Movie Recommendations
It can be challenging to find movies without a dystopian message these days, but I found a couple worth watching. I may be on a Ryan Reynolds streak because I have two movies to recommend where he played the protagonist. They are The Adam Project and Free Guy.
The Adam Project
In this movie, Adam, a time-traveling fighter pilot, meets his 12-year-old self. There is a 'Back to the Future-esque' plot where together with their father, they need to change the present in order to free the future. The plot is entertaining, but what I love about this movie is the way it illustrates our avoidance of, and the disdain we may have for, our younger self/inner child. This avoidance/disdain hides unresolved trauma and shows up in our lives in a number of ways, including illness and projection.
Future Adam finds his 12-year-old self pitiful and embarrassing, while 12-year-old Adam idolizes his future self. Tiny in stature and constantly bullied by a gang of boys at school, he can't believe that he grows into that man! His future self has muscles and kicks butt. He is a bold and daring pilot! He gives 12-year-old Adam a sense of confidence. But young Adam isn't the only Adam in need of a lesson. Future Adam finds his heart again through his 12-year-old self. This movie is funny and heart-warming.
The spiritual message in this is three-fold. First, inner child integration is vital to our quest to become whole. Second, connecting with our future self can help us see that all is in Divine Order now, and everything will turn out okay. Third, when the two Adams finally have a moving, heartfelt conversation, we are shown how our memories can be altered by our feelings about the past, and may not be accurate at all. All good stuff for anyone on the soul integration path.
Free Guy
In this movie, Ryan Reynolds plays a bank teller named Guy, who discovers he is in an NPC (nonplayer character) in a brutal video game. For those who know nothing about video games (i.e. me), NPC's don't have a playing role in the game. They are the background characters with repetitive, non-reflective actions who end up as collateral damage from the confrontations between the power-wielding game players. They aspire to nothing and they question nothing. They wake up every day to the same world, making the same (programmed) choices. Game players give them zero consideration. This is us, unfortunately, as we are for the most part, utterly blind to the programming that runs our lives, and to how easily we give up our power to culture and authority.
Guy begins to see the world differently when he is moved by the feeling of love for a new character who comes on the scene. He begins to see the extreme power imbalance of his world and the unconscious nature of his fellow NPCs. He starts to realize that he makes the same choices every single day and when he tries to make a different choice, the people in his community won’t tolerate it. He wakes up to the fact that there is a 'real world out there’ that is controlling everything. With the help of his love interest — who turns out to be a player who co-created the code for the game in the first place — he launches a quest for freedom and meaning for all NPCs.
This is a story about awakening - awakening to the reality of the 'game' we are all in (but can't see), and to our inner power and creative abilities. The people in the 'real world' have their own awakenings too. As I told my family, it is a cross between The Truman Show, Pleasantville, West World, Inception, Groundhog Day and Elf. That's quite a combination! Overall this movie is inspiring and funny. But if you don’t walk away reflecting more deeply on the NPC nature of your own life, you will have missed its gift.
