Ryan Reynolds said the 1980s were scarier than the nostalgia admits, Spencer Pratt told him to go back to selling phone plans, and the phone plan he named belongs to the wrong company. Hollywood’s silliest new feud is fully operational.
The California native, 43, professional lightning rod and recent longshot Los Angeles mayoral candidate, came off the top rope this week at one of the biggest stars alive, personally offended on behalf of parachute pants. “Here I am trying to bring back American film jobs, and then these tools keep saying stupid crap like this,” Pratt fired on X at Ryan Reynolds. “Hollywood is seriously its own worst enemy. Just stick to the Cricket wireless ads, dude.“
The trigger: Reynolds, 49, told Variety at the premiere of his new film Mayday, which lands Friday and follows an American pilot who crashes in the 1987 Soviet Union, that the decade deserves less rosy a rewind. “The 80s was a brutal, brutal time for people,” the star said, arguing nostalgia paves over the era’s trauma: “It was a tremendous strife. Socio political tensions everywhere.“
He put the whole thesis in one perfect line: “It’s a tumultuous period, but you look back at it now and you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah. Top Gun. Cocaine!’ Like, no! It was really scary.“
One problem: Reynolds never sold Cricket. He was the longtime face, and part owner, of Mint Mobile, the budget carrier he helped sell in a deal valued at over a billion dollars. Pratt aimed for the sickest possible burn about phone commercials and dialed the wrong carrier, which is the kind of detail that turns a feud into a comedy.
The asymmetry is the other half of the fun. In one corner: The Hills’ eternal villain, armed with a grudge and a factual error. In the other: the internet’s undisputed heavyweight champion of the comeback, whose replies routinely outperform marketing campaigns, and who has so far said nothing. Reynolds built an empire on precisely this kind of pitch hanging over the plate.
Mayday, meanwhile, gets its Friday release with a premise that explains his whole point: a Cold War story about the decade America prefers to remember as a montage.
Waiting on Deadpool
The thread became a referendum on the decade itself, fact-checks flying at both men. “Dude was 4 in 1980,” one user noted, while a defender who lived it testified: “I came into my prime during the 1980’s and it was the best decade to reach maturity.” And Pratt’s aim took its own hit, with one reply posting the Mint receipts under a dry verdict: “Criticizing Ryan Reynolds for being a god-tier capitalist is surprising.“
Pratt swung, missed the carrier, and left the ball hanging in front of celebrity social media’s most dangerous hands. If Reynolds decides this is worth thirty seconds of wit, the sequel writes itself, and the smart money says the Mint joke is already drafted.
Until then: the ’80s were scary, the burn was botched, and the internet waits.
