I have just watched a very, very interesting film indeed, although I must admit that, three hours ago, I’d never heard of it. After brunch today Dom suggested watching a film, which from the look of the sky struck me as a good idea. He went to my computer, loaded Disney+ and put on Free Guy. I was completely oblivious to it and didn’t have the foggiest idea what it was about.

Five or ten minutes into the film, I thought I was watching a very silly piece of crap indeed: it was set in a city, but it was exceedingly violent with people getting killed willy nilly. I just took it to be one of those puerile, gratuitous American action films I usually avoid. But then Dom pointed something out to me: this wasn’t supposed to be reality but a video game, and it suddenly became interesting.

The film is essentially an exploration of the relationship between the Real and Imaginary. What if a background character in a computer game could somehow become self-aware? What if something usually no more than a few pixels on a screen controlled by a few lines of code suddenly became aware of his own existence and the ultra-violent world around him? On one level, that notion is extremely silly, and the film does indeed have some very silly, contrived aspects; yet at the same time it raises some quite interesting philosophical questions, like how do we know we are real, and what is reality? If a character in a computer game became aware of their reality, what would they make of it? The film thus draws our attention to the unnecessary violence of modern video games as well as some of the bizarreness of video game culture. It also makes two or three extra-textual references which I liked.

When the end credits rolled I was intrigued. It’s only a 2021 film made for a streaming service, but it had given me a lot to think about. I would recommend checking it out if and when you can. After all, aren’t we all just characters in one giant role-playing game?