VGflicks: Free Guy (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Moving on to the final VGFlicks review this year, and it’s another big one. I still remember the summer of 2021. The pandemic was still bad, but cinemas had reopened, figuring they could have representations if moviegoers wore masks and practiced safe distancing. Sad times. But! I do remember going to the theater for a few films that summer. One was Space Jam: A New Legacy (reviewed these past two weeks) and another was this one.

Sunglasses are back in style.

We video game fans have been dining well since the early 2010s when it comes to movies about video games, be they adaptations or original stories with the medium as centerstage. It’s not that there weren’t good video game movies before, but they became far more common afterwards. I covered a lot of movies about video games, both good and bad, so I did witness that shift.

Anyway, without playing my hand too early, I guess I could say that Free Guy is one fine example of a movie that really understands the medium of video games and everything around them, all while hiding a science-fiction plot under the guise of a comedy. And with one of Hollywood’s most famous quippers, too. For what it’s worth, I knew this movie was going to do things right just by seeing its advertising – so many posters parodying famous video game franchises, and mimicking quite faithfully the look of those franchises (or their box arts, at least). Seriously – look at these!

Free Guy was directed by Shawn Levy (who would go on to make more movies with Ryan Reynolds), and was filmed in 2019 – though it wasn’t released to theaters until August 13th, 2021. As someone whose first language wasn’t English, let me start with a little observation: This movie’s title is untranslatable. It works on like three levels, but any translations will only be able to go for one of them. Explaining this would spoil things ahead of time, so why not just look at the plot?

Welcome to Free City

See? Super-cool. Totally justified, not psychopathic at all.

The film opens on narration by our protagonist, who presents Free City: An incredible place to live, where “anything is possible”. In this city, those who wear sunglasses are badass heroes and have access to anything they want; they can parachute, they can use gliders, they can get any girl they want, they can steal cars, they can rob banks, they can kill random people. True heroes! …wait, what? Amazing idea, by the way, to present this all within the first shots of the film, two oners that show and tell so much about the setting in such short time.

Medium coffee, cream, two sugars is just the default
in this world.

Cut to the main character’s apartment. Guy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up to his alarm, Fantasy by Mariah Carey. He says hello to his goldfish, gets dressed, has a bowl of cereal while watching the news (murders and chaos everywhere), flashes his blinds for a minute, then goes to get his morning coffee at the shop. Medium, cream, two sugars. He’ll check up on those blue shoes he desperately wants (but cannot afford), and rejoins his security guard friend Buddy (Lil Rey Howery) on the way to the bank. There, he will sign and stamp papers to the same customers over and over, until the inevitable bank heists, several times a day- …wait, what? At which point Buddy will drop his gun belt, join his friend on the floor behind the counter, and just wait for the sunglasses people to leave with more money than they came in with. At the end of the day, the two friends will go out for beers and chill at the beach.

Who cares there's an attack on the bank, when you have
your buddy to talk to? Guy even balances his legs like a
teen when talking about the woman of his dreams!

Through all this, Guy dreams of meeting the perfect woman for him. Someone with an off-kilter sense of humor, who loves pop music, who will match him so well. Such a woman might not even exist!

Of course, what Guy and all his colleagues and friends don’t know, is that Free City is a video game, and they’re merely NPCs living in it, entirely unaware of the artificial nature of their world. Those with sunglasses are player characters, controlled by people in the real world, hence why they have access to all sorts of features and skills NPCs can’t have.

Also, before I forget – Hey, Buddy, you look familiar.

Lil Rey Howery, seen here commenting a basketball game.

I wasn’t expecting any links between Free Guy and Space Jam 2!

We cut to a player who goes by molotovGirl (Jodie Comer), meeting a shady guy in a balaclava in an alley. The guy knows of a player who recorded a clip of something strange, and he is giving her a map to that player’s stash house. She believes the recording contains something extremely important that she’s after. She gets the data, and kills the other player character when he asks too many questions.

That's Jackman in voice only, yep. Neat little trick.

