As we saw in the latest Free Guy trailer, there's a lot going on in the world of Ryan Reynolds' new movie. Set in an open-world video game, Free Guy protagonist Guy (Reynolds) is a non-player character (NPC) who suddenly breaks his loop and becomes a hero in his own game. The rest of the Free Guy cast — Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi, Lil Rel Howery, Joe Keery, and Utkarsh Ambudkar — play either video game characters or video game designers for the game at the heart of this adventure-filled comedy. So, with all this video game world-building and lingo likely flying around, will Free Guy still be accessible to and enjoyable for non-gamer viewers?
Reynolds and Free Guy director Shawn Levy were asked exactly this question during a press set visit Collider attended with a group of journalists back in 2019. Reynolds jumped in first, opting to use a heartwarming movie from 1989 as his example for how Free Guy will make sense for non-gamers:
"I always look at it like, sports movies are good metaphors. The greatest sports movies ever made are not actually about sports. Field of Dreams, I wouldn't characterize that as a baseball story. They used baseball as a vehicle to tell a really beautiful story about a son and a father trying to connect. I think that we're doing the same thing. We're using the video game world, the Free City world, and video game culture as a sort of vehicle to tell this really beautiful and powerful human story."
Levy picked up where Reynolds left off, using a different example to explain how Free Guy's story will be told with non-gamers in mind. To do this, Levy summoned up the incredible HBO limited series Chernobyl and its use of Stellan Skarsgård's character-as-audience-surrogate to explain a complex historical event. Levy began, commenting, "You know what also helps is, if you have a character who is realizing the rules of a world, you're able to have an audience surrogate. I was watching Chernobyl and I was like, 'Wow, that was brilliant to have the Skarsgård character know nothing so that the other guy could literally explain how a nuclear reactor works.'"
The director continued,
"It's basically a very smart way of educating the audience about the rules of engagement, the rules of the game. Free Guy does something similar because, as Guy awakens to 'Wait, what is happening? How does this work?', it allows us to have him learn it, just as a non-gaming audience member would be learning it. But I think the other thing is to never be so inside-y, wink wink, inside baseball with the jokes that half the audience feels excluded. But that is the line we're going to walk and it's a line I'm sure we're going to continue to explore as we edit the movie and put it in front of audiences and realize that, have we gone far enough? Have we gone too far?"
Field of Dreams and Chernobyl are not the examples one might expect when discussing how Free Guy will be a fun watch for non-gamers. But you know what? I'll happily take it. On that note, consider me even more curious to see how Free Guy's world and story are presented; it sure sounds like Reynolds and Levy have found a way to make it work.
Free Guy is scheduled to hit theaters on December 11th. For more, watch the newest Free Guy trailer here.
Allie Gemmill is the Weekend Contributing Editor for Collider. You can follow them on Twitter @_matineeidle.