Free Guy

Assuming the boy (Keys) is in love with the female player. (Milly)

• Keys: I would feel completely humiliated if the girl I like ends up preferring an NPC over me.

And Jack Septic Eye of all people is in this movie.

Critikal responds to the above:

the amazing thing is I can't tell where the truth ends and the trolling begins, if there's any truth at all lol

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Oct 5th 2020 at 6:23:53 AM

Best bit of that second trailer?

"Oh, he found the button!"

Snerkles almost uncontrollably.

I want to see this movie at the cinema like a normal person, natch, but if the Coronavirus is still a thingy, it's not worth the risk of death to do so. It's one of the reasons why I gave Nolan's latest effort a stiff ignoring, after all.

(dog whistle redacted - Fighteer)

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 13th 2020 at 7:18:31 AM

The 1997 French/Italian cyberpunk film Nirvana had the idea of a video game character becoming sentient and asking his creator to be erased since he didn't want to get endlessly replicated and suffering all the deaths and pain. But as far as I know he wasn't from a MMORPG. It also was a serious and kinda dour film.

Postponed again. It had been scheduled for 12/11, but has been pushed into 2021 — no specific date has been announced.

Bumping this because we do have a release date, 8/13/2021. And here's Deadpool and Korg to riff the trailer.

New "trailer?" from Ryan Reynolds. Careful, Ryan, you'll start a new trend.

You know, given all the reveals lately about shitty game development and production, I can't help but wonder if the message of this movie will be seen as timely or outdated.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 2nd 2021 at 12:37:45 PM

Well, I just watched this thing. I will sum it up in one word: adorable. Comedy and pacing are all excellent. It loses steam at the end by failing to follow through on some of its ideas.

I wish they’d done more about the Holy shit, we just created AI aspect.

Editing in some more thoughts...

• Ryan Reynolds is perfectly cast for this film and I don't think it could possibly have worked with anybody else in the lead role.
• There's no way that humanity would just casually accept real general AI.
• There's no way you could get me to believe that players of what is essentially GTA Online would ever stop killing NPCs because one of them acted like a real person.
• If rebooting the servers worked once, why is that abandoned immediately afterwards? How exactly did Guy's memory survive the reboot? The latter is brought up but never actually explained.
• Do they really expect us to take seriously the sequence of the villain smashing the physical servers with a fire axe? I thought we were long past that cliché by now.
• "Dude" got flipped to the good side awfully quickly, didn't he?

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 13th 2021 at 1:45:44 PM

In fairness, Dude was based on Guy.

It would be like Antoine to reuse Guy's code to make Dude, but I'm not sure if that's the conclusion the movie intends us to draw. It's just inadequately explored, which is my main complaint about the third act of the film. He's an enemy, he gets the glasses, cut to the end, he's a friendly.

Some other likes:

• My son and I both laughed out loud at the portrayal of "hardcore" online gamers, especially the bank robber that Guy steals the glasses from, as real life losers and/or attention seekers. Sure, it's low-hanging fruit, but it hits a similar note as NoobMaster69 in Avengers: Endgame. As a gamer myself, the joke works.
• The portrayal of people around the world going apeshit for a charismatic NPC in a video game is viciously realistic.
• There is just enough going on to keep me from dwelling on the inconsistency of the game's internal logic. What are the actual rules? Who cares, it's not important.
• The world is visually spectacular and the shout-outs to pop culture are so numerous that you'd need several viewings to catch them all. If it's Product Placement then they may have made their entire production budget back on the ads alone.
• The satire of video game players and video game production overall comes off very strong. It's not going to win any awards but it does what it needs to.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 14th 2021 at 6:48:59 AM

I would say the film is about 80% perfect, with the rest being a respectable good/okay. It doesn't do anything especially wrong but there are some moments that are just not as strong as others. The best part is probably the commitment to understanding and portraying video games, video game culture and video game development. Nothing came across as obviously wrong and very little even registered as a fabrication, and even that was largely limited to things like how Guy was able to step in with the same level progression system as the Users, how the entire world is playing in the same space and how IT handle cheaters.

