It is an age-old question: why can’t anyone seem to make a decent movie out of a video game? Recently we’ve watched Mortal Kombat and Sonic the Hedgehog slide into the same dustbin of history that swallowed up the likes of Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider and Warcraft, all the way back to Super Mario Bros.
But Free Guy could change all that. Crucially, it’s not a straight translation of an existing game but it is set within the world of a game. Our hero, Guy (Ryan Reynolds), is a non-player character – one of countless programmed citizens of an open-play game world not dissimilar to, say, Grand Theft Auto. By some twist of fate, he develops agency and sees through his Matrix-like existence, which leads to an action-adventure that feels playful, unpredictable and fresh.
Much of that is down to the fact Free Guy plays by video game rules not movie rules. In the past, it has worked the other way round. Movie world has often looked down on video games as an inferior cousin – especially since many of them were inspired by movies in the first place. (Would we have had Tomb Raider without Indiana Jones?) When Hollywood puts games on the big screen it often seeks to “fix” issues of character and story to make them more credible in a vaguely real-world scenario. It rarely works. Instead, millions of dollars and brain-hours go into making something that’s less exciting than playing the game itself.
Movies such as Free Guy do the opposite. They adapt cinema to the reality of gaming, where impossible things are possible. Ordinary laws of physics (or laws of law for that matter) don’t apply. You can fly, teleport, fight and reboot when you die. You can interact with onscreen graphics, or with people on “the outside”. This new screen language is a potential new realm of storytelling.
We’re seeing more films like this. The Jumanji movies conjured a similar sense of playful fun. Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One wasn’t perfect but embraced the in-game premise. Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph flipped between disparate game worlds while retaining a sweet centre. Tron was a trailblazer back in 1982. The challenge is to combine no-rules gaming logic with an emotional reality we’re invested in watching.
The games industry is now twice the size of Hollywood in revenue terms: the power balance has shifted. The last edition of GTA made more than $6bn (£4.3bn) – greater than any movie in history. Fortnite has generated $9bn in two years. The movies’ cultural power is also under threat here, hence Free Guy’s inclusion of YouTube and Twitch gaming stars such as Ninja, LazarBeam and Jacksepticeye. You might never have heard of them but then a lot of teenagers have never heard of Ryan Reynolds. Either way, cinema is no longer in a position to set the terms.
