Warning: SPOILERS for The Bare GunThe Bare Gun is a joyful reboot-slash-legacy sequel that doesn’t require viewers to have seen the unique trilogy of slapstick spoof movies–and, apparently, that’s all due to a small act of revolt by its writers. Directed by The Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer, the film was co-written by him, Doug Mand, and Dan Gregor.
The film is packed wall-to-wall with humorous moments, however certainly one of The Bare Gun’s most sudden sequences entails Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin, Jr. being carried by the air by an owl that’s supposedly his father, the unique Frank Drebin performed by Leslie Nielsen.
As half of a bigger ScreenRant interview discussing The Bare Gun, writers Doug Mand and Dan Gregor revealed how they landed on the concept of the unique Frank Drebin showing in owl type. It seems that one of many film’s wackiest moments was a response to a studio word requesting that Drebin senior be extra current within the story:
ScreenRant: One factor that I notably thought was a hoot was the Frank Drebin Sr. cameo. How did you determine how to try this and why did you wish to try this?
Dan Gregor: Very intelligent.
ScreenRant: Thanks.
Dan Gregor: The studio saved giving us this word the place it is like, “We want a deeper relationship with Frank Drebin Sr. We want him to have more about his dad,” and I believe that, for us, that is in some methods a dying knell–to be too up the ass of the outdated films. You don’t need the viewers to have to return in and must consistently be serious about, “Do I know those old movies well enough?”
We have been like, “We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to have to make Frank Sr. a really central part of the plot.” And so we’re like, “How do we do that in a way that is really stupid?” So, that form of was our tackle, “Okay, okay. No, so he is in the plot, but he’s a f**king owl and it’s really, really dumb.”
Doug Mand: And everyone knows that we’re all simply making an attempt to endlessly please our fathers and make them pleased with us. How will we blow that concept out, and the place does poisonous masculinity come from? [It’s] this concept that this macho man may very well be like, “I just want to see you again. I just want you to love me.”
Simply Liam Neeson saying “daddy” in such a real approach is certainly one of my favourite issues as a result of it’s so harmless. And it is so clear, once you’re watching these macho males, there are simply little boys in there who simply really want a f**king hug, and that is most likely why they’re so violent. They simply want somebody to f**king hug them.
Dan Gregor: We went backwards and forwards. We had two completely different variations [of the ending to that]. [There’s] the one which’s in there, after which there’s one other one the place after he form of rode the owl and had the s*** assault, [Frank’s] like, “Thank you, daddy. Thank you,” after which we lower to the owl and he is simply consuming a rat on the bottom and also you notice, “Oh, it was simply an owl. There was no metaphor there.”
Doug Mand: I believe the opposite joke was that Paul Walter Hauser can be like, “This is my dad,” and he is taking part in with a lion that escaped a zoo, after which that lion assaults him and he is like, “It’s not my dad!”
Dan Gregor: However they did not wish to pay for a lion, a lot to our disappointment.
Doug Mand: Hollywood.
Dan Gregor: Anyway, so it was one thing that happened in a great way. We bought a really form of regular studio word about paying extra homage to the unique, having extra emotional grounding with pathos, and we have been like, “How do we do that in a stupid way?”
What This Means About The Bare Gun
Dan Gregor and Doug Mand clearly have loads of love for The Bare Gun’s supply materials, however their strategy to a word about tying the movie again to its predecessors is a superb instance of how properly they struck a steadiness between outdated and new. As ScreenRant’s assessment places it, The Bare Gun neatly “focuses on the laughs”, not legacy.
As an alternative, The Bare Gun reintroduces audiences to Liam Neeson as a comic book actor and Pamela Anderson as a real film star with few references to the unique movies. The truth that Mand and Gregor fought to verify their film did not depend on ties to a 30-plus-year-old movie trilogy proves their intent to make a movie for all audiences.
Our Take On The Bare Gun’s Frank Drebin Sr. Cameo
I’m unsure if Leslie Nielsen’s The Bare Gun films would have included Frank Drebin hanging from the legs of an owl because it defecated onto dangerous guys, however the reality-breaking gag definitely feels of the spirit of the unique trilogy. That Mand and Gregor crafted that sequence in response to studio stress is even higher.
The joke is one of some that really feel distinctive to this The Bare Gun–the tangent sequence taking viewers by all the scope of a relationship with a snowman is one other–however it’s straightforward to think about that Leslie Nielsen himself would approve of his character returning on this approach. That is the man whose tombstone reads “Let ‘er rip”, in spite of everything.
The Bare Gun is in theaters now.
The Bare Gun
8/10
Launch Date
August 1, 2025
Director
Akiva Schaffer
Writers
Akiva Schaffer, Doug Mand, Dan Gregor
Producers
Erica Huggins
Franchise(s)
The Bare Gun
