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Former reality TV star and California politician Spencer Pratt offered a blistering response Friday after actor Ryan Reynolds condemned nostalgia for the 1980s.
Ryan Reynolds had initially faced backlash Thursday after the “Deadpool” star called the 1980s “brutal” and a “f—ing mess” while promoting his Cold War-era movie “Mayday” at its New York premiere, prompting critics to question his characterization of the decade and the contrast with his nostalgia-driven new film.
“When you get far enough away from a time period that’s quite distinct, there’s always a lovely feeling associated with it, almost like you pave over all the trauma with puppy dogs and ice cream,” Reynolds said in an interview with Variety.
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“The ’80s was a brutal, brutal time for people. It was a f—ing mess, and people forget that.”
Pratt, however, argued that the 1980s were a time of cultural sanity compared to today’s world, one where there were clearly defined ideals of good and evil.
“It makes perfect sense that Ryan Reynolds’ view of the 80s is the inverse of what normal people think. In 80s movies, bad guys were villains. Today, the bad guys are the heroes. Hollywood now bends over backwards to redeem wickedness and mental illness,” he said on X.
“‘Top Gun’ and St Thomas of Cruise represent the hero generation of cinema. Reynolds represents the anti-hero generation, and they are both byproducts of their own creations. Choose your path carefully, young man.”
Reynolds, in recent years, has played the Marvel superhero/anti-hero Deadpool, who is a wisecracking mercenary who breaks the fourth wall of the Marvel Universe and stands as a stark contrast against the more traditional superhero archetype.
Pratt shared his tweet with an excerpt from a video he had previously shared in which he was talking about far-left politics among women and the “hijacking of the maternal instinct” and the loss of classic heroes as American culture began to try to empathize with anti-heroes or even outright villains.
Christian Toto, an award-winning film critic and founder of Hollywood in Toto, spoke to Fox News Digital about how Pratt’s response to Reynolds points to a very real fissure in American culture.
“Spencer Pratt’s hot take suggests a sobering reality. Has pop culture’s infatuation with anti-heroes had real-world implications? It’s one thing to follow Tony Soprano or Walter White, but modern films and TV shows are replete with villains we’re asked to cheer on,” he said.
“Consider how many recent movies have given us hit men with hearts of gold. ‘Bullet Train.’ ‘Hit Man.’ The ‘John Wick’ saga. Indie films like ‘Emily the Criminal’ and ‘Carolina Caroline’ also turn villains into quasi-heroes.
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“Has that had a corrosive effect on the culture? Pratt’s question is worth exploring.
“His takedown of Reynolds’ comments also leave[s] a mark. No decade is perfect. The ’80s gave us the AIDS crisis, worries about nuclear war, the Challenger explosion and more. It also delivered great pop culture classics and lacked the cultural hand-wringing that weighs down so much of our lives today. It was a more simple time, and it’s impossible not to miss that,” he concluded.
Theo Wold, former assistant attorney general and former White House deputy assistant for domestic policy under President Donald Trump, offered a more explicitly political angle.
“Ryan Reynolds forgot to do some thinking before he took a talking point from his celebrity cocktail hours and debuted it in public. Most of us remember the ’80s, and it was a time when this country enjoyed greater social cohesion and wider individual freedoms than today, with relative economic prosperity,” he said.
“Of course, Reynolds’ experience growing up in Canada might have been different — socialism was working just as poorly then as it is now.
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“Also, only a vapid Hollywood celebrity would cite the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ as an explanation for why the 1980s were supposedly so ‘brutal,’ rather than, say, the horrific crimes perpetrated by radical leftists like domestic terrorists Angela Davis and Bill Ayers.”