The Lego Movie 2 Focus on the Family Review
Picture Review
Guy likes his shirts blue, his ties striped, and his java with cream and two sugars.
He likes his goldfish, Goldie. He likes his best bud, Buddy. He likes his job at the bank so much that he makes Disneyland cast members feel like KGB agents.
"Don't have a good day," he tells his customers, coffee baristas and random people on the street. "Accept a great solar day."
Aye, Guy likes life. It hardly matters that he'due south non actually alive to like information technology.
Paradox? No, just a video game.
See, Guy isn't a guy: He's code. Expect underneath his shirt and skin and you'll see a agglomeration of 1s and 0s—binary elements that brand up non just Guy, but literally his entire world. The bustling city of Free City that Guy calls dwelling is really a massively multiplayer online game, and Guy's only one of scads of NPCs—that is, non-player characters—who populate it.
The existent people who come to visit the game can do pretty much whatsoever they desire with these NPCs. Talk with them? Maybe. Punch them in the face up? Sure. Blow them up with a rocket launcher? Now we're talking!
You've heard the phrase, "Information technology'south their world, and we're simply living in it," right? In Guy'due south case, that'southward absolutely true. If the Gratis Urban center's gamers are its Harlem Globetrotters, its NPCs are its Washington Generals. In a earth of whales, Guy and his cronies are krill. And—considering they're just fulfilling their programming—they're absolutely fine with that.
But what if that programming stops being so … fulfilling?
See, as much as Guy likes his job and coffee and goldfish and whatnot, he feels a fleck of a void deep within. He wants to fall in dear. And non only with whatsoever pretty NPC that crosses his path. No, deep down, he has a perfect adult female in mind.
And then one day, after his morning time java but before the usual bustle of murders and banking concern robberies, he sees her—the woman of his dreams. He recognizes her immediately, and he knows he must talk with her.
But how can he? She's wearing sunglasses, after all—a fashion accoutrement that, unbeknownst to Guy, separates the gamers from the NPCs, the real from the binary. "People with sunglasses don't talk with people similar us," Buddy reminds Guy.
Guy knows this. But Guy is likewise in love. And if he needs sunglasses to talk with this mysterious stranger? Why, he'll simply, um, borrow a pair from i of the gun-toting visitors to his bank.
Perhaps if he just asks nicely.
Positive Elements
Guy does procure said pair of sunglasses. And simply like any nearsighted kid getting spectacles for the first fourth dimension, a whole new world opens up when he puts those glasses on. Suddenly, he sees the game elements embedded in Gratis Metropolis—from floating health packs and stacks of cash, to mission get-go points and undercover rendezvous joints. He still doesn't acquaintance those elements with a fictional game; he only thinks that Free City is way more interesting than he always imagined. But when he starts to interact with Free City every bit a role player, not an NPC, he does something startlingly divergent.
He plays as a nice guy.
Instead of robbing banks, he catches criminals. Instead of blowing people up, he dusts them off. "I never injure innocent people," he says, and it's truthful. What he does is so unusual in the hyper-Darwinian globe of Free City that his avatar becomes a existent, digital glory, both feared and admired past the existent humans playing. And as the game's rogue Dudley Practise-Right, he triggers a bout of soul-searching amidst many. Turns out, you don't have to be a wiggle to play Free City. You don't accept to troll other gamers or needlessly kill NPCs. Information technology's OK—actually—to exist decent.
Outside the game, Free City's apparent creator, Antoine, treats this new wrinkle with indifference. But to Keys and Millie—ii programmers who built a much more beautiful, idealistic digital world and sold off their creation to Antoine—Guy is seen as a gift. See, they doubtable that Antoine illegally used their digital creation as part of Free City's programming. They want to be justly recognized for their piece of work. The film's plot is partly powered by this push for that sense of fair play.
But as they begin to realize that Guy is truly an NPC and is transcending the premises of his coding—that he is somehow, in some way, live—their goals shift. Certain, they notwithstanding desire to be treated adequately. But more than that, they want Guy and his slowly evolving friends to be treated as the living beings they believe them to be.
