Hacker Cinema
Free Guy
2021 · Film · 115 min
Directed by Shawn Levy
ComedyAdventureScience Fiction
A bank teller discovers he is actually a background player in an open-world video game, and decides to become the hero of his own story. Now, in a world where there are no limits, he is determined to be the guy who saves his world his way before it's too late.
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10 comments on Hacker News
This trope has been used in "Free Guy" movie (not a marriage proposal but as a love letter)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Guy
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.
this was a premise of a work of fiction i cant put my finger on: the protagonist wanted to create a game where the npcs simply lived their lives and the "players" watched. Edit: 2021 "Free Guy" movie
Free Guy might work, but I would consider just saving the whole simulation concept for whenever he is old enough for The Matrix, or other AI movies such as Her and Blade Runner. Free Guy is quite lazy with the Hollywood tropes. Lazy might be fine when he hasn't seen that many movies yet, but still I would prioritize watching something "better" (many other good suggestions here).
Free Guy, story line is similar to Matrix, however it is a much better execution, plus it is a kids-friendly movie (no bad words, depressing topic, etc)
Lets see... the most recent comedy movies I've seen...
Knives Out (2019) was probably the one I enjoyed the most.
JoJo Rabbit was trying too hard IMO, but I still smiled/laughed throughout it. WW2 is kinda overdone at this point (though serious films like Downfall are worth revisiting)
Free Guy was fine? Apparently "The Suicide Squad" also counts as a comedy. I guess Deadpool and Deadpool 2 were also fine. Maybe other people are tired of comicbook / superhero movies, but really I'm personally only tired of the "Marvel Formula" (and Deadpool / The Suicide Squad strays pretty heavily from the formula). Going back a bit further is "Jumanji"...
There's a lot of flicks / comedy films out there. Nothing is quite as good as Airplane but I'd say Knives Out is on-par, maybe even better than Clue (1985).
I don't really like the "Despicable Me" series, but my nieces really wanted to watch "Minions: Rise of Gru" and I actually enjoyed that one. (My nieces love this series, so I can say that I've watched all of it and its mostly trash. But Rise of Gru actually got me to laugh)
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I'm no critic. I enjoy just a basic flick now and then. Honestly, I'd rewatch "Knives Out" more than any Adam Sandler movie from the 90s or even Austin Powers. 90s era comedy just didn't mesh well with me, despite me growing up at that time. I do have a soft spot for the dry 80s stuff with Leslie Nielsen, and I guess I really liked Jackie Chan's action/comedies through the 90s and 00s.
I dunno, if I think "90s comedy I enjoyed", I think of Men in Black or Aladdin? Nothing in the list that this author wrote.
What a great video!
On Star Wars in particular, in the original trilogy, it's about coming from nothing, and overcoming your challenges. Luke fails, he makes numerous mistakes throughout the series.
Ray never makes any mistakes, in fact in Episode 9 she clearly kills Chewbacca, but 30 seconds later they backtrack that decision.
The new Star Wars movies are absolutely god awful, except for Episode 8. I liked it for a fairly unique reason. Back when I lived in LA I basically went out with this girl who knew she was a model and I wasted a ton of time and money on her.
When I moved to Chicago, I met a dorky awkward girl, who became my first real girlfriend. This is priceless dating advice, go for that dorky awkward girl that actually likes you.
Of course this really pissed a lot of people off, so they basically got rid of that story arc for the last movie. Looking at the entire series, I really think someone at Disney got uncomfortable with interracial dating, and thus Finn ends up making no sense as his two previous love arcs need to be eliminated by the last movie. This is understandable because even in America I've met people who are very uncomfortable with it, and Disney needs to distribute these movies to a global audience.
That might actually be the root of the problem, you have to make a movie that goes out of its way to keep everybody comfortable. In various countries showing LGBT plotlines are a big no-no, so you have reports coming out of Disney that they've cut these at the last moment from various movies.
The moment you have to make a movie that's okay for every single person, you end up creating these devoid visual spectacles. As in, most action movies are just a bunch of explosions and music. You can replace all the dialogue with gibberish and still get the idea of what happened.
I was trying to watch Free Guy and had to turn it off 10 minutes in. Stop with the freaking music for a second and let people speak.
However, other countries are still making real movies. I think a big part of the Korean wave is you don't have as much pandering to every single possible audience in K-pop dramas. Even then, I've had friends post that the subtitles are often toned down. Edit: Language Reactor is a great Chrome plugin which offers alternative subtitles as well as context. It's a great tool for language learning as well
I can't imagine ever going to a movie theater again, congratulations Disney You've ruined cinema.
Maybe I'll put one of these mediocre movies on in the background while I do other things, but they're not worthy of my undivided attention.
The entirety of "Free Guy" with Ryan Reynolds is the opposite of this.
The protagonist is a female programmer, and the male programmer involved becomes a hero and "gets the girl".
As an aside: It's one of the best movies I've seen in the past 2 years. Watch it if you like Ryan Reynolds and are looking for a movie to watch.
Free Guy(2021) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6264654/
I'm about to cancel my Netflix (Canada) I find myself going to it scrolling around and leaving finding nothing interesting. On top of that like most streaming services shows I like take nearly 2 years for the next episode to be made. And it's only eight shows for a "season". By that time I've lost interest in any of the shows.
I have been watching more Amazon Prime lately. It seems to have older shows that I find more interesting plus some new ones I like too, but the same thing of 18 to 24 months for season 2 of eight shows. But this paying to rent inside a streaming service you are already paying for is incredibly stupid.
Disney+ was so easy, I accidentally signed up it! For one month at $1.99 then jumps to $11.99. Worth it I watched Free Guy which Amazon wanted $25 to rent while paying for Amazon Prime already. now I'm going through all the Star Wars and Marvel movies and shows.
I tried to sign up for Apple TV holy what a mess. I have an Apple ID, I had a Mac but it died. Try to sign into my AppleID and my password is rejected. Try to recover my password "check your Mac" no, it died. Use your new Apple device, nope. Use someone's iPhone, no again. Make a new apple ID, nope my gmail is already in use. Recover? Text is sent (Samsung phone) but the recovery page kicked me off when I read the text. Finally got it to work and was told 7 days to recover. Got an email and was told 14 it's days to recover my AppleID password. So Nov 27 I may make some progress.
When I first saw The Matrix I was mesmerized. I went back every weekend for a month and saw it again. Something I had never done before and haven't done since. The effects were amazing, of course, but, the story was what got me. I couldn't stop thinking about all the intricacies and possibilities of a world like that.
I hope this new movie goes back to that. I just saw Free Guy over the weekend and between falling asleep and listening to the people behind me talk, I really feel like I had wasted my money. It's not that the movie is bad but, you knew after the first 10-15 minutes pretty much how it was going to play out. It seems to me that's how most movies are these days. Hollywood doesn't seem to be interested in telling any original or compelling stories anymore.