*THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THE MOVIE FREE GUY
Free Guy. A story about a video game told through the eyes of an ordinary NPC.
My God, I love this movie! Sorry Ready Player One and Jumanji, I have a new favorite video game movie! It was everything that a person could want for a video game movie, and then some! The movie is pure euphoria for the eyes, and it is a must see if you’re a fan of the actors above, or if you just love video games!
Summary
The majority of the movie takes place in an MMORPG called “Free City”, and our main protagonist, Guy, talks about a powerful group of people known as “The Sunglasses People” (the players) that don’t abide by the laws of Free City, and he thinks they’re fucking awesome! Guy proceeds to talk about his daily routine and his amazing job at the bank that gets robbed multiple times a day (he’s cool with it). He’s happy with the same old routine, until he sees a player named Molotov Girl, and believes that she is the girl of his dreams. This causes Guy to break free of his normal programming, and instead of allowing a player to rob the bank, he fights and kills the player(by accident), and takes their sunglasses. He puts on the glasses to be presented with his own HUD (Heads UP Display), which grant him the ability to see and use the features the game “Free City” offers to the players.
He uses these new abilities to try to impress Molotov Girl, but she turns him down because she thinks that Guy is just some noob (new player). She does advise Guy to start completing missions so he can level up, and by “missions” she means robbing and killing other NPCs, but Guy would rather do nice things to gain xp (experience points) and level up, to which Molotov Girl says it is possible but not very popular among other players. So Guy decides to play as the “good guy”, or “great guy” as he puts it, and becomes a social media sensation in the real world.
Speaking of the real world, we later meet the player behind Molotov Girl, Milly, who sole reason for playing “Free City” is to prove that development studio who made the game stole her code from her game. Well, her and her friend Keys’ code. Both Milly and Keys were indie game developers who created a life-simulator game called “Life Itself”, where players can interact with NPCs with adaptable AIs. Their game was brought by the studio that would go on to make “Free City”, and unfortunately “Life Itself” was never made, and Milly was left to find proof that her and Keys’ code was used to create “Free City”, whereas Keys is currently at that very studio.
Keys feels that Milly’s investigation is a fool’s errand, but when he discovers that Guy is a NPC with an adapting AI, he immediately decides to fully dedicate his time to help Milly. It’s revealed that not only do all the NPCs in “Free City” were created using Keys’ code from “Life Itself”, but the original build for “Life Itself ” is hidden within “Free City”!
After Guy goes through an existential crisis whenMilly tells him he’s an NPC in a video game, he decides to help her and Keys find the proof they need to expose creator of “Free City”, and they use said proof to get back their original build. The evil studio is exposed for being frauds, and our heroes get a happy ending. The movie ends with “Life Itself” being completed, and all the NPCs from “Free City” were transferred there to live in peace.
Milly struggles to say goodbye to Guy, so he does it for her by telling her he has come to accept that he is an NPC, but the feelings he has for her are real. He broke from his routine when he saw her because his feelings were based on his creator’s emotions. Guy’s code was solely created by Keys, and Keys based his code on his feelings for Milly. Milly realizes that she wasn’t really falling for Guy, but she was falling for Keys. In a strange way, Guy was Keys all along.
My Thoughts
Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, and Taika Waititi all did great jobs playing their roles, and they brought so much emotion into this story. Who really blew me away was Ryan’s portrayal of Guy because I feel like most of us can relate to feeling like a background character in someone else’s story, but Guy shows us that it’s never too late to flip the script and become the main character of your own story.
Video game movies do not have the best track record of being great movies, but thankfully Free Guy is one of the few exceptions to that stigma. The fact that the movie is centered around NPCs is what makes it so alluring. We have a movie like Ready Player One with amazing CGI and cool Easter Eggs, but it lacked three-dimensional characters and a unique plot. Free Guy did not rely heavily on Easter Eggs, and their CGI was amazing, but what made the movie special were the characters. They were endearing, they were funny, they acted like total badasses, and they made me grow attached to them, and the plot enchanced my feelings towards the characters.
Free Guy shows that there are no background characters, and that we are all the center of our own stories. You just have to be brave enough to step into the spotlight, and show the world what you are capable of. I give this movie a 10/10. Until next time, I am your cosplayer for fun, and in the wise words of Guy “Don’t have a good day….have a great day”.
Hall of Mercs 