Fans Spot Huge Ryan Reynolds Gaffe In 6 Underground
6 Underground may be the Michael Bay-iest of Michael Bay joints, but star Ryan Reynolds just can't seem to quit with the Deadpool-style fourth wall breaking.
Eagle-eyed fans of the Netflix original film have noticed Reynolds popping up in a place he definitely wasn't meant to be — a circumstance which, in true meta fashion, he teased on YouTube months ago.
Given that Bay is the world's oldest teenager and that Reynolds is about as fond of screwing with people as any Hollywood star we can think of, it's actually tough to say whether the shot in question was left in the film on purpose. The mistake is certainly not going to jump out at the average viewer — but once you know it's there, you can't un-see it, and it's pretty damn hilarious.
Let's rewind just a bit. Back in September 2018, Reynolds posted a short video to YouTube in which he was seen engaging in a faux-interview on the set of 6 Underground. Leaning nonchalantly against the wall of a building on a side street, he pretends to answer a question which we're pretty sure nobody actually asked.
"The best part about shooting with Michael Bay?" he says. "I don't know, a lot of people would say the action. But for me, it's the stillness. You know? It's those quiet moments..." Reynolds continues to say stuff, but we can't hear what it is — because at that moment, a camera car speeds by on the main street behind him, and shortly thereafter, there's a multi-car crash in which one vehicle actually becomes airborne, going completely upside-down and rolling out of the frame. Once all the clamor settles down, Reynolds becomes audible again, continuing, "...the character things, you sort of feel it, you're looking like... lost in the character's eyes. Those are the moments for me, I think."
The clip is, of course, comedy gold. What Reynolds apparently failed to realize, however, is that while recording it, he was actually in the shot that was being captured — in the far distance, but visible nonetheless. Said shot made it into the finished film, and one intrepid Redditor quickly noticed that during the scene (in which Reynolds' character was supposed to be in one of the cars involved in the crash), the actor could be spotted in the background, doing his comedic shtick. Check it out:
Whoopsie-doo! Of course, in all of the mayhem (and believe us, this movie is made out of pure mayhem), it's pretty tough to notice — unless you've watched Reynolds' YouTube clip about 50 times, which this particular Redditor must have done. We don't blame them; some people just have a lot of time on their hands. (Okay, we admit it, we've watched the clip at least 50 times. It's hilarious.)
Big old gaffes are nothing new to Michael Bay
Now, perhaps Reynolds could have been a little more mindful of where he was standing, and it also stands to reason that perhaps 6 Underground's editor might have noticed the film's star chillin' in the background of that particular shot. But at the end of the day, it's the director who decides which shots make it into the finished movie, so we feel like we can place the blame for this gaffe squarely on Bay — who is absolutely no stranger to such errors.
Just for one example, let's take 2007's Transformers, one of the director's most well-known and successful films. The website MovieMistakes.com, which exhaustively catalogs these types of gaffes, lists no fewer than 147 errors in the movie; some of these are tough to catch, but most (to quote Stephen King) are big as life and twice as ugly. There are dozens of examples of crew members or equipment being visible, continuity errors galore, audio which doesn't match the action onscreen, and even blatant factual errors (such as a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to hotwire a car).
Okay, let's look at a later Transformers movie: 2011's Dark of the Moon, a film which is absolutely lousy with factual errors of the sort that can't simply be chalked up to lazy screenwriting. For example, even though portions of the film are supposed to take place in the Washington, D.C. area, there are establishing shots which feature towering skyscrapers (D.C. doesn't have those) and a chase in which an Interstate sign is plainly visible which gives away the fact that Chicago was actually a stand-in for our nation's capitol during filming.
Ah, details! They're tough to give the necessary attention to when you're preoccupied with making sure that stuff is blowing up in a sufficiently awesome manner. Say what you will about Bay as a filmmaker; heck, you can lambaste him up one side and down the other, and for the most part, we'll be inclined to agree with you. But when it comes to blowing up stuff? Nobody, but nobody, blows up stuff like Michael Bay, and 6 Underground is his explode-y masterwork.
Now, if you'll excuse us, we're going to go watch it one more time. KABOOM! BLAMMO!