2021 – Free Guy
This was a fun movie, and the visual effects really reflected that. The effects were creative and bright, and just pleasant to look at. The color palate of the movie was flashy and familiar for anyone who has played video games. And I liked that as part of the narrative of the film, it was both common and no reason for any concern to see explosions, gun-fire, car crashes, burning people, and helicopters crashing into buildings, just as a typical day. Things like that were happening in the background of many scenes, and yet were not the focus of the scene. It was a very interesting dynamic.
The visual style of the movie was perfectly crafted. One of the great things they were able to do that helped to tell the story was to make it instantly obvious when a scene took place inside the game, and when one took place in the real world. They used specific colors and lenses, as well as deliberate framing and camera movement techniques that made the differences easily recognizable.
But I think what made Free Guy so unique was the in-game experience that it created. For example, when Guy puts on the sunglasses, and sees the world through the eyes of a player instead of an NPC, everything changed. Everything was filmed as live-action, and yet it was an unmistakable video game experience. All the glowing signs and the digital in-game markers looked exactly like they were supposed to, like live-action versions of video game interface devices. It was really cool and very creatively designed.
As a side note, I have to say that it was also really awesome to see live action versions of specific video game devices like the gravity gun from Half-Life 2, or a Mega Buster from Megaman. But my favorite was from the awesome game Portal. The Portal Gun effect was really fantastic! I wish they could have found a way to have GLADOS on the screen, if only for an instant!
And the film’s climax was two-fold. First there was the destruction of Free City. As the bad Guy, Antwan, takes a fireman’s axe to the servers in the real world, the city starts to digitize and dissolve in the game. As the buildings begin to crumble and dissipate, the NPC population flees in fear. Some of the people are even lost along with the environment, and it was a cool effect.
But the other fun effect was the character of Dude! They digitally put Ryan Reynold’s head on the body of professional bodybuilder, Aaron W. Reed. It looked just real enough to be believable, but just fake enough to be, as the narrative required, incompletely created and thrust into the game before it was ready. It was brilliant, and if truth be told, slightly creepy at the same time. Well done, everybody! This was a fun movie with fun visual effects.