VGFlicks: Free Guy (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

I’m Not Real??

And he is being told this in the one place where he can see
all the ways in which players are rewarded for mistreating
him. Ouch.

Millie goes to tell Guy everything. She takes him to the multiplayer lounge, which he couldn’t access previously, to explain the artificial nature of this world – and of Guy himself. As an NPC, he’s little more than setpiece decoration, and players are encouraged to mistreat him whenever they can. The weight of the revelation leaves him heartbroken and crushed, and he leaves even after Millie explains about the imminent shutdown of his world.

I guess swimming in that ocean is out of the question, huh.

Not fair! I wanted him to make me laugh, not cry!

Seeking further confirmation, Guy heads off to the beach. He tosses a rock at the ocean and sees it disappears into the out-of-bounds barrier. Failing to get through to any other NPCs, Guy goes to Buddy’s place for a chat. The security guard doesn’t quite grasp the part about not being real, but he says that this moment, where he helps out a friend in a funk, that’s real no matter the circumstances around it. Buddy might be one of the silliest characters, but he’s got all the best moments of emotion in the film.

It is hilarious to me that in this movie, Ryan Reynolds plays
someone who doesn't (or barely) grasp the concept of a
fourth wall.

This helps Guy a lot, and so he enlists Buddy’s help. They sneak into the player safehouse, and get in easily because Buddy is friends with all the security guard NPCs in town. The safehouse’s owner arrives, and Buddy threatens him with his work firearm. The player character, portrayed by Channing Tatum, is ecstatic at meeting Blue Shirt Guy. Tatum is RevenjaminButton, the player followed during the Oners in the intro, and has this lengthy scene as well, so his role is greater than a cameo. The character is played by a streamer who speaks monotonously; the character is more animated than him. Guy easily gets his video just by asking nicely; though he does mention Millie's name in the discussion. The streamer tries to ask for things in return, like having Guy say his stream catchphrase. Or, uh, other awkward stuff.

Every gamer who's played a multiplayer game where
teabagging is possible has done it at least once.

You know another reason why I like this movie so much? It does throw the occasional gag or shade at gamers, sure. but you can tell that it’s all in good fun. It’s laughing a little at them, but mostly with them. The streamer here behaves pretty much as one would when meeting a celebrity in-game, but then there’s also jokes about that streamer being a stays-with-his-mom loser, sure. And most Free City avatars are portrayed as chaotic criminals – but then again, in a GTA-like game where major missions are invitations to crime, can they be blamed? Have you ever played multiplayer GTA? All the nods to modern gaming, like teabagging or (God help me) the Fortnite dances, including the floss, because of course it’s in this film. It’s not mockery to be insulting, it's more like a roast. You can tell there isn't a bad intention behing it.

See, that's the problem when you're streaming from your
parents' home.

In a weird way, I see Free Guy as the antithesis of Gamer, the first movie I ever covered in VGFlicks, in which gamers are all portrayed as gross assholes (if not complete psychos), since they remotely take control of real people to make them degrade themselves or kill each other without a second thought. The gamers in that movie have few to no redeeming qualities, and are hardly ever shown in a positive light; the one protagonist who’s a gamer is not portrayed positively until the very end. It’s been 12 years since I published that review and Gamer still comes across as a fucking insult.

The movie exhibits a genuine respect for gamers and
even streamer types. The jokes are gentle ribbing at best.
At least that's how they come across to me, since I have
seen movies handle depictions of gamers so poorly before.

In comparison, due to gamers in Free Guy assuming that Blue Shirt Guy is a player making a statement about NPC respect, they begin to think about how they treat NPCs in general and even reflect on those past actions. We are talking about remorse for mistreating bits of code here! Some even talk about changing their in-game behaviors after this point. Is this film a little naïve in its idealism? Perhaps, but I’ll take it.

Five days ago: "I love this guy!"
Today: "I hate this guy!"

