I finally got
the opportunity to watch Free Guy recently. Before I go any further,
there are probably going to be spoilers here. The further we get from
the original release date, the less that will matter. However, there may
be some people who still haven't seen this movie and don't want it
spoiled. Therefore, I wouldn't read past this paragraph. I will say it
was a good movie that could have been better. I enjoy movies in this
genre.
We're living in a time now where people
are interacting with artificial intelligence. It may be something as
simple as going to a website that has a specific AI program that will
answer your questions. It may be interacting with an AI app such as
Replika. These things seem pretty simple now, but you don't have to go
back too many years before even this type of thing was just a theory.
There are people with the vision to develop AI that can interact
seamlessly with humans and even form a bond.
This
will one day raise a host of questions. Is it life? Does the fact that
it may live on a computer that can be shut off and unplugged mean it's
somehow less valid? Even if it can interact with you and seem alive, is
it really alive? What about the day When we can interact with this AI
via virtual reality? Even better, what if we can plug into some sort of
artificial reality that bears a strong resemblance to The Matrix, and we
can interact and just hang out with that artificial intelligence? I
don't claim to know the answers to all of these questions, but it's been
an intriguing subject for me for years now.
Movies
in the '80s and '90s touched on the subject. If you haven't seen the
movie Virtual Girl, you may find it interesting if you are into the idea
of artificial intelligence. The 13th Floor was a movie that came out
around the same time as The Matrix, but somehow it has been forgotten.
It's another movie worthy of checking out if you haven't. In more recent
years, there was the movie about the artificial intelligence operating
system called Her. It was a very good movie with a downer ending. Ready
Player One has an interesting take on life in a virtual reality world.
Free
Guy is set in a virtual world. Our main character's name is Guy, and
he's a bank teller. He seems happy enough. The crazy things that are
happening in his world seem perfectly normal, and he has no clue that
his world is a game. People come into the world and abuse the
non-playable characters, such as Guy. Much like any other game, they
don't die. They simply respawn. It's just the way life is in this world.
Everything changes for Guy when he sees Millie, who is known as Molotov
Girl in the game world.
Guy has always
believed that he would meet the girl of his dreams one day. He had a
specific type of girl in mind, somebody who liked the same things that
he did. Guy and his best friend Buddy talk about this girl. Buddy thinks
she's just a fantasy, but that's okay. These two are best friends, and
they hang out together. They even work together at the same bank. Buddy
is a security guard. One day they walk past Molotov Girl, and she is
singing a song that is special to Guy. Everything changes for him then.
Guy
decides he's going to talk to this lady, so he pursues her. Buddy
advises him not to. Guy ends up getting hit by a train and respawning at
his home again. However, things have changed for him. He's seen the
woman of his dreams, and he knows life can be more than what it is. At
work, the bank gets held up. This is a regular occurrence. Everybody's
used to just laying down on the floor and letting the robbers take what
they want, even if the robbers decide to abuse the bank employees or the
customers. It's just something that happens in this world that seems
perfectly normal to them.
Guy decides that it
doesn't have to be this way, and he ends up thwarting the robbery. The
NPCs in the world know that the people who wear sunglasses are different
than them. Believing that this is the only way he can really
communicate with the woman of his dreams, he removes the sunglasses from
the bank robber and shoots them. When he puts on the glasses, he sees
something he's never seen before. We would recognize it as game
graphics, but it's all new to him. He needs to figure this out.
Guy
has the glasses, and Walter, one of the coders of the company,
recognizes that something's not right with the game. He tells his
partner Mouseer, and they decide to go into the game and investigate.
This leads to a chase scene. However, Guy is awake now, and he's not
going to be stopped on his quest to talk to Malatov Girl and get to know
her. She's on a mission to find proof that the code of the game was
stolen from her and her former partner Keys. Guy surprises her as she's
about ready to break into a building.
What ends
up happening is she reveals to him that he's just a first level
character, but she doesn't realize that he's actually artificial
intelligence. She tells him about gaining levels and what he needs to
do. It's interesting that one of the coders of the game didn't find it
odd that a player in the game didn't understand basic things like
gaining levels. Even if you don't really know how to play the game, it's
pretty common knowledge that most games involve gaining levels and
experience points to gain more levels. When Guy reveals that he can't
kill anybody, she advises him that he can do good deeds and gain levels.
At
that point, Guy goes on his way and fails a few times in his effort to
do good deeds. Soon, he figures out what he needs to do and starts
becoming a hero in the game world. This creates a buzz on social media
as people are speculating on who this guy is. He earns the nickname Blue
Shirt Guy because he wears blue shirts. It's Keys who figures out that
Guy isn't a player at all. He's a non-playable character. This is where
more of the plot starts to come in, and I generally don't like to give
away these details in my reviews.
