By Mariah Beachboard, Editor, Great Geek Refuge

Go see Free Guy.

It’s superb and will make you laugh. It’s like “if Jesus washed my tongue and right before he finished he told my dad he’s good enough” (a Guy quote). Let that sentence float in your brain for a moment, and understand that seeing Free Guy is the only way you’ll find out what the sentence even means. (Mwahahahahah.)

Alt Text: Guy (Reynolds) is a pleasant white male, beardless with short brown hair. He has just woken up in his very plain white apartment, wearing blue pjs, and has a dopey expression on his face.

Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn have a huge winner in this screenplay, especially with Ryan Reynolds’ sprinkling in one-liners of his own. You’ll regret not seeing this movie. If you’re new to video games, though, check out this primer on the art form and the industry.

For the Noobs:

Here at GGR, we never want to leave people in the dark or assume everyone has the same level of knowledge. If you’re not into video games, here’s what you need to know to enjoy the movie. If you know everything about video games, scroll down to “Movie Review.” (“Noobs” is a nickname for new people. See also, “newbie.”)

Alt Text: Guy (Reynolds) walks down a street in the game “Free City,” with his mouth agape. He’s wearing his daily uniform (blue dress shirt, tie, khakis, name tag), and sunglasses which magically allows him to see all the florescent aspects of the game world he happens to live in.

The video game industry evolved over 70 years, and is now a $173 billion industry. (Read this History channel article from 2017, and this current business intelligence report.) First-person shooter games (FPS) are very popular; their design makes you like feel you are the character walking around in the digital world, shooting everything that moves. When you start an FPS game, you’re at Level 1 and have to complete missions (usually murdering or saving non-playable background characters) to collect weapons, gear, health aides, and access to better missions. In many games, you start at the “load-out” screen - an inventory of all your collected equipment, skins, etc. Skins are not just an outfit for your avatar, but can involve turning your avatar’s head into a giant llama head, or looking like a walking Medusa. Or a banana. The options are endless, and people spend a lot of time and money to collect exclusive skins.

Alt Text: Fortnite skins. From left to right, I shall name them incorrectly: Banana dude. Sherriff Lady. Ninja guy. Fierce gold tattoo chick. Cat man. Strider. Magic Gray Elf Person.

The streaming industry is big business! Even minor streamers have been able to pay for college with their earnings. Here’s how it works: people pay video gamers in order to watch those video gamers play and to interact with their big personas. For instance, let’s say you like watching Ninja “stream” his video game playing, and you decide to “subscribe.” This means you pay Ninja a small amount of money for exclusive digital content (emojis, etc) and to support him so he can continue to stream on a platform service like Twitch. If you’re lucky, the streamer will give you a shout-out and thank you verbally on his public stream, thereby giving you a teensy taste of fame.

Alt Text: Two of the Twitch streamers who appeared in Free Guy: Ninja and Pokimane. Ninja is a white guy with blue hair, and is tying on a Redbull headband. Pokimane is a Canadian-Moroccan female, with long light brown hair, and she wears a denim jacket and headphones. They stand in front of a backdrop of Free City’s explosive sky line.

One of my favorite FPS games is Fallout 4, in which you are a survivor of nuclear holocaust. You are a playable character. Every other character you talk to is an NPC (non-playable character). You can’t act in the game as those characters. They interact with you according to the programming. In some games, you can choose different responses to the NPC’s comments and actions, which in turn prompts a different train of responses from the NPC. The variety makes the game more engaging. I’ve played Fallout 4 multiple times, just to find all the different ways the NPCs respond to different choices I make. Fortnite is a multiplayer online game where just about everyone is an actual person behind a customized avatar, and they’re all running around the map building forts and killing each other. The NPCs are the bots: automated bad guys you can kill to level up your character (the bots are only a recent addition to Fortnite).

Alt Text: Minecraft screenshot of two Minecraft villagers with their arms folded, in a village. They are blocky, with green eyes and unibrows.

The major goal in Free Guy is to find the Paradise hidden in the game. That hidden world is an Easter Egg in the video game. Before the internet spilled all secrets, Easter Eggs were mysterious hidden gems (knowledge, maps, hints at future games) that may or may not exist and may or may not hint at a larger conspiracy in real life. There’s some debate about the first video game Easter Egg, which is made all the murkier by conspiracy theory mockumentary podcasts such as Rabbits and The Polybius Conspiracy.

Movie Review:

I’ve said it before: comedy is really hard. Not only do you have to get the timing right (well done Free Guy film editors), but you also have to avoid hamming it up and just “playing for the laugh.” You have to be genuine, otherwise the comedy comes off as cheap and stupid, and the audience feels embarrassment or disdain for the performer.

For nearly the entire movie, Ryan Reynolds (Guy) pulls it off with expert skill. He’s genuine, his character makes you laugh one minute, and then breaks your heart with his innocent passion for life and love in the next minute.

The writing could have been so bad. For much of the movie, things happen TO him, rather than BY him. Usually, that makes for really bad hero writing. But they gave him just enough choices, and funny lines, that it really works. It doesn’t hurt that every choice Guy makes is the biggest choice of his life. The stakes are HUGE, and Guy’s very literal understanding of his world just makes those choices even more delightful.

