He has become, without question, the breakout star of the 2024 summer movie season. Dennis McDonald’s legendary character Reggie, first introduced in Michael Bay’s Bad Boys II, has become a staple of the series ever since. Normally, he’s on the receiving end of the ridicule dispensed by Marcus (Martin Lawrence) and Mike (Will Smith), because he made the mistake of trying to date Marcus’s daughter and then – in Bad Boys for Life – get the young woman pregnant. But the best part about the new Bad Boys films is how the scripts evolve the main characters – Reggie included – and we are now learning that one key Reggie scene wasn’t even in the original Bad Boys: Ride or Die script.
We are going to have to get into spoilers for the new movie Bad Boys: Ride or Die, so stop reading now if you haven’t seen the movie and want to go in fresh.
Early on in Bad Boys: Ride or Die, one of the best in the series, Marcus suffers a heart attack during Mike’s wedding. Once out of the hospital, he heads home to recuperate, and ridicule Reggie (Dennis McDonald) for not having a job. Reggie reminds his father-in-law that he’s a U.S. Marine, to which Marcus says, “Well then you need to deploy.”
Marcus ends up singing a different tune later in the story, when armed goons invade the Burnett household, and Reggie snaps into fully Call of Duty mode to single-handedly dispatch an army of enemies. It’s one of the loudest cheer moments at the movies this summer, and one that McDonald told EW he trained for religiously. The actor said:
When I got the script and I found out what I was doing, I already knew that this might be something real, real big. He's finally in the family, [Marcus and Mike] finally accepted him, he's finally getting his due, so I'm just happy about that. … I had to get on real military mode. I went online and looked up a lot of the things that had to do with military training and stuff like that. So before I even went to military training, I was one step ahead of the curve.
The scene works because it’s so believable. And it’s hilarious because when we first met Reggie, he was a timid boyfriend being bullied by Mike and Marcus. And now he’s a military force, capable of stepping up and defending his family. It’s a magnificent arc for a character that the Bad Boys crowd has embraced. It’s a big part of the reason why this movie has been critically acclaimed since it opened.
And it’s apparently why the directors chose to include an unscripted scene with Reggie that ends the film. It takes place in a Florida park, around a grill. Marcus is ready to cook for everyone, but Reggie steps up and offers to make chicken. And because of his bravery, Mike and Marcus hand him the “keys” to the grill. McDonald says he was just as surprised as everyone that he got the final scene in the movie, telling EW:
That wasn't in the script at all. That was kind of crazy — I was in Miami filming, and then I flew back home, and then they called me like three or four days later to come back to Miami to shoot another scene. … I had lines and everything, and it was the whole end of the movie. They're like, 'Yeah, you end the whole movie. It ends with your face.' And I'm like, 'Are you serious?' I was just overwhelmed.
It’s a terrific ending, and one of more than a handful of emotional moments in Bad Boys: Ride or Die that help make the sequel special. Bad Boys 4 and Inside Out 2 are pulling the summer box office back to relevancy after a mild May. We have a number of upcoming 2024 movies that can continue the hot streak, including Despicable Me 4 and Deadpool & Wolverine. But for now, the summer belongs to Mike and Marcus. And certainly to Reggie.