Visually the film is just a lot of fun, the look of Free City is impeccably consistent (the tank outside the diner during the "I want to try an espresso!" scene is one such example) and so the FX work feels like it contributes to the immersion rather than overpower the movie. The story probably tries to do a few too many things but I found the ending to be rather satisfactory. I did think the existential crisis was underbaked and more could have been done with developing the other NPC's, and there were a few moments that felt like something was removed like how Player Characters are frozen in their safe house when they are not online comes up as though it was known information.

Unfortunately, I would say the weakest part of the film is Taika Waititi and his character. It's not a bad comedic performance and likely to get a chuckle out of some people, but he comes across more cartoonish than Reynolds when the movie attempts to make a clear line between the video game absurdity and the reality of the real world. A lot of his decisions as a character is similarly better suited for a cartoon villain, complete when he starts taking an ax to the servers, and for a "charts and test groups" guy seems to have zero concept that his cartoon villain antics will ruin him. Maybe reflective of some big game corporations but not exactly a compelling villain.

One thing that was a mixed bag was I think the movie might have been better if the Free City game was slightly better defined like a campaign mission with In-Universe lore building, but at the same Steve implies the game was a mishmash of popular trends and didn't have much in the way of a vision.

Saw it with friends this afternoon. That was so much better than I expected it to be. It showed a great deal of love for videogames and videogame culture, while still effectively taking the piss. Had a great time.

Almost died when they pulled out captain America's shield, complete with the Avengers theme music.

Yeah, and the surprise cameo afterwards was amazing as well. That got even bigger laughs than the shield and theme song.

What surprised me was how much of a 'romance' story it actually was!

I have trouble recognizing faces, so that part of the joke was lost on me, unfortunately.

Chris Evans, who plays Captain America in the MCU, has a cameo showing that he also plays Free City and is surprised to see the shield appear in-game, since nobody knew those assets were present.

Thanks for recounting. I've read about it on this wiki, but I appreciate you trying to let me in on the joke.

Saw it last night. I think it had some pacing issues but was on the whole was enjoyable. As someone who is extremely online but not a gamer (enough to be aware of the more famous streamers and Blizzard-level scandals), I probably missed more of the gaming industry deep cuts, but there was enough in there to keep it funny all throughout.

I cringed hard through all the Guy/Millie scenes because I dislike Kiss Me, I'm Virtual as a trope and Ms. Comer is set to star in two films where she plays the love interest to a man approaching 50 (the former's trailer even played in front of my screening, so I was reminded of it), so I was more relieved than outright happy that she got with Keys at the end.

Agreed on all the takes of Taika's character being too cartoonish to be a good villain.

Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 25th 2021 at 9:32:32 AM

The thing about Guy is that he is literally crafted to be an ideal match for Millie. The story is practically hitting us over the head with it. It's seeing her that activates his hidden AI code (well, the first time).

There never seemed to be any risk that Millie would end up with Guy, not unless they pulled some really strange trick like in the end of Tron Legacy, but rather that she would keep missing the message. Honestly, that part of the story (the unrequited romance between two feuding programmers) reduces the film a little in my eyes because it's so cliché, but it works well enough that I managed to cheer for them in the end.

Hollywood really loves its generic "got the girl" romance stories, and it also really loves to sell the Nice Guy Wins The Girl Who Was Oblivious To His Romantic Interest ending, which has quite a few unfortunate implications, not the least of which is that women are prizes to be won.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 25th 2021 at 10:51:26 AM

That was obvious in the back half, but not at all in the marketing or the first half.

Well, then the fault is with people who take trailers and "first half" narratives at face value. Just saying.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 25th 2021 at 4:24:35 AM

Whether or not it was 'predictable' that the romance went that way wasn't even my original complaint. Again, I liked the movie. It was more that Hollywood ageism in m/f couples and Kiss Me, I'm Virtual are pet peeve tropes of mine, and I'm allowed to cringe at a trope as it's happening even if it winds up subverted later on. Same way I cringed at the item cameos because the recent slew of "look at all the I Ps we own" movies makes me roll my eyes, although at least this one was rather graceful about it.

Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 25th 2021 at 3:39:31 AM

To each their own. I cringe at some things too, but at least I'm honest that it's my problem, not the work's. Usually. Okay, maybe I shouldn't throw stones...

From this conversation I learned Ryan Reynolds is 44. He looks AT LEAST five years younger IMO, damn.

I saw the movie, my Dad said it was like it was tailor-made for me (he had already seen it).

It's not my favorite movie, but he was right.