[SIDE NOTE: Guy levels up by taking a non-violent approach to his very violent video game world — which actually happened in a video game that exists in real life. Kyle Hinckley beat Fallout 4 without directly killing anyone! Read about it here. (Hilariously, the title of that article is “Guy Beats Fallout 4 Without Killing Anyone.”) Also, he took the more passive approach out of frustration for video game execs who have “forgotten” about gamers like himself - the gamers who want a more thoughtful, less violent game which doesn’t require senseless shooting sprees. Sounds like a Free Guy theme to me.]

Taika Waititi (Antwan) isn’t nearly as funny as Ryan Reynolds, and occasionally he pushes too hard for the laugh. But as he grows more villainous, I couldn’t stop watching him.

Utkarsh Ambudkar plays my favorite character: Mouser, Keys’ co-worker and friend. He’s hilarious, and also has the best character arc. Every other character has a very predictable progression of choices, but Mouser seems to be on the side of the antagonist at first. He’s willing to do whatever he must in order to keep his job. And he relishes parts of it, like jumping into the game in the fiercest pink bunny suit to chase off hackers. But when he discovers the truth, the frolicking, rambunctious tone of the movie seems to pause; it holds its breath. Then Mouser chooses, and the resolution of the movie comes crashing in. (By the way, Ambudkar is descended from parents who emigrated from India and work at National Institute for Health. How cool is that?!)

Alt Text: Mouser walks down a city street in a full-body light pink bunny suit, complete with abs and pectoral muscles, a gold sheriff star, and a belted holster. The mask is fierce - that bunny would cut his own mother. Keys walks in front of him in a cop uniform, “caterpillar” mustache, slicked hair, and sunglasses. These characters chose these avatars, which gives delightful insight into what makes them tick.

Jodie Comer (Millie Rusk) exhibited huge acting range, and my favorite Millie moment happens when she confesses to Keys (in the real world) that the NPC Guy passionately kissed her (her avatar). And she liked it, which she knows is weird because it didn’t happen in the real world, but the effect on her is the same as if he had. Keys is confused because “There’s not a button for that.” She yells, “Oh he found the button!” (Every grown woman in the theater cackled at that line.)

Alt Text: Blonde, white, adorable Jodie Comer stands in her apartment, wearing a striped oversized turtleneck sweater. She’s mouthing “Oh he found the button!” She looks like she’s trying to hide from her own embarrassment as she clutches the neckline of that giant sweater.

Joe Keery (Keys) was mildly interesting. He makes you care about him a little, but he and the writing for his part were a little meh. This means the payoff at the very end was more awkward than romantic (I really thought he was going to be hit by a car. Those who saw it know what I’m talking about.) Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely love him in Stranger Things. It’s just hard to get excited about someone when they’re big heroic move is just typing on a laptop. (I realize the irony of that sentence as I type an article about a movie about PC video gaming.)

Alt Text: Antwan (Waititi), Mouser (Ambudkar), and Keys (Keery) in the offices of Antwan’s company “Soonami.” Antwan wears a long jacket of mixed material which he thinks makes him look rich and cool. Mouser wears a t-shirt and a gold chain under an open button up, and black cargo jeans. His hands are in his pockets as he listens to Keys (white guy with glasses and unkempt brown hair) earnestly explain a thing to Antwan who really doesn’t care. Keys wears a black polo, black pants, and holds his laptop with stickers on it.

Lil Rel Howery plays Guy’s best friend, Buddy. Like Guy, Buddy is an NPC in Free City. Howery does a great job of mixing hilarious comedy relief with poignant moments that touch your heart. You can’t help but love him, and you root for him even when he chooses to stay in his routine as an NPC. I haven’t seen Howery’s movies yet, but his performance in Free Guy makes me want to see all of them. Like, right now.

Alt Text: Buddy (Howery) is a bearded African American male with large brown eyes and a smile that says “we’re best friends for life.” He’s dressed in his bank cop uniform.

Hurray for the Video Game Sub-culture!

Art forms belonging to sub-cultures usually have to fight and claw their way through the system to receive recognition and accolades. Which dance form is considered proper? What hobbies are considered genteel vs. absurd? Which literature is considered proper enough for school?

For a long while, video games were subject to the same criticism, but we’ve come a long way to being a reputable hobby, pastime, career, and art form. To me, movies about playing video games are fun celebrations of the video game sub-culture. Remember War Games, The Last Starfighter, and Wreck it Ralph? And yet, the modern movies (Wreck It Ralph and its sequel) are only cartoons.

Free Guy is a live-action movie with magnificent blending of video game images, CGI effects, and real stunts. Additionally, the superb writing gives us space to talk about very real problems in our video game sub-culture: harassment, trolls, the unreality of the social interaction, ethical use of technology, copyright infringement, and violence. I’m not saying video games make people more violent. I am saying they can make us see characters/people as disposable - which is a main point of Free Guy.

Go see it. And when you do, comment below with the references to real life video games you saw in the movie. I recognized Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto. What did you catch?

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