Reynolds swings a fist at him, he blocks it with Captain America’s shield while the Avengers theme music plays. Then, the movie cuts to Evans, as himself, watching proceedings on a laptop in a coffee shop. He says the immortal line, “What the shit?” and the movie cuts back to Reynolds with a green Hulk arm. Then, he conjures a lightsaber out of thin air to fight the musclebound Reynolds-beast. Audiences cheer; cinephiles mourn.
At this point, it became clear that Free Guy wasn’t a movie at all. Like so many other big-budget efforts in the last few years, it was an exercise in cynical, calculating IP management that effectively jangled keys in front of brainwashed viewers to indoctrinate them into watching the latest Marvel project or buying the latest Star Wars merchandise.
To dig even deeper into the quagmire, it was also a reminder that all of this was only possible because Fox, the studio behind Free Guy, was bought over by Disney, who also purchased the rights to Marvel and Star Wars in the ’00s. At the end of the day, all this depressing cameo is celebrating is that one massive corporation is owned by another, even more gargantuan conglomerate – and now the two super-studios can bash their toys together to make nerds fork over their cash.
