In celebration of a loosening of the COVID restrictions, I have been to the movies. The most recent movie I saw was Free Guy. This is the movie with Ryan Reynolds, Jody Comer, Lil Rel Howery and Joe Keery. There were also a number of cameos by other actors, like Alex Trebek, Chris Evans, Channing Tatum and others – some of which I missed.
My spoiler free summary of the movie: I expected it to be either terribly bad or terribly stupid, but was surprised when it was actually a fun and funny movie. I liked it! I think it is my favourite movie this summer!
The following is a slightly more complete reflection, with some spoilers…
Ryan Reynolds plays the titular character Guy. Guy is a NPC (non-playable character) in a video game called Free City. Essentially, Guy is a background character on a fixed loop of actions. He wakes up, talks to his goldfish, gets his coffee and goes to his job as a teller at the bank.
In this open-world video game, players are generally the villains – or heroes in their own minds. They rob banks and stores on a regular basis. They steal cars, knock out people and blow up buildings. They are your typical player in a game where there are zero real world consequences for their in game behaviour.
Of course, things are a bit different from the perspective of the NPCs. They are caught in their usual loops of actions. For example, during a bank robbery, all the NPCs capitulate without question. Buddy, Guy’s best friend and Bank security guard, never fights back. He drops his gun at the first sign of trouble and joins Guy on the floor. This cycle continues for Guy until one day he meets the player Molotov Girl (aka Millie). Seeing her triggers something, a change in his programming that causes Guy to veer off script.
But the story is not limited to the actions within the video game. We are introduced to some of the players and the media world they occupy too. I was impressed with the switch between “in game” and “real world” story telling. There was a lot of different aspects of modern life brought into the storytelling of this movie. The visual shift between the two worlds was nicely done. And the connections with the story were well organized. The plot about a corrupt owner of a popular (but bland) video game company wove in well with the idea of successful AI and stolen code. The plot used just enough jargon to sound vaguely real, but explained enough that someone with no gaming background could follow along. And the AI wasn’t evil and out to destroy all humanity. The AI was nice and just wanted to do its own thing – so relatable to our everyday life.
I loved Guy. Really Reynolds did an excellent job making the character so likeable. It was wonderful to see that Guy’s method for leveling up was generally non-violent. He was just trying to do good. And he approached this goal with the idea of minimal violence and nothing permanently damaging (or tried to). It was a nice change from the pirate blimps machine gunning the streets in the background.
Speaking of background. I totally want to watch this movie again just to pay more attention to the crazy work going on in the background. There is always something insane happening – usually because of the game players. Cars are exploding, fighter jets are zooming through the skies, it is an endless flow of weird and generally violent actions that I sometimes failed to notice because I was focused on the primary plot. They did an awesome job making the background and characters interesting!
Really, Free Guy was just a great, straightforward, fun story. The actors sold the characters really well. It looked like it would have been a blast of a movie to work on. And it was not part of a franchise, not a sequel and not a remake. All of this has pushed Free Guy to the top of my summer movie list – full five stars (out of five)!