In fact, you could make the argument that Costless Guy is, inherently, a pro-life sort of flick: Guy might not authorize as a living entity for some. But the film stresses that he does live, and equally such should be accorded the nobility life deserves.
Spiritual Elements
That "pro-life" bulletin, of class, comes with an important spiritual caveat: This "life" is essentially man-made. That, obviously, has some of import theological implications. And for all its wit and levity, the movie postulates that the creation of "life" isn't necessarily reserved for God alone.
The movie leans into that dissonance pretty heavily at times. When Millie (as her game-based avatar Molotov Girl) tells Guy that she'southward met the creator of Gratuitous Metropolis, and that he's (paraphrasing here) not a very prissy person, Guy gasps, "Y'all met God? And he'southward a d–k?"
Throughout the story, we see humans deport with a certain godlike omnipotence inside the earth of Free Urban center. Ii moderators spring into the game using "God manner" (a phrase often used in games that refers to cheats or codes that allow players do to things otherwise not allowed), and the game itself is subject to reboots or outright destruction that, obviously, deeply impacts the game's digital world. Guy (when he learns the truth) wrestles with whatever differences that at that place might be with his feelings and his programming, but he too acknowledges that he is the production of his "author."
When sipping a loving cup of coffee, Guy says that it tastes every bit though "Jesus done my tongue." Someone proclaims that there is no God.
Sexual Content
Guy and Molotov girl buss a few times within the game.
Nosotros too hear enough of ribald references and conversations; many are veiled to some degree; but the older you are, the more probable you volition be to catch references to all manner of sexual organs, acts and fluids. Ane gamer (in the guise of his male in-game avatar) gets extraordinarily close to Guy—so close that Guy says their privates are touching behind the fabric barrier of their pants—and he pops a few vaguely lewd trip the light fantastic toe moves, besides.
When Guy tells Molotov Girl that he'south trying to be a decent guy in Gratuitous Urban center, Molotov tells him to savor his "lifetime supply of virginity." 2 moderators call him a "forty-year-old virgin" to get his attention. Guy makes a reference to virginity too.
At least 1 NPC—chosen "Bombshell" in the credits—is designed to exist a female trophy of sorts. (We encounter her in a car with one player, with Guy telling united states that she and the rebel are probably non married.) Guy later encourages her to hold to higher standards on who she goes out with, and we learn that she's written a feminist manifesto rejecting objectification and patriarchy.
Characters can dress in slightly revealing garb, and ane massively muscled NPC goes about without a shirt on. (Someone plays with his pectoral muscles.) A moderator describes his in-game "skin" (what he looks similar in the digital world) as a mustached stripper cop. Another moderator dresses up as a pinkish rabbit, describing himself as an noon predator; the rabbit's ability to have sex is described as something of a superpower. We see a sign for an "all trunk massage." When Millie admits to Keys in the real earth that she's kind of drawn to the in-game Guy, Keys chides her. "He's like, iv," he says.
Trigger-happy Content
Free City? Well, it's certainly non Costless-From-Violence City. Every morning, Guy eats his morning bowl of cereal while watching the weather on TV, where the weatherman predicts hails of bullets on the northside of town and rivers of blood near the embankment.
Now, all of what follows comes with a caveat: While Free City is designed to replicate a hyper-violent, Chiliad Theft Machine sort of world to some extent, the violence nosotros run across is pretty cartoonish is surprisingly bloodless. The most hemoglobin we see spilled is when Guy fights a depository financial institution robber for his sunglasses and gets smashed in the confront with a gun—leaving his nose possibly cleaved and his face up a fleck of a mess. But he quickly cures himself past picking upwardly a heretofore invisible health pack on the sidewalk, and he's correct equally pelting.
The aforementioned cannot be said for the player/banking company robber, whom Guy shoots in the chest. He lies on the flooring with a cartoonish-but-massive hole in his middle. (Guy says that he's probable lying down considering he's "sleepy".)
