MacGruber (film)

In eastern Siberia's Dzhugdzhur Mountains, Dieter Von Cunth and his men take control of the X-5 missile, which has a nuclear warhead. In Ecuador, Col. Jim Faith and Lt. Dixon Piper are searching for former Green Beret, Navy SEAL and Army Ranger MacGruber. The two men find him meditating in a chapel, and try to convince him to retrieve the warhead. MacGruber refuses; later that night, MacGruber explodes into a fit of rage after he wakes up from a flashback where Cunth killed his fiancée, Casey Fitzpatrick, at their wedding; he then accepts the offer.

After having a heated conversation with Faith and Piper at The Pentagon, MacGruber creates a list and travels the U.S. to form his own team to pursue Cunth. MacGruber recruits all but his long-time friend Vicki St. Elmo and Brick Hughes. MacGruber meets Faith and Piper on a tarmac, while his team is in a van with his homemade C-4 explosives. The van explodes, killing the entire team, and Col. Faith removes MacGruber from the case. MacGruber convinces Piper to form a new team, and Vicki arrives at the Petagon to join him in taking down Cunth.

The group travels to Cunth's nightclub in Las Vegas. A driver in the parking lot is rude to MacGruber and angers him, so he begins to repeat the license plate number KFBR392 obsessively to remember it. MacGruber gets on stage and announces who he is, his intentions, and where he will be the next day. The team sets up a sting operation with Vicki portraying MacGruber. Hoss Bender, one of Cunth's henchmen, attacks the van MacGruber and Piper are in, but MacGruber runs down and kills Bender. With Vicki disguised as Bender and Piper disguised as MacGruber, the team attempts to break into a warehouse to stop Cunth from getting the passwords to operate the rocket. MacGruber distracts the guards and Piper kills most of the men, but is unable to stop the transfer of the passcodes. The team goes to a charity event Cunth is holding where MacGruber confronts Cunth and threatens both him and his guards. Cunth's guards throw MacGruber out.

MacGruber returns to the Pentagon where Faith reprimands him and takes him off of the case. MacGruber and Piper sit and drink beers outside his trailer while MacGruber explains his history with Cunth: MacGruber met Casey Fitzpatrick and Dieter von Cunth while the two were in a relationship, until MacGruber and Casey began an affair and he asked Casey to abort the baby she was going to have with Cunth. Soldiers ambush them and MacGruber uses Piper as a human shield to survive and escapes along with Vicki. Vicki and MacGruber believe that Piper was killed in the attack, but Piper reveals that he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Piper compliments MacGruber on his quick thinking, only to realize that MacGruber wasn't aware of the bulletproof vest and had intended to let him die, so Piper leaves the team. Vicki realizes MacGruber has been shot in the leg, and they go back to her house to remove the bullet. Vicki confesses her love to MacGruber, she admits she is a virgin, and they end up having sex. MacGruber goes to his wife's grave in shame, but her ghost gives her blessing. MacGruber then has sex with the ghost of his wife on her tombstone.

Upon returning to Vicki's house, MacGruber discovers that Cunth has kidnapped her. MacGruber realizes that Cunth's plan is to blow up Congress during the State of the Union. He calls Col. Faith to inform him and then finds and destroys the KFBR932 car. Cunth calls MacGruber to gloat and MacGruber traces the call and Piper agrees to help MacGruber on one last mission. MacGruber and Piper make their way into Cunth's compound, but they are captured and taken to Cunth, who is with Vicki and the missile. The group overpowers Cunth and his men and MacGruber handcuffs Cunth to a handrail. MacGruber removes the nuclear component and guidance system before his team escapes as the missile explodes. Cunth escapes by using an axe to chop off his handcuffed hand.

Six months later, MacGruber and Vicki are getting married. Also present at the wedding as ghosts are his dead team members. During the ceremony, mirroring his wedding to Casey, MacGruber spots a disfigured Cunth with an RPG. MacGruber saves Vicki and battles Cunth before throwing him off a cliff behind the altar, shooting him with a machine gun and launching a grenade as he falls, incinerating the corpse, and finally urinating on it from the top of the cliff.

