Gaming has certainly found its place in the world. Who would have thought, at the beginning of the 21st century, that gaming could one day be mainstream? We’ll answer that for you: no one.  

Gaming has a checkered past of being labeled as a procrastinating device that “ruins children’s minds”. But in the year 2021, we know that is far from the truth. In fact, gaming is perhaps one of the best community-driven activities you can participate in: especially in the multiplayer era of gaming. People are more connected than they have ever been, and online gaming is a bona fide industry today. 

From handheld Gameboy consoles to the immersive sensory experience that is VR-gaming, video games have had quite the journey. Free Guy is a movie that doesn’t profit off of that history; it celebrates it with unabashed joy.

What is Free Guy?

This Ryan Reynolds-starrer is a movie that, from start to finish, pays homage to some of gaming’s most seminal creations. When it was first conceptualized in 2016, Free Guy was one of the only projects that survived the Disney-Fox merger’s cutting floor. 

Director Shawn Levy had initially passed on the script. But after re-reading it with Reynolds, they realized that this project had more legs than originally believed. Principal photography began in 2019. Reynolds, who had recently worked on Detective Pikachu, called Free Guy his “most immersive project since Deadpool”; and the film certainly delivers on all its promises. 

The movie is centered around an NPC called Guy who is a part of the game Free City. Guy’s character is a bank-teller in-game but through a series of events, he gains sentience, and becomes a virtual-life hero through his actions.

Free Guy’s Marketing Campaign Tips its Cap to Multiple Genre-Defining Games

LA-based agency, Petrol, gave Free Guy’s promotional campaign a distinctly unique vibe that remains authentic to its gaming roots. 

The agency pitched the idea of re-imagining the cover art of classic and modern video games. They inserted Free Guy’s characters into the iconic imagery from franchises like Street Fighter, Mega Man, Super Mario Bros., Doom, GTA, Minecraft, and even Among Us! 

This campaign tracks the trajectory of conventional gaming history: Nintendo was one of the first companies to introduce gaming to the world, Doom and GTA advanced the form with their open-world settings, while Minecraft and Among Us represent gaming’s current standing as a mainstream commodity. 

These posters seamlessly blend the aesthetic of those games with Free Guy’s story, showing that the movie isn’t just based on video games but is rooted in gaming culture itself.

Free Guy’s Setting Attempts to Capture Genre-Defining Greatness

Read Dead Redemption and SimCity are two of the defining games of the 21st century and serve as the primary artistic inspiration for Free City. You can see this prominently in the animation: the detailed, vibrant environment of Red Dead Redemption has been crossed with the bubbly, cartoonish animations of the Sims games. 

The climactic fight scene has a string of pop culture references: from Fortnite pickaxes and gravity guns straight out of Half-Dead 2, to Captain America’s shield and Hulk’s fists, everything makes an appearance. 

At the same time, these are pulled off with such grace that it feels like a natural part of the narrative, and not a broken finisher-spam.

Why is Free Guy an Important Film?

“How do we show gamers that Free Guy is not just a movie about video games but is really rooted in video game culture?” This was the question on Petrol CCO Alan Hunter’s mind when 20th Century Fox approached them. 

They answered it by creating a series of 20 posters that spanned across decades of gaming history. They made sure that no matter how old or young a gamer is, they would relate to the movie. 

Thanks to this embracing of gaming culture, Free Guy has been able to establish itself as a movie that celebrates the unique world of video games. 

It is a love letter to gaming in the truest sense of the phrase.