12 Movies To Watch After You've Seen "Free Guy"
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Free Guy is the new big hit in cinemas. People are loving it for its story, the acting of its lead actors, the comedy, and the tons of Easter eggs.
If you enjoyed Free Guy, you'll probably want to check out these similar movies as well:
1.The Truman Show
When this movie first came out in 1998, even its actors thought the premise was preposterous, but little did they know that the movie would seem quite prescient a few years down the line. The movie is about a run-of-the-mill guy called Truman Burbank, who is the clueless star of The Truman Show, a voyeuristic TV show that broadcasts Truman’s day-to-day life 24x7 through hidden cameras as “reality show.” All the people that inhabit Truman’s world and interact with him are mere actors who know that they are in a show except Truman.
In today’s world of multi-season reality shows like Keeping up With the Kardashians, Love Island, Real Housewives, etc., The Truman Show seems like an astrologer in retrospect. Even though we can touch and feel our surroundings, how do we figure out what is real and what is staged? Are our choices guided by our own free will, or is there some hidden power nudging us into making the choices that they want? The camera never lies, but do they, who populate the reality shows, lie in the front of the camera?
2.Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
This 2017 film is a sequel/reboot of the much beloved 1995 film Jumanji. The movie is loosely based on Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 children’s book Jumanji, where a bewitched board game unleashes wild flora and fauna into the real world, putting the players at risk.
The 21st-century adaptation makes some contemporary tweaks. The story starts in a school where four teens stuck in detention come across “an old-school Nintendo game” titled Jumanji and try to play it. One thing leads to another, and our quartet find themselves sucked into the game and transported into the cursed wilderness of Jumanji. There they find themselves in new avatars and must finish the game if they ever want to make it back to the real world.
3.Wreck-It Ralph
This 2012 movie from Pixar is quite similar to Free Guy in its basic premise. The movie tells the story of its titular character, who is the villain in an arcade game named Fix-It Felix Jr. Sick of being ostracized by other characters from other games for his in-game villainous nature, he decides to take control of his “life” and tries to change his image from a villain to a nice guy. There are many moments in the movie that will remind you of Free Guy. It’s a great movie that can be enjoyed by kids and adults alike and was nominated for an Academy Award as well.
4.The Matrix Trilogy
The Matrix trilogy is one of those movies that later become a phenomenon, a benchmark to achieve, and a template for others to follow. For those who are unfortunately oblivious to this masterpiece, it starts just like Free Guy, except that the protagonist is a real human, but the world around him is fake/make-believe and made of computer codes.
The trilogy follows him and his teammates, dressed in sleek black trench coats, as they try to battle the progenitors of the codes with slick martial arts. The movie’s biggest contribution to modern-day vocabulary is its representation of grim reality vs. utopian fantasy by red pill and blue pill respectively.
5.Ghost in the Shell
Although The Matrix trilogy was revolutionary (and still is), its revolution was mostly limited to North American and European cinema. It was hardly a pioneering film and was heavily influenced by the OG of this genre, the 1995 British Japanese tour de force Ghost in the Shell. It’s an action thriller cyberpunk anime movie set in 2029 Japan and follows Motoko Kusanagi and her teammates in their quest to hunt down a mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master. This movie gets philosophical at many points, often raising the question of what it means to be human. Is it to just have a body born from the womb? Or is it just to have a conscious mind? Or is it neither?
The movie has influenced many in Hollywood, including James Cameron, whose own Avatar used the same basic premise as Ghost in the Shell. The Wachowskis, who made The Matrix, literally showed the movie to their producer and told him: “We wanna do that for real.” If you are intrigued enough, then you are in luck. The 4K version of Ghost in the Shell will be releasing on September 17 in the US.