People are run over by and bounce off cars and trains and whatnot. They're shot and stabbed and smashed and thrown around (sometimes through windows). Helicopters crash into skyscrapers, tanks crush cars, and lots of things blow upwards. I NPC powers upwards what appears to be a glowing fist of death in training to permanently finish someone in game. Someone falls from a terrific height, only to be protected from the fall by what appears to be an inflatable cocoon. 1 character's chest is almost crushed by another. People get manipulated in comic videogame fashion.
About of the action takes place between people who (to viewers' eyes) are quite alive and real. Just the picture show sometimes takes u.s. to a more than pixelated view: In such scenes, Guy suffers a number of bodily indignities (including taking a punch to the crotch) and inflicts some of his own besides.
The nearly violent deed we see in the real earth is the destruction of a roomful of calculator servers.
Rough or Profane Linguistic communication
One f-word and about 15 s-words mar the dialogue of this PG-thirteen moving-picture show. You also hear several uses apiece of "a–," "d–n" and "h—" (sometimes as office of songs that play in the background), also was ane use each of the words "b–ch" and "p-ssed." God's name is misused nearly 20 times, about iv of which are connected to "d–north." We encounter a couple of obscene gestures and hear a joking reference to i, besides.
Drug and Alcohol Content
Gamer avatars hang out in what looks to exist a seedy in-game saloon. We hear a reference to recreational drug apply.
Other Negative Elements
Gratuitous Metropolis naturally rewards bad behavior, and we encounter oodles of it. In the game, every law you can think of is broken with gusto: Banks are robbed, cars are crushed, ruby lights are run. It'due south all for laughs, of form, but Gratuitous City's chaos reminds united states merely how amoral those sprawling gaming worlds can exist.
And even within the game's own rules of etiquette, we hear about how many trolls Free City welcomes each and every twenty-four hours. Indeed, Molotov Girl suggests that Free City's jerks—those that seek to spoil the game for everyone else—far outnumber the folks who come up to, y'know, but play the game.
Keys hides in a bathroom stall as he tries to infiltrate Free Urban center.
Decision
Gratis Guy is what you lot'd get if y'all crossed The Matrix with The Lego Motion picture and added a good for you dollop of Ready Player I. Yes, it's a movie about videogames, and you can't throw a barrel without smacking a gaming Easter Egg right in the ol' koopa. Enough of famous gamers make cameos, as well.
But information technology's as well a movie about purpose and gratuitous will—about finding pregnant in what can feel like a meaningless world. And as such, the movie'southward themes transcend its frenetic, wacky setting. Sometimes, we all probably feel a little like Guy. We do much the same thing day later on twenty-four hours in a world nosotros take very little command over. Perhaps sometimes we wonder whether there's any signal to what we're doing at all.
As Christians, of class, we know the answer: yes. We know we're office of a bigger story, that our roles are inherently disquisitional to its telling. Nosotros're not just window dressing, like Guy. We're players, imbued with both complimentary will and purpose—filled with the knowledge that nosotros are loved and valued, and endowed with the ability to phone call our own shots, to aid make our own little corners of the world a fiddling better … or a little worse.
The creators we meet in Complimentary Guy are far less worthy of worship than our own Divine Creator. At Keys and Millie'south best, they're well-pregnant but fallen creatures, just similar us. At their worst, the antagonists here are twisted things, bullheaded and raging, corrupting creation even as it's made.
No wonder that the motion-picture show itself follows in Antoine's sneakered footsteps.
Complimentary Guy is hardly free of issues. The sexual references and asides tin feel as steady as a Florida shower, as unwelcome equally an Arctic wind. Language sours the feel. The violence? Well, as cartoonish equally it is, information technology's as well inescapable. And even as the film uses that violence to needle mindless, violent games, information technology also renders Complimentary Guy—despite its more than thoughtful underpinnings—a potentially mindless, violent diversion.
Crashing helicopters and blasting bazookas aside, Costless Guy's world looks a lot like our own: both kinda fun and clearly fallen. And a little caution would be advised earlier diving right in.
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Source: https://www.pluggedin.com/movie-reviews/free-guy-2021/
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