Warning: Spoilers
I went to see Free Guy (2021) in the cinema because 1) my boyfriend likes gaming, 2) Ryan Reynolds is entertaining, and 3) we felt like going to the pictures and couldn't find anything else palatable besides this. That being said, I don't think I've enjoyed a movie that much in a long time. We walked out of the theatre feeling seen and pleasantly surprised.
The premise is as such: a bank teller, living an ordinary life centred around routine and blissful ignorance, finds out that he is an NPC within a popular video game and hacks the algorithm from the inside, developing sentience and free will in his status as homegrown artificial intelligence manifest. Along the way, he falls in love with a player’s avatar, saves his world, and frees his fellow non-playable friends from the trappings of the script of Free City (the game in question).
A Google search yielded nothing regarding intentional or explicit autistic representation, but the target audience of Free Guy (namely ‘gamers’) says enough regarding how characters have been constructed as relatable iterations of the viewers’ clunkiest and most unmasked selves. The same can be said of most movies based on ‘nerdy’ interests (I’m looking at you, Ghostbusters). But Free Guy is different. Sure, the nerd-turned-hero trope is nothing revolutionary. Where this film stands out, though, is the fact that the face of this litany of traits of social awkwardness, reliance on routine, limited interests, and naivety is Ryan Reynolds - 2010’s Sexiest Man Alive Ryan Reynolds, Superhero Ryan Reynolds, Rom-Com Veteran Ryan Reynolds.
I am not outlining these testaments to Reynolds’ fame and glory to say, ‘Autistic people can be hot,’ because there are too many questionable components to that statement for it to hold any weight as a radical or liberating conviction (and what it often relays between the lines is ‘Not all of us are unable to speak or institutionalised or are unable to engage with the world in a meaningful way,’ which is more obvious in its ableist enforcement of the functionality dichotomy). What I am saying is that instead of autistic traits being wrapped up in meekness or, conversely, predatory ignorance quasi-The Big Bang Theory, we have been presented with a critically-acclaimed and world-renowned actor playing a character so obviously on the spectrum with humour and grace, and with all the complexity of Ben Affleck’s Christian Wolff in The Accountant minus the ever-present trauma narrative of actively autistic characters.
What is more, is the fact that the subject matter and referential nature of this movie targets arguably the most canonically autistic subculture out there - gamers.
Free Guy is the life of a sexy autistic action hero. It is also the story of what an autistic utopia may look like.
Pre-epiphany, Guy’s day looks something like this: he wakes up, looks out his window, bids his goldfish hello, switches on the news (which reports on the chaos that consumes his city on a daily basis), picks out a blue shirt and pair of chinos from an array of identical items, gets a coffee (with cream and two sugars), cracks an unintentional double entendre at the barista, walks to work at the bank with his security guard friend, Buddy, surrenders to robbers, and grabs beers at the beach.
The social hierarchy is determined by whether or not you wear glasses. ‘Glasses-people’ shoot up the city, surround themselves with hot girls, and pride themselves on their luscious lives of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. They are also players - i.e. real people. The NPCs are unaware of this, and Guy’s enchantment by a glasses-wearing woman leads to him stealing the glasses off of a robber’s face amidst his usual surrender. This marks a turning point in his life, because now he knows how to work the system for his benefit and the benefit of others. It just so happens that ‘working the system’ (with the single-minded goal of getting the girl of his dreams) is his savant skill. Is Guy’s balancing of obligations to the rules of the system and striving towards attaining his desires the perfect metaphor for what masking ought to be? I think yes.
Free Guy’s love language (however contentious that concept may be) is manifest by acts of service. He wants to make his community better. He wants everyone to have the freedom that seems so easy to grasp. And he does it all whilst subverting the wishes of the corporate overlords that stole his ‘soul’ (code) and its ephemera in order to build the hellscape that has become Free City.
I felt seen when I saw him stumbling to kiss a girl he loves (which, as an action, isn't available as a playable option within the workings of the game). I felt seen by his scripted awkwardness and attempts at humour. I felt seen by his simultaneous comfort in routine and hunger for the freedom that comes with newness. I felt seen by his aspiration for a self-driven and organic existence within his world.
Guy masks by unmasking. He is unequivocally himself, which leaves players and their avatars in disbelief. How can he have an NPC skin and ‘deny it’ (as he doesn't even know what an NPC is until about halfway through the film)? How can he have action and thought seamlessly independent from the rules? These questions are seemingly unanswerable, at least from a ‘player's’ standpoint. And yet his agency and awkwardness change his world for the better.
The only qualm I have is the somewhat questionable portrayal of ‘Dude’, a rip off of Guy developed by the company in order to turn a profit from Guy’s popularity. Dude is a clichéd caricature of a ‘stupid strongman’, effectively, which is a bit uncomfortable to watch if one has a shred of awareness of the pervasive mockery of intellectual disability or a seeming lack of intelligence that permeates popular culture.
I’m not going to dissect/give away every square centimetre of this film, but I highly recommend it if you're in the mood for good old-fashioned autistic gaming representation, however nefarious that may sometimes be.
Rating: 9/10
Available on: GooglePlay Movies
3. Free Guy (2021): The Autistic Hero We Never Thought We Needed?