Especially when we have some realism to come back to afterwards. Realizing that people are too interested in the Blue Shirt Guy stuff to prepurchase Free City 2, Antwan gets pissy and wants him gone. Hey, game studio CEOs are also represented with the level of respect they deserve. When Keys mentions that Guy is not a player but an NPC that’s gone sentient, Antwan is smart enough to ask whether there’s a way to reset that – and Mouser suggests rebooting the server.

Reboot

Revenjamin keeps referring to this island as a "secret level".
In an open-world multiplayer game, the right terminology
would be a secret area. Knowing Soonami, one could also
think it's a DLC or an expansion unlocked with money.

Meanwhile, Guy brings the recording to molotovGirl and patches things with her; they head to the multiplayer lounge to watch the clip. It shows RevenjaminButton dancing on a pole, seeing a strange paradise island glitching beyond the area limits. Unfortunately for them, this is when Mouser reboots the server; not only is the recording erased, but all the player characters, Millie’s included, get frozen in place.

Somebody has pressed the Pause button.

Okay, if Free City really was that big of a game, it would run several multiplayer servers, not just one. So, the Guy stuff seen in this movie would have happened in one server out of many. Just one server would make the place cramped with player characters everywhere, no matter the size of the city’s map. Having multiple servers would allows players to customize their experience regarding the number of human players, or pick servers geared towards beginner or expert players. Plus, having many servers means that players have a fallback plan if one server goes awry for any reason. Only one server increases the risk of something going wrong eventually.

It sure looks bigger than Los Santos!

Speaking of the size of the city, it’s never specified. There are shots where it’s implied to be enormous, while other scenes imply that everything is close enough that Guy can just walk there in minutes. Sure, players have access to portal guns for quick travel, but Guy never uses one for that purpose. Cars, then? Despite keeping a few in his safehouse, Guy isn’t seen driving one until the climax. We also have shots soon showing the entire NPC population of Free City, and it feels… too small for the actual scope the movie implies of the game. Just a few hundred. Chalk up those two points to artistic liberties, I’m willing to let quite a bit slide if the result is a good story. I refuse to stoop down to the level of CinemaSins!

Come on Millie, it's easy! Just sing Fantasy by Mariah
Carey at him!

Guy exits the lounge to see the entire world frozen. And then a white light ,akes everything disappear – and him last, as the game reboots. Guy wakes up in bed to his alarm. He says hello to his goldfish, he gets dressed, has a bowl of cereal while watching the news, flashes his blinds for a minute, gets his morning coffee at the shop (Medium, cream, two sugars), then heads to work at the bank with Buddy by his side. His program is back to respecting the routine. Or it would, but his walk is interrupted by molotovGirl, who spawns near him. She tries to break him out of it, without success.

When his AI activated, it became so advanced that no graph
could ever map his new behavior.

It seems hopeless, but Millie gets a call from Keys who says that Guy’s improved AI hasn’t disappeared; it’s just buried. In a video log he sends her, the programmer mentions about designing NPCs for Life Itself with identity quirks to make them interesting, and that he coded Guy with the desire of finding a romantic partner with similar tastes to his. He had to imagine that hypothetical love interest, so he based them off Millie herself. And it is when he met her, completely at random, that his AI broke out, all the way to basically sentience. She has a plan, so she stops the video before the end.

He even gets to remember when he had ice cream with
molotovGirl! Even though he technically shouldn't know
what taste is.

She breaks into the bank Guy works at and takes the teller hostage. She carries him away to try and reawaken him, even handing over a pair of sunglasses so he’ll see the HUD again. It doesn't work, so she kisses him, which reactivates the memories. Huh. Guess there WAS a button for that after all. He remembers everything, so he can now show her the other hint of the island’s existence.

Are we even at an angle from which we could see the
island over the blinds? ....ehhhhhh whatever.

The reason Guy flashes his blinds in the morning is that he could see something odd in the reflection. Something that looks like an island; he shows that to her, and Millie sees it too. The island was made invisible, but it’s in the horizon beyond the barrier at Southern Beach, and Antwan forgot to erase the reflections as well. Again: Not entirely sure that’s how it works, buuuut artistic license.

