Free Guy (5 Stars)

Disney Wednesday #1

I've finally taken the plunge. After 18 weeks of my Amazon Friday feature, I've decided to watch films from other streaming services. Every Wednesday I'll be watching a film that streams on Disney Plus. I'm not a member myself, but my son Benjamin subscribes to Disney Plus, and he kindly shares his account with me. I also intend to start a Netflix Thursday feature, probably next week. I wanted to start this week, but I'm going to the cinema tomorrow, so I (probably) won't have time. Do you want to know what I'm going to see tomorrow? I'm not telling you. Check my blog on Friday morning to see what it is.

My regular readers already know that I'm critical of streaming services. It's not because of what they show, it's because of what they don't show. I laugh when people claim that streaming will replace physical media. Maybe it will happen one day, but it's far in the future. My guess is that it'll be at least 30 years from now. Streaming services won't replace physical media until they offer at least 90% of all the films ever made. I'm not just talking about British and American films. It has to be 90% of all films from every country in the world.

At times I felt tempted to drop my Amazon Friday feature. I realised that the films I was watching were average to poor. I shan't have that problem with Disney Plus. There are a large number of great films in its catalogue. As for Netflix, I'm not sure. As far as I know, the really good films on Netflix are films that I already own on Blu-ray. It's possible that I'll run out of films that I want to watch on Netflix in a few months. I'll have to browse the selection.

"Free Guy" is a film that I was anxious to see in the cinema. It was finally shown in Stuttgart two months ago, but I skipped it because it was only being shown in German, i.e. with German dubbing. I don't mind German dubbing, it's usually high quality, but I find it irritating when an actor I know well has a different voice. It's the sound of the voice that bothers me, not the language spoken. The better I know an actor, the more the dubbing bothers me. I've never heard Ryan Reynolds' voice in German, and I don't want to.

After watching "Free Guy" today, I'm regretting my decision not to watch it in the cinema. It's the best new film I've seen this year, and it will probably stay top of the list, unless there's a surprise film at this year's Fantasy Film Festival. The film's quality would have made up for Ryan Reynolds having a Bavarian accent (Dennis Schmidt-Foss). Not having seen it in the cinema will distort my list of the top 10 films of 2021, because I only include films that I've seen in the cinema.

The film is about a man called Guy. He lives a dull life, doing the same things every day. He gets up, puts on a blue shirt and goes to work in a bank. Every day the bank is robbed. In the evening he shares a few beers with his friends. He goes home to bed, sleeps, wakes up, and the day repeats itself.

He accidentally discovers that he's a character in an online video game. To be precise, he's an NPC, a Non-Player Character. His whole world is fake, as in "The Matrix". The difference is that he too is fake.

I don't want to say any more. The film is too new for me to give away spoilers. I'll just talk about its similarity with other films. It's been compared with various films, such as "Ready Player One" and "Blade Runner", but I can only think of six films that deal with similar themes. Ordered by relevance:

1. "The Matrix" – People are unknowingly trapped in a computer simulation.

2. "Tag" – A girl is unknowingly trapped in a computer game.

3. "The Lego Movie" – People are Lego pieces and don't know there's an outside world.

4. "Dark City" – People are trapped on an artificial planet.

5. "Pleasantville" – People are unknowingly characters in a television show.

6. "The Truman Show" – The main character lives in an artificial city built just for him.

The feature that's common to all of these films is that a character or characters are unaware that they live in an artificial world. Maybe when I watch "Free Guy" again I'll compare it with these films in greater detail. Are there any other films that are relevant comparisons? Leave an answer in the Comments box. Don't forget to tick the "Notify me" box, which will tell you when I reply.

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