And here we have our first voice or face cameo of the movie! There’s a LOT of quick cameos across this film. You may recognize the guy’s voice as… yep, that’s Hugh Jackman putting on an American accent. Another surprising addition is Dwayne Johnson, who voices another PC later (and, the first time I watched the film in English, I did not recognize him!). John Krasinski and Tina Fey have other voice cameos. Then, several faces appear directly: For starters, Channing Tatum as a role slightly more important than a cameo. There’s Chris Evans later, and also Alex Trebek (who passed away in November 2020, making this a posthumous appearance). And due to how events play out, quite a few famous online content creators appear for moments; the only two names that rung a bell to me were Jacksepticeye, Ninja and Pokimane.

Jodie Comer gets to play two completely opposite roles,
in the same film. That must've been so much fun.

This same scene also introduces more interesting elements of Free City; as an example, that players interact vocally with NPCs and other players through their microphones, but the game includes an accent filter (molotovGirl is American, but has put on a British filter), as well as the ability to make your player character’s voice be completely different from yours (the Dwayne Johnson voice cameo mentioned above is controlled by two teen girls IRL!). Like a lot of details about the game that are revealed during the runtime, it sounds too good to be true – and it is, but even with all the accurate representations all over the place, this film runs a LOT on what’s cool rather than what’s realistic when it comes to game design, which is in no way a problem if it makes the story interesting!

The click

The movie was so close to replicating the "Distracted
Boyfriend" meme.

After her transaction, molotovGirl walks down the street, quoting the NPCs she meets as if she knew the game by heart. She starts humming Fantasy right as she’s passing by Guy and Buddy, and as she quotes his line, he turns around to say he loves that song. It surprises her for a moment, but she keeps walking away. Guy feels love at first sight, but Buddy tries to discourage him; she wears sunglasses! He tries to follow her all the way to a seemingly empty area beyond rail tracks, but he gets hit by a train before he can reach her.

Every minute playing that drivel must be so painful.

Cut to the real world. molotovGirl is the Free City avatar of Millie Rusk (also Jodie Comer). She hates Free City, but has to spend entire days in it to find evidence. The multiplayer GTA/ Saints Row/Fortnite parody is a production of Soonami Studios. She and her friend Walter “Keys” McKey (Joe Keery), an MIT graduate, began their careers in game design with a project titled Life Itself, and they even designed a complex and unique AI system for it; they landed on Soonami when looking for a publisher. Unfortunately, under claims that a non-interactive game wouldn’t be worth a release, the project got shelved; but Millie is convinced that their original game and AI were plagiarized for Free City’s system.

Guy respawns in his bed the next morning no worse for wear, with no apparent memories of his death, but still… something feels off. At the coffee shop, instead of his usual, he wants to try a cappuccino. This change stuns everyone around him, barista included, and… everything turns belligerent around him. A cop threatens to shoot, and a tank outside the coffee shop points its cannon at Guy’s head. Guy changes his mind and goes back to his usual coffee.

"What? What did I do?"

The entire film is about Guy growing beyond his programming and unlocking the self-awareness of other NPCs through interactions with them. This specific scene is something that never shows up again in the film, yet it would have made a super-interesting movie on its own: If the game itself tried to quell down any hints of self-awareness, forcing the NPCs into their routines under threat of death (even if temporary). Maybe, instead of looking for that code, the protagonists in the real world would be trying to break the game to let the first instances of self-aware artificial intelligence live freely while the studio is purposely trying to shut it down, either because they dread such AIs going rogue or just don’t want to deal with that. Even if it’s just coincidental, the tank’s cannon suddenly aiming at Guy is too on-point. It feels planned, it feels like in an older version of the film it may have been intentional. It doesn’t make as much sense with the more lighthearted tone the actual film goes for. Pure speculation, but this sole scene convinced me that there was a different intention for the film in earlier drafts.

Give him a chance, he just wants the fancy eyewear!

After Guy leaves, the barista stares at her coffee ingredients… the seed of an idea has been planted. As for Guy, he’s not enjoying his day at the bank. And it feels wrong to chill out behind the counter with Buddy when the usual robbers show up. But! Through the door, he spots molotovGirl. He wants to see her again, but he may need sunglasses for that. He gets up and confronts the bank robber. He gets a beating and a broken nose from the PC, but spotting his romantic interest walk away still, he steals the sunglasses… and accidentally kills the robber with his own gun. After seeing the shock of everyone around, Guy heads out to chase his love.

We’re In A Game??!?

