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A Surprisingly Charming Fantasy of Algorithms Gaining Free Will


The trailer for Free Guy first started playing front of movies in early 2020 when it was assumed to come out that summer. It of course did not. When I first started returning to cinemas about a year ago that trailer was still playing -because there was nothing else to show. It played in front of just about every movie I’ve been to see in the last eighteen months, and I grew to resent it a tad -it and the trailers for Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The King’s Man. It wasn’t just the repetition though, it really didn’t look all that good. THIS is what awaited us whenever things returned to normal?
It was difficult then finally going into the movie with an open mind. This just seemed to be the latest gimmicky project to capitalize on Ryan Reynolds’ winking schtick. Had I maybe taken stock though that this movie was directed by Shawn Levy, I may have had a different mindset. Levy has directed his share of duds, which is par for the course of a Hollywood comedy director -but in the time since his last feature seven years ago he’s done such things as produce Arrival weirdly enough, and attach himself as executive producer and occasional director on Stranger Things. Free Guy never had a chance of being as good as either, but nor was it likely to be just another generic product like The Internship or the Night of the Museum sequels. And it’s not. It strangely might be Levy’s best movie.
That’s not to suggest it’s something astonishingly great, though it is astonishingly good given mine and many others’ lukewarm expectations. Part of what propels it is that it does largely make the most of its’ nifty premise: that being what if an NPC (non-playable character) in a video game gained sentience. In exploring this the movie pulls from a lot of familiar sources: The Truman Show, The Matrix, Reynolds’ everyman banker seems especially modeled after Emmett from The Lego Movie -and it plays out that formula plot essentially as you’d expect, but with something genuinely refreshing in its’ story and make-up. For one thing, the video game reality allows for a lot of creativity and very specific kinds of jokes pertaining to the gaming world. It informs the movies’ structure and humour as much as television did for The Truman Show, with its’ various minutia and narrative mechanics. Also, just the business of the video game industry.
Free Guy tells two stories: one being of in-game character Guy seeking a semblance of free will to the point of stealing the “sunglasses” off a player and gaining access to their commands, abilities, mobility, and vision. The other follows real-world developers Millie (Jodie Comer) and “Keys” (Joe Keery), whose concept and unique code for the open-world was stolen and corrupted by millionaire game tycoon Antwan (Taika Waititi), as they endeavour to figure out the meaning behind this apparent A.I. As expected, it is Millie who drives much of Guy’s quest for agency through her game avatar (with a fake British accent that is Comer’s real one): he is convinced to become a hero (subverting Antwan’s Grand Theft Auto-style violence-infused design) on Millie’s encouragement, and his infatuation with her provokes most of his ambitious actions. That love story angle is one of the movies’ weaker beats due to a lack of chemistry between Reynolds and Comer, but it doesn’t come at the expense of the authenticity of Guy’s own resolve. It’s been strange seeing major cultural products grapple recently (however lightly) with free will vs. determinism as an essential theme, Marvel’s Loki series being the most prominent and interesting until it wasn’t. Free Guy devotes much less cumulative time to the concept, but still addresses it in a not insubstantial way as Guy strives to escape his preordained role and attempts to convince others to as well. It’s something the movie seriously ponders and that works, admirably considering the philosophical more than the technical regarding the free Guy.
Reynolds sells it, though he does also, as the trailer indicated, play Guy with that heightened earnestness that he’s known for, only with naivete more than irony, and a sincerity that isn’t entirely believable. Parks and Rec-era Chris Pratt worked for this type of character, post-Deadpool Reynolds doesn’t as much. Although he is still a good deal funnier than I’d anticipated he’d be -the movie in general is as well. Waititi especially is a riot as the egotistical obnoxious trust fund CEO, a caricature big enough you could likewise accuse him of being unbelievable, but he’s far too entertaining for it to matter. And Lil Rel Howery is back doing his thing as Guy’s buddy Buddy, but the movie allows for him to be relatively restrained. Comer obviously serves her purpose quite well as both one of the film’s serious elements and better action components, but it’s Keery who really makes an unexpected impression. The Stranger Things star was largely left out of the movies’ long marketing campaign but he is arguably its’ heart …and oh so charismatic and likeable. I can’t wait to see him take off in new ways after this.
The writers on this movie did their research when it comes to the infrastructure of video games, how they work and the culture surrounding them (to a point), though they do still make use of some of the easy jokes and stereotypes about gamers being largely either children or antisocial losers. Making fun of the perpetually online is never a bad thing, but there’s an extended Channing Tatum cameo here dedicated to the predictable joke of him being an avatar for some thirty-year old nerd living in his mothers’ house, and it’s not all that funny comparative to the rest of the film. Other cameos include a handful of genuine streamers who the movie returns to every so often for reactions to plot developments, and a somewhat haunting appearance by the late Alex Trebek, which you know the producers must have had a debate over whether to leave in. His presence is nowhere as offensive though as a beat in the climax that exists purely for brand integration (in case you forgot Fox is now owned by Disney) and brings the films’ momentum to a screeching halt. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie so swiftly and dramatically annihilate its’ verisimilitude. It manages to recover, but not without falling in estimation. For the movies’ successes too it does feel constrained at times by its’ crowd-pleasing blockbuster format; some of the writing is noticeably stilted to adhere to plot, and a third act story point relating to a system reset that adds very little fails to transcend banality.
However, Free Guy does pull through with surprising stamina. Levy makes it work as a thoroughly decent summer blockbuster with a curious, largely effective action-comedy premise and even a degree of compelling drama. It’s the second movie of the summer that has done this for me and made me perhaps reconsider my expectations for movies off of trailers alone.

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