MacGruber is based on a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live, a parody of the television series MacGyver. It was created by writer Jorma Taccone, who pitched the idea to cast member/writer Will Forte over a period of several weeks.[6] Forte was initially reluctant to commit to the sketch, deeming it too dumb, but accepted after persuasion from Taccone.[7] The first sketch aired in January 2007, and led to multiple more segments in the following years. In 2009, the sketches were spun off into a series of commercials sponsored by Pepsi premiering during Super Bowl XLIII that featured the actor behind MacGyver, Richard Dean Anderson, as MacGruber's father. The advertisements led the character and sketches to receive a wider level of popularity.[7]

Following the success of the advertisements, creator Lorne Michaels approached Forte, Taccone, and writer John Solomon with the idea to produce a MacGruber film, and they were at first skeptical. They began pitching ideas for a potential feature-length adaption, deciding first and foremost it would not be the sketch repeated for its entire runtime.[8] The film's central conceit was to produce a real action film, with MacGruber as comic relief.[9] It was inspired by their love of 1980s–90s action films, such as Lethal Weapon, Rambo, and Die Hard. To this end, it is considerably more deadpan in its parody, with most characters outside MacGruber designed "as serious as possible."[8] The most difficult part of the writing process was to portray MacGruber—an "insanely flawed [and] narcissistic" individual—as a likable lead character.[6][9]

The film was written while simultaneously producing a weekly episode of SNL, and the show's production process left the trio fully deprived of sleep. This led to sequences deemed "crazier," such as a scene involving celery.[10] There was concern the film might receive an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, which could lead to certain commercial disappointment.[10] The script was written in five weeks by Taccone and Forte,[11] with a first draft coming in at 177 pages and lacking a third act. It was subsequently re-written under budgetary concerns, which mostly involved deleting scenes containing special effects.[6] Forte praised the level of creative freedom afforded to the filmmakers, noting that even the more outrageous jokes were allowed to remain in the final film.[6]

On the June 1, 2009 episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Forte announced that MacGruber had been greenlit and production was to begin on August 9, with Jimmy Fallon adding on the July 29 episode that it would be filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico.[12] Cameos by WWE wrestlers Chris Jericho, The Big Show, Mark Henry, Kane, MVP and The Great Khali and actor Derek Mears, were later confirmed.[13]

Following a short six-week period of preparation,[14] the film was shot between August 10 and September 13, 2009 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.[7] The film shoot employed a crew composed of local workers as a part of a tax credit.[15] The quick film schedule of 28 days led to the filmmakers adjusting scenes to complete them on time, as the presence of automatic weapons on set would slow down the process. Keeping in line with their sources for parody, the filmmakers opted for cinematography emulating the style of blockbuster action films. This involved most prominently using smoke machines for interior areas, as they noticed similar scenes in Lethal Weapon inexplicably contain prominent smoke.[14]

Pictures were leaked on the Internet on January 6, 2010. A two-minute red band trailer was released on January 19, 2010, and the next day, January 20, a green band trailer was released.[17]

On April 19, 2010, Forte, Wiig, and Phillippe hosted WWE Raw from the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey in character to promote the film.[18]

Phillippe guest hosted Saturday Night Live on April 17, 2010 and made reference to the film in his opening monologue.[19]

After an off-hand mention by Taccone in an interview in 2012, Forte dismissed rumors of a sequel, commenting, "We jokingly talk about the sequel all the time. But I don't think anybody in their right mind would give us any money for it."[40] The following year, he told Entertainment Weekly that Taccone had mentioned creating a Kickstarter to financially support a sequel, saying, "We are going to make MacGruber 2 for sure. Whether we have to do it with a video camera in our backyards – there will be some form of MacGruber 2."[41] The film's writing team at one point convened to produce a loosely completed outline, but the trio have since been too busy to complete a script.[42] In 2015, Forte said the team has a "realistic shot" at producing the film, and it is his second priority behind his comedy series, The Last Man on Earth.[43]

Forte discussed a MacGruber TV series in a March 2019 IndieWire article, saying, "The state of MacGruber right now is, we're trying to see if somebody will let us make it as a TV series... We have a really fun idea. We actually went out and pitched it a couple weeks ago."[44] On January 16, 2020, it was announced the TV series is in the works and will be released on the streaming service Peacock.[45]

• Official website
• MacGruber on IMDb
• MacGruber at Box Office Mojo
• MacGruber at Rotten Tomatoes
• MacGruber at Metacritic