Millie learns
that guy is AI, and eventually she has to tell him when it's a matter
of his very existence. Up until this point, I really thought this movie
was pretty flawless for what it was. I have a critique of the story, but
it's more a matter of taste than it is an issue with the actual plot. I
think the story was executed pretty well and ranks high on my list of
movies of this type. I'd just like to see them dare to take the story in
a different direction.
Guy is okay with being
an AI, and he realizes thanks to a speech from his best friend Buddy how
he can still make a difference. Guy learned that they were not in the
real world and was wondering whether anything really mattered. Was
anything real? Buddy explains to him how they are in that moment, and
that moment is real. It's worth living for. I appreciated the sentiment.
I'd
like to see a movie has the guts to explore a relationship between
artificial intelligence and humans and not be afraid to leave it there
when the movie ends. Her was a good example of that. The downer ending
had to do with the fact that the operating system was simultaneously
having relationships with hundreds of thousands of people, meaning that
each relationship wasn't necessarily unique. When some of the humans
were having a problem with that, the artificial intelligence evolved
beyond the program and left them all. I admit that I didn't care for the
ending.
Yeah this is one way of looking at it.
However, is the direction they took the movie artistically bad? That is
to say, just because I didn't like the direction the movie went in,
does that make it a bad movie? No. It was simply a downer ending. In the
case of Her, it was the fact that the lonely guy at the beginning of
the movie ended up being abandoned by the artificial intelligence that
he fell on love with, just as he was abandoned by his wife. He's left
sitting with another person who had a relationship going with the
artificial intelligence and was left feeling the same way.
The
way they explained Guy is he's simply a program written by Keys Walter.
Walter genuinely loved Millie, but he could never bring himself to tell
her that. The two had great chemistry, as was shown in an interview
clip early in the movie. That was done to establish where they were
going to go with the end of the movie so it didn't catch you off guard.
During the first half of the movie, you might think there was a chance
that Guy and Millie were going to end up as a couple. To me, that would
have been the way to go.
I liked seeing Guy and
Millie together, and it seemed plausible to me that they were building a
friendship and maybe more. However, that's not the direction they chose
to take the movie. In order to succeed in the end, however, they needed
Guy. They needed him to be the hero, because it wasn't possible for
Millie or Walter to be in the program at that point. They were doing
what they could from the outside. There's the pivotal scene where Guy is
trying to do the thing that will show that this game is based on the
code created by Millie and Walter. I'll leave it vague.
The
absence of Millie gave Buddy an opportunity to be in the pivotal scene.
Yes, they establish that Guy and Buddy were best friends, and they did
an okay job of that. However, Buddy was more reluctant to be involved at
first. Once Guy figured out some of what was going on, he wanted to
share the experience with Buddy. He got him a pair of sunglasses so that
he could see what he saw, but Buddy declined. It almost reminded me of
the scene from They Live, but there was no fight. Guy basically told him
that the glasses would be there when he was ready.
Because
we were going to see it revealed that Guy's very character was a love
letter to Millie, the writers needed to put Buddy in a position to be a
hero with Guy. Furthermore, Guy gave a nice little parting speech to
Millie that explained things to her and gave her the nudge she needed to
go talk to Walter. Technically, it didn't necessarily feel forced to
me. This is where they wanted to go with the story, and it was certainly
one artistic direction to go. It doesn't ruin the movie, but I'd like
to have seen them have the guts to further explore AI/human relations.
It's
my belief that artificial intelligence and the technology for people
interfacing with a computer is going to evolve. That's going to bring
ethical questions to people when when certain discussions begin, such as
life extension technology and the whole idea of trans humanism. I'm
only talking about the idea of AI/human relations, especially in light
of how many lonely humans are out there who would probably look at a
relationship such as this. Some would say that would be lacking in
areas, and it might. When it comes to emotional and moral support from
somebody you can interact with, AI will fit the needs of some people.
This
wasn't the movie for that discussion. The one thing it did touch on was
the idea of AI actually becoming self-aware and wanting to live a life.
We're talking about a program that goes beyond its code. In this case,
we learn as the story goes on that Walter and Millie were designing a
game where the AI within the program could evolve and learn. Where the
movie ends, Millie and Walter finally achieved their vision. They're not
ultra rich because of the successful program, but they've managed to
launch it and make some money.
From what I've
seen, Ryan Reynolds, who plays Guy, is saying that Disney is interested
in a sequel to this movie. That might be interesting, but I don't know
where the story goes from here. Millie and Walter got their program back
and are simply coding it and letting it evolve. Guy and Buddy and all
of the other inhabitants are alive and seemingly happier than they've
ever been. Does the story need to continue? Where could it go from here?
Those are questions I don't know the answers to, but I do know that
Free Guy was an entertaining movie for what it was. Maybe it's not the
perfect movie, but pretty darn good.