Breaking the game

Looks like a big crowd. And it is. But I feel like that number
would pale compared to the amount of player characters
roaming the streets.

The CEO will do everything to prevent Millie, Guy and Keys from finding the island – but Guy has an idea. Hours later, he has reunited all the NPCs across Free City for a meeting in the park. He tells them that they don’t need to accept all the gratuitous violence around them, all the crimes. Millie is by Guy’s side, telling how it is in the real world. Bank robberies are rare! There are no corpses in the street every day! And no gun violen- Oh. Uh, about that…

God damn, I do love me a good satirical joke. It stings, but we need it. Yeah, it vibes on the same level as the quip about white privilege from Mouser, but also, within context of Free City, this one doesn't feel quite as misplaced. It's even justified, considering that every player character has access to so many firearms, and absolutely no qualms about using them.

Guy on the way to finding a better world for everyone!

Either way, Guy’s speech. lets the other NPCs find it in them to grow beyond what they’ve been doing their whole “lives”. He states that they can be free, as long as one of them can reach the island. The NPCs together decide to go on strike against the player characters, chilling at the coffee shop. The players who attempt their usual missions have no idea just what is going on – this has never happened before.

Agh! Betrayed by the livestream!
Guy, you don't tell people's real names to just anybody!

Meanwhile, at Soonami, Antwan is studying livestreams to find about Millie Rusk’s player and lands on the scene of Guy talking with the streamer from earlier, where he mentions her by name. Mouser tries to ban molotovGirl from the game, but the account is spoofed. And he can’t send the cop and military NPCs at her because of the strike. All that’s left is to turn off respawns for everyone and go full God Mode to end her (and Guy, too). Mouser follows his boss through this because Antwan told him that Millie’s lawsuit is bogus. He’s unknowingly siding with the villain. And he’s very efficient at his job.

Wonder how many players saw that happen through their
characters' eyes.

Guy and Millie drive to the beach in a sports car. Then… the street gets thinner. The buildings are closing in. Mouser is manipulating the environment to crush them. God damn, that concept makes for amazing visuals. I swear, this is one of my favorite action scenes in the film. He's even throwing cars at Guy, which the NPC has to avoid. It seems lost as the buildings get too close, but Keys, hidden within the offices, manipulates the game from his laptop to create a ramp that saves Guy and molotovGirl’s car and makes them land on a rooftop.

One second late and there wouldn't be a finale.

Reporting on his failure, Mouser goes back to Antwan. The employee realizes that the two characters are headed towards the southern beach. There’s nothing there… unless there is. Yep, it took that long, but he's figuring it out; the lawsuit may not be so bogus after all.

Antwan really is a dick. Thankfully, Keys knows that the
best way to fight this guy is through good programming.
Fun fact: Director Shawn Levy based a lot of interactions
Antwan has with the others on a real-life studio exec he
talked about the project with.

Keys was caught by security and taken to Antwan’s office. The CEO calls him out on helping Millie Rusk as she looks for Life Itself’s build within Free City, and Keys plays dumb. After all, everything Antwan has been doing these past hours has only been incriminating him. Keys leaves a final message to his ex-boss, giving him the middle finger and using that finger to press a laptop key and activate something in Free City. On Southern Beach, molotovGirl and Guy see a building deconstructing itself, creating an opening through the virtual wall and a bridge towards the invisible island.

The bridge towards freedom!

That's a glitchy disconnection if I've ever seen one.

Mouser gets to Antwan’s office and shows the bridge getting built in the game, with Guy and Millie’s avatar looking at its construction. The CEO orders all the players booted from the game by force. Antwan also demands that the devs upload his Free City 2 version of Blue Shirt Guy, which he himself worked on, to fight against Guy. Keys is taken by security to clean out his office; meanwhile, the boss’s orders lead to all the players getting kicked from the game at the same time, with Millie’s avatar disappearing in front of Guy, though she has time to tell him to hurry and find the island.

Guy has to cross that bridge, now.

…Let’s say, in Part 4?