Actor Ryan Reynolds is continuing his hilarious brand of self-referential humor with a new teaser for his upcoming film Free Guy, which shows the actor debuting a new character in the film's video game world that is an outrageously jacked version of himself.
The new character's name is "Dude," and is meant to resembler an unfinished, stock buff guy character that's popular in many different video games. Also present in the teaser is director Taika Waititi, most popularly known for directing Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit, in an acting role that seemingly antagonizes Ryan Reynolds' main character in the film by deploying the buff character.
The premise of Free Guy, the upcoming action-comedy film, is that a bank teller (played by Reynolds) comes to the realization that he is a background character in an open-world video game, which leads him to decide to become the hero in a story that he actively begins to rewrite. Alongside Reynolds and Waititi, Jodie Comer, Lil Rel Howery, Joe Keery, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Camille Kostek star in the film.
Reynolds has been actively promoting the new film through hilarious social media teasers, even bringing in his Deadpool character – which has recently joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe through a blockbuster agreement between Disney and Fox – in on a recent teaser that parodied a YouTube reaction video. Becoming one of the most popular forms of content on the tenured media platform, Reynolds' Deadpool character reacts to a teaser of New Guy alongside Korg, the rock monster character voiced by Waititi from Thor: Ragnarok, seemingly officially confirming the former Fox character's entrance to the MCU.
According to the "Next Level Reynolds" teaser posted to Ryan Reynolds' YouTube channel, the introduction to the "Dude" character parodies a fitness lifestyle kind of character, while ironically hinting at the idea that the character took tons of steroids to get jacked. Mariah Carey's "Fantasy" plays toward the end of the teaser while a visual is shown of Dude throwing a strong left hook to Lil Rel Howery's character's face.
Free Guy hits theaters on August 13. Check out the teaser below and let us know what you think.