Didn't look like it will be, and Drinker thought it was pretty good, so I have decided to sail for it. He noted that there were some woke shit in it, but not much, but there were several he did not mention.
The IRL male protag describes his earlier life as "failed dreams, desperation, and a mountain of college debt", which is declared by his non-white coworker as "horrible and boring and full of white privilege".
A female eyecandy NPC upon gaining some level of independence / sentience "wrote a memoir that's a searing indictment of gender roles, the patriarchy. It's a little preachy in parts but, over all, it's pretty good."
The main female protag: "The first time I kiss a non-toxic guy in, like, forever [...]" There is of course a lame basement-dwelling loser gamer featured, who also has a "special sock" he doesn't want his mom to touch.
When the game world is compared to the IRL one: "See a lot of gun violence in your world? - Actually, that's a big problem, Guy. It's a massive problem." --- you could give this one a pass as there definitely are problems with gun violence, but adding it up with the pacifist story this does come off as anti-gun.
There are other comments in the movie I felt were OK, since this is a GTA-style mayhem game, so it is not a surprise that people's behaviour ingame would be perceived as awful. ("Sometimes I forget not everyone you meet on here is a sociopathic man-child." or Eyecandy NPC: "- I don't have to be with any guy. - Right? Exactly. Most of them are awful. - They really are. - Terrible.")
All in all there was definitely fun to be had, with some genuinely hilarious moments, as well as some surprisingly heartfelt parts. The positive characters were all quite likeable, and the actors were well cast for them.
The movie is mostly entertaining, especially for someone into gaming, who can at least tolerate Ryan Reynolds doing what he always does.
Wasn't as good as I had hoped, and definitely not as free of wokeness.
At least the stronk wahman doing everything important and men being bumbling idiots that contribute nothing stuff wasn't present. Well, technically, it was, as a high level female player is shown to be excellent at the game, and a level 1 male NPC is shown to be a bumbling idiot in comparison, but considering the setting that makes sense. Also, after leveling up considerably, the male NPC became a badass.
If you have zero tolerance for wokeness, skip this. Otherwise, it's a decent watch for sure.
(Unrelated, but I have turned off and deleted Candyman after 15 minutes or so, that one was way too woke.)
replying again because this is all I do, but Free Guy SUCKED
It was like someone saw Lego Movie, watched one stream of COD mobile, and thought "lets combine these two"! Except without any of the attempts at subtlety with in-universe humor that kept Lego Movie enjoyable.
It had the classic "movie within a movie" problem of Last Action Hero where the audience has no reason to give a shit about the in-movie plot and not enough time and energy was spent making them care about the "real world" wrapper.
Lego Movie worked since the the fantasy world that was built was taken seriously by the characters because the writers wrote them playing it straight. You can't do that with a video game analogue because there cant be any stakes for the NPCs, the NPC has to come back the exact same as before for the game analogy to work.
The idea of an NPC having the same persistence of a PC means there is a break in the premise but that is never addressed (Oh I started leveling!)
Maybe I'm just too old or haven't played any of the genre of game that this movie is based on but I couldn't even begin to suspend enough disbelief to shut off my brain and "have fun" with this one. One of the few that I (barely) sat through and then immediately deleted of my PLEX server.
I get where you are coming from, but personally had little problem turning my brain off and just enjoy this movie enough to not want the time back that I have spent on it.
With how shit most of the stuff we get is these days it was somewhat of a fresh air for me.