Free Guy's Original Ending Was Quite A Bit Different

Now that Free Guy is in theaters, moviegoers are seeing what happens when a non-player character named Guy (Ryan Reynolds) becomes self-aware inside of a Grand Theft Auto-like game. The result is a funny and ridiculously over-the-top action movie, filled with dozens of pop culture and video game references. One particular scene, though, was originally going to be very different.

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the end of Free Guy. If you haven't seen the movie, turn away now. Instead, check out GameSpot's review of Free Guy.

As Guy races to keep Free City from being shut down, he's forced to face off against his ultimate foe, Dude. Dude, also played by Reynolds, is essentially Guy 2.0--he's bigger, he's more powerful, and he has Guy's signature blue shirt tattooed on his chest. However, Antwan's (Taika Waititi) team wasn't done programming Dude, so he's also incredibly stupid.

In the ultimate battle of brain versus brawn, Guy uses a number of weapons to take his opponent down, including Captain America's shield and a lightsaber. What's more, when he grabs the shield, Chris Evans pops up in a cameo, watching a stream of the game on his phone somewhere--and he's not pleased. It's a small moment, but one of the funniest in the movie. Of course, Free Guy also makes use of the Avengers and Star Wars scores for those respective moments, making them feel more epic.

It's a fun climax to the movie, but one that would be absolutely impossible if the movie had come out before Disney purchased 20th Century Studios, the producers of Free Guy. When we asked the movie's director Shawn Levy what the original ending to the film was, he made it clear Star Wars and the MCU were not involved.

"It always was a battle royale between Guy and Dude--between Ryan and Ryan 2.0," he said. "So that was always going to be the third act and it was always going to be Ryan as Guy, mastering the game and deploying weapon after weapon after weapon after weapon. But it was like a portal gun... It was always going to be this cavalcade of increasingly absurd and over-the-top weaponry."

Then the acquisition happened and that all changed. "Once Disney bought our studio, we're like, 'Wait a second, they have even cooler things,'" he remembered. "And so we ask permission--and Ryan's and my memory differ. My memory is that we gave him a list of things and said, 'Which one could we use?' And Disney said all of them. Ryan's memory is that we gave them a list of things and then we used all of them and then after the fact said, 'Is that, okay?' I don't know whose memory is accurate, but either way, Disney was incredibly supportive. And it makes for a sequence that is such a nice surprise and delight for audiences."

While the initial ending, with a parade of ridiculous weapons being introduced, would have been entertaining, it's hard to argue just how impactful seeing Guy wield the shield and a lightsaber was. Besides, where else are you going to see Chris Evans sharing a scene with Cap's trusted vibranium shield in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame? Yeah, he's watching it unfold on his phone and thinks it's ludicrous, but it still counts.

Free Guy is in theaters now.