6.Blade Runner
This science fiction classic by Ridley Scott received underwhelming response when it first came out in 1982, but today it is seen as a sublime neo-noir film. It was an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The movie is set in a dystopian and futuristic Los Angeles in 2019, where humans have started manufacturing synthetic humanoids known as replicants to be used as slave labor in extra-terrestrial colonies. Those replicants who develop emotions and free will, and expect to be treated as humans, are deemed rogue and "retired." The agents who hunt down such replicants and retire them are known as blade runners. The movie touches on many themes like class difference, meaning of humanness, and free will. The movie also had a sequel in 2017, Blade Runner 2049.
7.Being There
Adapted from a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, this 1979 movie by Hal Ashby is a satire revolving around a half-developed character or in Roger Ebert’s words, “about a man whose mind works like a rudimentary A.I. program,” just like our protagonist in Free Guy. The protagonist of Being There is an ex-gardener named Chance who has never stepped outside his garden in a big mansion and is totally oblivious to the dynamics of the outside world. Circumstances change, and he is forced into the outside world, where he excels and rises to the top echelons of the country just by uttering simple gardening-related phrases that are interpreted as profound wisdom by others around him, mostly because he dresses in a genteel manner. You can think of the movie as what it would be like if a chatbot were to come to life, dress stylishly, and go around interacting with people using the same limited phrases that its programmers coded in it.
8.Last Action Hero
A bit different from other titles in this list, here is a film where a character is transported from the real world into a movie and the villain of the movie is transported into the real world. The movie starts with a boy enjoying an action movie in the theater and then finds himself in the car of the super cop come protagonist Jack Slater (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger). The police chief in the movie appoints him as the new partner of Jack Slater, and they work together to bring down an assassin called Benedict (Charles Dance, best known for Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones). The movie is a hilarious and silly ride that parodies many action movie clichés and also sticks to those very clichés.
9.Detective Pikachu
This 2019 mystery film is more of a video game movie rather than a manga-based movie, as it is an adaptation of the eponymous video game. It is set in a world where humans and Pokémons coexist peacefully and follows an insurance agent who teams with Pikachu to investigate his father’s disappearance.
The movie is absurdly delightful and has a colorful palette. It is fun to watch but only if you don’t think too much and just watch. The title character is played and voiced by Ryan Reynolds, who provided facial motion capture for Pikachu. It's a good lighthearted watch.
10.The Lego Movie
The initial plot of the movie is quite similar to the initial plot of Free Guy. Our man, Emmet Brickowski, is a nice, regular construction worker, living in a city called Bricksburg, who follows the same schedule daily. One day after his interaction with a girl (duh!), he realizes the truth of his world made of Legos and unwittingly becomes part of the resistance against Lord Business, who wants to glue the Lego pieces together and prevent any rearrangement of the pieces. It's a hilarious and wacky movie chock-full of Easter eggs that hovers over the question of free will and the ability to chart one's own destiny.
11.Ready Player One
This science fiction film directed by Hollywood virtuoso Steven Spielberg is set in 2045 in a dystopian futuristic Earth where virtual reality has become quite advanced and has become the opium of the masses as it provides an escape from the pain and poverty of real life.
At the heart of the story is a VR simulation called OASIS, which allows its users to experience everything that they do in virtual world. People interact with friends, participate in games, and of course fight each other. Threatening the free world of OASIS is an evil corp, IOI, whose CEO wants to have total control of the OASIS. The protagonists and his chums are poor but street-smart underdogs who have taken it upon themselves to outwit IOI. Albeit the story is slightly clichéd, it is a delectable visual treat.
12.They Live
The story of this movie seems to be straight out of the mind of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but it was actually based on Ray Nelson’s short story "Eight O’Clock in the Morning." Our protagonist (played by WWE star “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) is a working-class simpleton (aptly named Nada) who is trying to make a living in Los Angeles.
One day he comes across a pair of sunglasses that show him that all the rich people around him are actually aliens and they are deviously controlling the lives of the have-nots. Guy from Free Guy will totally empathize. What follows later is his attempt to convince others about the truth and join a resistance to oust these creepy aliens.
