The past year and a half has been a landmark for video games. As the world shut down, the medium took on new relevance as games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons became a central way in which we relate with one another. Platforms like Twitch saw enormous growth, with viewers watching more than 1.8 billion hours of video in February 2021. Also, Mortal Kombat got another movie.
And by strange pandemic luck, Free Guy, from director Shawn Levy (Real Steel), is coming out in a time where it can build on 18 months of video game hype. Starring Ryan Reynolds as a nonplayable character from an open-world video game who breaks from the monotony of being a programmed character, the movie was developed at 20th Century Fox before the company’s acquisition by Disney, and was initially scheduled for the summer of 2020. As a comedy, Free Guy lives off of references to games like Grand Theft…