Outside, Guy tries the glasses on… and gets bombarded by the game’s HUD. Inventory at the bottom, health on the top left, a mini-map, and tons of floating letter signs over every building. “General Store”, “Armory”… His workplace is right next to a big sign saying “Bank Heist”, with a mission telling players to go in and steal 100,000$. Near him is a first-aid kit; he touches it, and it repairs his nose. Health restored! Seconds later, he steals money off the corpse of a player that crashed into the out-of-bounds wall and landed dead near him.

He checks his account, and… Wow! He can finally afford those blue shoes! Oh, he’s gonna splurge!

Keys on the right, Mouser in the center (real name never
given).

We cut to Soonami Studios, in the real world. Walter McKey works in Quality Assurance and technical support for the studio, when his skills would be far better used in game development. He discusses with his colleague Mouser (Utkarsh Ambudkar) a report he received of a player who got killed by an NPC. They assume that the NPC is a player using illegal mods to make their character look like that; modding is not allowed in the multiplayer-focused Free City, since it can break several gameplay elements. Keys and Mouser assume the guy is a smart hacker since they can’t seem to spot him in the player base, so they make their own avatars to hunt the character down in the game itself.

Officer Mustache and Officer Pink Rabbit.
Coming out never, in theaters near you.

Guy walks out of the shoe store with his new acquisition. Just before he attempts to cross the railway again, he is accosted by a cop with a mustache and his colleague wearing a full-body pink fursu- I mean bunny- I mean rabbit suit. He is immediately told to take off his skin, and the cops(?) continue with more incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo about hacking and mission logs. Guy is confused, but as nice as ever – and to the QA guys, he comes across as the hacker trolling them.

This rabbit is packing heat. It's easy to be an "Apex predator"
when you have a whole armory in your inventory.

Guy flees as the cops pull out their guns and shoot. He finds refuge in an unfinished building, and they give chase. Staring down at his shoes with his HUD sunglasses on, he sees they have “three jumps left”. He accidentally activates the ability and is sent flying several floors upwards… then wastes a second jump. With his final jump, he goes so high to be uncatchable – so Keys and Mouser trigger God Mode to transform the area and make a quick path to the top floors.

No, God Mode doesn’t work like that, obviously – but then again, moderators would not have to kill a player character in the game to delete them. Like I said: A lot of artistic license regarding game development and upkeep is sprinkled throughout, but damn if they don’t make it fun and create a ton of awesome visuals by the wayside. God Mode at play here is freaking cool.

So what if God Mode doesn't work that way?

I unfortunately haven't seen much of Stranger Things, so
don't expect me to flip this review upside down with two,
or three, or eleven subtle references. I just know Joe
Keery was in that show.

Guy escapes them by jumping to a wrecking ball, missing, and surviving the fall by activating a bubble suit. The cops(?) still kill him with their car though. Keys and Mouser applaud themselves for a job well done, but Keys notices that the online player count hasn’t decreased despite their success. Strange, but they aren’t grasping that there are stranger things at play here. (Yes, I did that on purpose.) They choose not to bother their boss Antwan about that issue, since Soonami Studios is neck-deep into the production of Free City 2.

Mouser asks why an MIT graduate like Keys would end up working QA at an AAA game studio, but stops his colleague before the story can even start assuming it will contain too much white privilege. Uh, OK then. I mean, the character of Mouser is probably Indian-American like his actor, so while it does make sense for him to assume stories like that, it feels… a bit out of place as a mention within the film? Maybe setting up a character trait for Mouser? Okay, but that also doesn’t come up again.

We're not gonna get that story right away, but we do
get to learn a lot about Keys over the course of the film.
Including in the scene immediately after this one.

Not that this isn’t an important topic in modern society, but it’s so disconnected to everything else in the film that it comes across as a mention “just because”, like something that was expected to be heard from someone from a newer generation or a visible minority, and with a mind towards calling out social injustices. I guess if that’s to be in the film, I would have liked that to come up once more later. I think the closest we get is that, as things evolve, Mouser ends up siding with the “oppressor” (Antwan) due to being fed many lies about what’s going on, at least until the boss’s torts are too much to tolerate; maybe that’s how that all ties together. But this does feel poorly implemented otherwise, since Mouser doesn't display this trait at any other moment. At least he has a major redeeming quality in his friendship with Keys.

Anyway, this is where I best end for today. See you for Part 2.