Whether you play video games online for hours every day, causally pick up the Game Boy from time to time or haven’t played a video game since the days of Pong and PacMan, the greater culture has been undeniably changed by gaming culture.
It’s interesting to think how much 20- and 30-somethings are out there making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by making YouTube videos of themselves playing a popular video game. At the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of young people who play video games as either an escape, a way to socialize with friends or even as therapy, believe it or not.
Riding that hype train for a couple decades now has been the video game movie, nearly all of which have been adaptations of already famous video games and have either been horrible movies or tanked at the box office.
Now, arguably one of the best video game movies we’ve seen yet is in theaters, “Free Guy,” a genre-bending action comedy that is neither based on an already existing video game nor even really about video games. As a look at what makes us human, how important our relationships are and the difference one person can make, it’s also one of the smartest movies of 2021.
Simple bank teller Guy (played by Ryan Reynolds) leads a pretty ordinary life, going to the same coffee shop, working the same job with his best friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery) and following the same routine every day, until he sees the girl of his dreams.
Unbeknownst to Guy, he is actually a background character in the video game “Free City,” and the girl of his dreams is Millie (Jodie Comer), a gamer and developer who believes the game was stolen from her and her partner Keys (Joe Keery) by the biggest video game developer in the world, Antwan (Taika Waititi).
In a virtual world where there’s no limits, Guy is determined to save the day by playing as the good guy in a game full of villains. Teaming up with Millie, the two have to prove “Free City” is actually Millie and Keys’ idea before Antwan deletes the whole game for good.
From the start, the film does its best to introduce both people who are and are not knowledgeable about video games to the world. It makes the “Free City” game look and feel like a real place with plenty of creativity and small details in every frame. And as the story goes on and Guy learns he’s in a game, more references and explanations are well handled, helping non-gamers understand the world while giving gamers some good laughs.
Surprisingly, the core of this action comedy starring Reynolds of all people is the philosophical ideas of what impacts people can have on their world and what makes us human. Even though Guy is just a computer code, he essentially becomes the first artificial intelligence who naturally learns and grows just by getting outside his routine, thanks to Millie.
Then in the real world, that classic underdog story of the little guy — this time Keys, not Guy — taking on the corporate CEO, portrayed hilariously by Waititi. The movie somehow has to balance two separate but interconnected stories, and thankfully neither become boring or drag the other one down.
Reynolds once again plays the same character he’s played in almost every movie for the past five years since “Deadpool.” Rather than being snarky and putting people down, he’s overly optimistic and happy here, which is a nice change and also pretty inspiring.
I also have to give credit to Comer for playing both the in-video game Millie character who is like a big action spy person with an English accent as well as the real-world Millie who is American and a bit of a computer nerd. Having to make both characters work and have comedic chemistry with both Reynolds and Keery is no small feat, and I think she succeeded.
It’s hard to say where video game movies go from here now that something like “Free Guy” worked so well without being based on a game. Hopefully studios will explore more video game-type movies or even trust the filmmakers with established properties, but at least this is a shining example of it working for now.