The Fall Guy is a love letter to the stunt community, an opportunity to bask in Ryan Gosling’s sky-high levels of charm, and possibly, in the form of one of its villains, a blind item about a narcissist Hollywood actor.
Tom Ryder, an action star played by rumored new Bond actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is the star of The Fall Guy’s film-within-the-film, the sci-fi epic Metalstorm. He’s also a smug, showboating asshole who lies about doing all his own stunts; kills his new stunt double, Henry (Justin Eaton, Taylor-Johnson’s actual stunt double in the film), with a misplaced kick; and tries to frame his old stunt double, Gosling’s Colt Seavers, for the crime. Taylor-Johnson and Gosling have a lot of fun with Tom’s braggadocio and Colt’s deadpan replies when the star actor and his stunt double finally face off. Tom’s all puffed-up, pompous, and a teensy bit sexual as he shirtless-ly reveals that he sabotaged a stunt Colt did for him on a previous film, which led to Colt breaking his back; Colt calls Tom a “Bond villain dipshit” and says they’re getting “tangled in exposition” as Tom over-explains his evil plan.
The Fall Guy emphasizes that for people in the movie industry, films are literally and figuratively their whole lives, the way they understand their feelings and their reality. It’s why Colt and his boss and friend Dan (Winston Duke) get themselves amped up for a fight scene by quoting The Last of the Mohicans, and why Colt, when declaring his love for director Jody (Emily Blunt), wonders if his big admission of adoration is “from a movie, or did I just make it up?” The boundaries between fiction and reality are pretty fluid in this film, which leads to the question: Is The Fall Guy shading anyone specific with its depiction of Tom Ryder?
Director David Leitch, writer Drew Pearce, and Gosling developed the film’s story together, and given Leitch’s hands-on approach, it’s tempting to think his experiences working with movie stars might have helped shape these characters. So let’s consider the evidence, drawing from the movie, Leitch’s career, and the general field of leading action men these days. (All in the spirit of gossipy fun, don’t sue us.)
Ryan Reynolds, Chris Pratt, Brad Pitt, Jason Statham
Let’s start with four action stars who have worked with Leitch — on Deadpool 2, Jurassic World (for which Leitch did second-unit work), Bullet Train and Fight Club, and Hobbs & Shaw, respectively — and who fit the general “omnipresent white dude all over genre franchises” mold. In real life, all of them pretty openly praise stuntwork or their stunt doubles; remember that Leitch was Pitt’s stunt double in Fight Club. More than a decade ago, Statham supported the stunt community’s campaign for the Oscars to add a specific category recognizing their work: “It’s a total injustice. They’re the ones getting busy. Then you have some guy standing in front of a fucking green screen screwing his face up pretending like he’s doing the stunt. To me, it’s like a farce.” Given that a scene pretty much exactly like this plays out in The Fall Guy at Tom’s expense, I think it’s safe to assume that Statham (and all these dudes) are free from mockery because of their vocal support of the industry in the past. Now, Pitt did do a series of ads for Chanel N°5, and Tom does have a beauty campaign in The Fall Guy that Colt rolls his eyes at. But I think that detail more closely aligns with another actor on this list.
Tom Cruise
We must consider Tom Cruise because he is arguably the world’s biggest action star, and the one whose insistence on doing his own stunts makes the most headlines (and wins Vulture Stunt Awards!). There’s also the fact that Tom Ryder is named, well, Tom. But The Fall Guy has only praise for Cruise, like when Colt jokes about wanting Metalstorm’s deepfake technology to turn him into the Mission: Impossible star. Is it possible that Hannah Waddingham’s character, Gail Meyer, Tom’s longtime producer, is modeled after Cruise’s former publicist, his sister, Lee Anne DeVette? Eh, probably not. All they have in common is that they’re women; Gail seems more like an updated version of The Godfather producer Robert Evans than anyone else (note their similarly oversized glasses). I think you can’t make an action movie about action movies without acknowledging Cruise’s existence and impact, but that’s the extent of the connection between Tom and Tom.
Keanu Reeves
Is there any possible reality in which Tom Ryder is a subtweet of Mr. John Wick, renowned nice man? There can’t be, right, not when Leitch’s big break was co-directing that Keanu-starring picture? Admittedly, Leitch’s work went uncredited because of some Directors Guild of America rules, and Chad Stahelski kept directing the John Wick films solo (Leitch retains an EP credit). But very few actors are out here championing the stunt community like our beloved Neo. Keanu innocent, probably.
Matthew McConaughey
It has to be acknowledged that Tom is, for some reason, American, and Taylor-Johnson (who is English) is doing a Dazed and Confused–era Matthew McConaughey accent. This man can do a perfectly serviceable, perfectly flat American voice (we heard it in Godzilla, Savages, and the Kick-Ass films), so the put-on Texan drawl is definitely a choice. But is McConaughey an action star? Nope; even in films like The Dark Tower and The Gentlemen, McConaughey isn’t doing a ton of physical work, nor pretending to. So let’s just put the accent down as “ATJ trying some things out” rather than McConaughey shade.
Johnny Depp
Here’s where things get interesting. Remember that ad campaign I mentioned earlier, the ones all over the airport in Los Angeles when Colt flies to Australia, and all over bus shelters in downtown Sydney? They look very much like Depp’s Dior Sauvage ads, in that they place Tom in a dusty, desert landscape in front of mountains and a beautiful watercolor sky, and make him look like a mysterious, brooding antihero as he’s sledgehammering rocks to prove his masculinity, or whatever. And then later in the film, when Gail walks into Jody’s trailer and sees that it’s messy — as if two people have fought, because they have, unbeknownst to Gail — she says it looks like “Johnny and Amber” were in there, a joke that’s gotten some bad press but that is at least contextualized in the film as another indication of how crappy Gail is as a person. Those two moments together feel pointed; maybe not exactly like an insult toward Depp, but a reminder of the amount of power and cultural sway he once held and how that image was, like Tom’s, manufactured and manipulated. Something to think about!
Dwayne Johnson
An action star who (allegedly) disappears from set, shows up late, has an entourage whose members do whatever he wants, and who is overly concerned with his public image to the point where it starts to affect his actual acting. All of Tom’s behavior in The Fall Guy seemingly aligns with Johnson’s (alleged) misbehavior on the upcoming film Red One, as documented in this piece at the Wrap. And recall that Johnson and Leitch did work together on Hobbs & Shaw. Something to think about, part two! (It’s also worth considering that perhaps Tom could contain elements of Vin Diesel, who’s also been accused of diva behavior on set and who was rumored to be feuding with Johnson on The Fate of the Furious. But Diesel has talked before about how the death of Harry O’Connor, his stunt double on the xXx set, affected him and emphasized to him the importance of safe stuntwork, so it seems unlikely he inspired a character who is so blithe about stunt safety.)
Jason Momoa (not!)
The one person we can assume Tom Ryder isn’t supposed to be mocking is Momoa, who ends up appearing in the film as himself, replacing Tom after the action star explodes in a pyrotechnics accident he caused by using his cell phone where he shouldn’t. It’s fun to see Duncan Idaho show up and kick ass, since so much of Metalstorm is Dune-coded (set in space on a sandy planet, with a Hans Zimmer–like score and Teresa Palmer looking like she’s wearing a Lady Jessica Halloween costume). Also, haven’t many of us wondered “is it Momoa or Mamoa” at some point? The Post-It note Tom has in his loft with that question might be his most relatable quality!
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