If there is one thing that Ryan Reynolds is good at, it’s playing Ryan Reynolds in basically every movie he’s in. And seeing as how it’s been a winning formula over the past couple of years for Deadpool and Deadpool 2, Reynolds has decided to double down on his schtick in a new movie that’s as high-concept as it is bonkers.
According to Deadline, the actor is teaming up with Stranger Things producer and director Shawn Levy for a film titled Free Guy.
Reynolds will play an ordinary bank teller who discovers that he is actually a background character in a “brutal open-world, action-adventure video game” and is the only one capable of stopping the game’s makers from shutting everything down.
Um, yeah. Just… yeah.
Free Guy‘s concept is pretty whack but I have hopes for the final product because it appears to be taking influences from all the right places. The idea seems to channel the genius of The Truman Show while throwing in sprinkles of Wreck-It-Ralph and Stranger Than Fiction.
If you’re going to do a high-concept, meta movie about video games and entertainment, those aforementioned three films are some great jumping off points. Hell, it certainly can’t be worse than the mess that is Ready Player One. My eye still twitches at how awful that movie is.
Throw in the wise-cracking charm of Reynolds and what you have are the pieces to what could be quite an intriguing movie. To be honest, I’m just super-keen about the idea of watching Reynolds basically play a character who is Deadpool in all but name and red jumpsuit, and seeing him do his fourth-wall breaking schtick to video games instead of comic books.
The only gripe I have about the whole project is the title. I mean, what the hell does “Free Guy” even mean?
They totally missed out on a chance to name it something more appropriate, like NPC or Stranger Than Truman: Wreck-It-Reynolds.