Free Guy
Free Guy is a 2021 American science fiction action-comedy film directed and produced by Shawn Levy from a screenplay by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, and a story by Lieberman. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as a bank teller who discovers that he is a non-player character in a massively multiplayer online game, who then partners with a player to find evidence that a gaming company's CEO stole the source code of the player's game. The cast also features Jodie Comer, Lil Rel Howery, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Joe Keery, and Taika Waititi.
Lieberman began writing the script in 2016, which was acquired by 20th Century Fox shortly after. Levy passed on the script but reconsidered after Hugh Jackman introduced him to Reynolds, resulting in him leaving the film adaptation of the Uncharted video game he had been developing. The acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney made Free Guy one of the first films produced by the studio to continue production under Disney's ownership. Filming took place in Massachusetts and California between May and July 2019.
After Free Guy was delayed two times by the COVID-19 pandemic, it premiered at the 74th Locarno Film Festival on August 10, 2021, and was released theatrically in the United States by 20th Century Studios three days later. The film was a commercial success, grossing $331.5 million worldwide against a $100–125 million production budget, and received generally positive reviews from critics, who compared it to films and video games such as Ready Player One, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Grand Theft Auto, and Fortnite. It received a nomination for Best Visual Effects at the 94th Academy Awards.
Plot
Free City is an online game developed by Soonami Studios. Its "players"—people in real life—wear sunglasses and spend their time fighting each other and causing mayhem. The non-player characters accept the chaos while living out their scripted lives, unaware that the world they live in is a video game. These NPCs include Guy, who works as a clerk in Free City's bank with his best friend, security guard Buddy.Unemployed software developer Millie Rusk plays Free City to find proof that Soonami stole the source code from the concept game she developed, Life Itself, which included novel artificial intelligence techniques for its NPCs. Her friend and co-developer Walter "Keys" McKey is reluctant to help, as he now works in technical support at Soonami. Millie's avatar "MolotovGirl" catches Guy's attention by singing his favorite song, "Fantasy". Guy then begins to deviate from his programming, accidentally shooting a player robbing the bank, and leaving with the player's sunglasses.
Believing Guy to be a hacker disguised as an NPC, Keys and his coworker Mouser unsuccessfully try to ban him from the game. Accessing the players' view of the game, Guy visits new areas and meets Millie at vlogger Revenjamin Buttons' stash house, where they attempt to steal evidence leading to her source code. Believing Guy to be a novice player, she advises him to level up. Guy rapidly progresses through the game by completing missions benevolently, standing out from other players and becoming a worldwide sensation known as "Blue Shirt Guy".
As Keys realizes that Guy truly is an NPC, other NPCs that Guy interacts with also begin to develop self-awareness. However, Free City 2 is due to release in 48 hours and will replace Free City, terminating all of its NPCs. Millie tells Guy the truth about his existence, but he becomes distraught and breaks off contact. Guy eventually realizes that there is something more to an NPC's existence, and goes with Buddy to get the evidence Millie wanted from Buttons, who accidentally glitched through the edge of Free City
Guy recalls the location of an island containing remnants of the Life Itself build and they attempt to reach it before the Free City 2 launch wipes all old content from the servers, rallying the NPCs to go on strike from the game to hinder Antwan. Antwan fires Keys, has every player removed from Free City, and sends an unfinished but extremely powerful Guy-resembling character named Dude into the game to stop Guy. Initially overwhelmed, Guy then puts his sunglasses on Dude, distracting him, and proceeds to the island. Furious, Antwan begins smashing the game's network server racks with an axe in a last-ditch attempt to stop Guy, erasing Buddy and much of the game world, while firing Mouser after he soon realized that he did steal Millie's code. Before he can destroy the final server, Guy manages to reach the island and Millie offers a deal to drop the copyright infringement lawsuit and surrender the Free City franchise's profits to him in exchange for her creation. Antwan agrees to her terms, believing she made a bad deal.
Sometime later, sales for Free City 2 slip because of bugs in the code and lagging online play. An embattled Antwan is in the crosshairs, but claims he is a victim of circumstance. Millie salvages her code and along with Keys and Mouser, releases the indie game Free Life, which includes Guy, Dude, and the other NPCs from Free City. Guy reveals to Millie that his code is actually a love letter to her from Keys: during the development of Life Itself, Keys had encoded what he knew about her tastes into an AI routine in the game, which was eventually incorporated into Free City, explaining why Guy felt drawn to MolotovGirl. After Millie leaves the game, she and Keys kiss. Meanwhile, Guy and Dude reunite with Buddy, whose AI algorithm was reconstructed.
Cast
- Ryan Reynolds as Guy / Blue Shirt Guy, a bank teller and non-player character in Free City who is initially unaware that he is a video game character.
- * Reynolds also provides the uncredited voice and facial motion capture for Dude, an incomplete muscular version of Guy with a blue shirt tattoo on his chest that was made for Free City 2. Dude is physically portrayed by bodybuilder Aaron W. Reed.
- Jodie Comer as Millie Rusk, a player and unemployed software designer looking inside the game for source code to her original game Life Itself, which she co-developed with Keys. In Free City, her avatar is MolotovGirl. Comer wore a short dark-brown wig and used a Southern English accent when portraying MolotovGirl. Comer normally speaks with a Liverpool accent.
- Lil Rel Howery as Buddy, a Free City bank security guard NPC and Guy's best friend.
- Joe Keery as Walter "Keys" McKey, a developer for Soonami Studios' technical support department and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate who co-developed Life Itself with Millie. In Free City, his avatar is described as a "dirty stripper cop". Keery had previously worked with director Shawn Levy on Stranger Things.
- Utkarsh Ambudkar as Mouser, a developer and Keys's coworker at Soonami Studios' technical support department. In Free City, his avatar is a police officer in a muscular rabbit suit.
- Taika Waititi as Antwan Hovachelik, the ruthless, narcissistic, and faux-polite founder and CEO of Soonami Studios who stole the source code for Life Itself to make Free City with plans to have it entirely replaced with Free City 2.
- Channing Tatum as Revenjamin Buttons, an avatar in Free City who owns a stash house that Guy and MolotovGirl try to break into to obtain incriminating data involving Life Itself.
- * Matty Cardarople as Keith, a 22-year-old gamer who plays Free City as Revenjamin Buttons.
Actor Chris Evans and Good Morning America anchor Lara Spencer make cameo appearances as themselves. Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek made a posthumous cameo appearance in his final film role before his passing on November 8, 2020.
Other voice roles in the film include Hugh Jackman as a masked avatar in an alley who MolotovGirl gets the location to Revenjamin Buttons' stash house from, Dwayne Johnson as bank robber #2 whom Guy accidentally shoots while trying to claim his sunglasses, Tina Fey as Keith's mother who was vacuuming in the background, and John Krasinski as a silhouetted gamer who comments about Guy and the NPCs alongside the previously mentioned gamers and streamers.