Spoilers ahead for Bad Boys For Life…
Bad Boys For Life hits Malaysian cinemas this week. I’ve already seen it and without spoiling too much from my review which will be dropping tomorrow, let me just say I had a helluva good time watching it. The film sees Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reunite on the big screen as Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett, after 17 years. It’s also the first Bad Boys film without Michael Bay at the helm. Instead, it’s directed by Belgian filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah.
Also unlike the first two films is the inclusion of a mid-credits scene. In the scene we see Mike (Will Smith) have a conversation with his incarcerated son, the film’s villain who is trying to atone for his sins. Mike then asks him if he’d like to help Mike with a mission, as the film cuts back to the credits. But what is the purpose of the scene? Is it just for closure or is it to tease a potential sequel? Well, as it turns out, it’s a little bit of both. In an interview with Collider, co-director Adil El Arbi had this to say:
That was the last scene to be put in the movie, and we went back and forth a hundred times. No one knew what to do. The studio, the producer, us, or Will and Martin—do we put it in or not? And from those eight or ten test screenings, we screened it with and without, and by screening it without, the audience felt they needed some kind of closure with one of the characters, so we put it back in really close to the title, not like a Marvel movie where it comes all the way at the end of the credits. It’s not a superhero movie; we put it in just to have that closure. And who knows? If the movie is successful, there might be another one.
Bad Boys For Life hits Malaysian cinemas 23 January 2020.
