Psycho's Movie Reviews #260: Wreck-It-Ralph (2012)

Wreck-It Ralph is a 2012 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 52nd Disney animated feature film, it was directed by Rich Moore (in his directorial debut), written by Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee from a story by Moore, Johnston, and Jim Reardon and executive produced by John Lasseter. The film features the voices of John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch and tells the story of the eponymous arcade game villain who rebels against his "bad-guy" role and dreams of becoming a hero.

Wreck-It Ralph premiered at the El Capitan Theatre on October 29, 2012, and went into general release on November 2. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing $471 million worldwide against a $165 million budget and winning the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, as well as receiving nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet, was released on November 21, 2018.

Plot

When Litwak's Arcade closes at night, the various video game characters leave their in-game roles and socialize via a power strip. At a support group, Wreck-it Ralph, the villain of Fix-it Felix, Jr., expresses anger with his assigned role, as he is mistreated by his game's NPCs while Felix is celebrated. When Ralph is excluded from the game's thirtieth-anniversary party, he determines to win a medal and earn some respect.

Overhearing that players in the first-person shooter Hero's Duty can earn medals, Ralph sneaks in and steals one while the game's characters are fighting Cy-Bugs, an insectoid enemy. Ralph accidentally launches himself in an escape shuttle with a Cy-Bug inside and crash-lands in the candy-themed kart racing game Sugar Rush. With Ralph gone, his game is labelled out of order. Fix-it Felix leaves the game to find Ralph, allying himself with Sergeant Calhoun, the heroine of Hero's Duty. She is tracking the Cy-Bug, as it may become a virus.

In Sugar Rush, Ralph has his medal stolen by Vanellope von Schweetz, who uses it to buy her way into the nightly race that determines which characters are playable during the day. King Candy forbids her to race, as she has a glitch that causes her to move and teleport erratically. Other racers destroy her kart until Ralph intervenes. Vanellope promises to get the medal back if Ralph helps her win, and he reluctantly helps her build a new kart and teaches her to drive inside Diet Cola Mountain.

Calhoun and Felix arrive in Sugar Rush, and Felix explains that long ago, the titular hero of Turbo Time became jealous of the new racing game RoadBlasters, and tried to sabotage it, causing both games to become unplugged. Felix fears Ralph might be "going Turbo", too. Calhoun and Felix fall into Nesquik-sand, work together to escape, and begin to fall in love.

Meanwhile, King Candy hacks into Sugar Rush's source code and retrieves the medal, giving it back to Ralph. He warns that, if Vanellope becomes a playable character, her glitching might cause someone to unplug the game as 'broken'. Ralph decides he cannot allow Vanellope to race and destroys her kart. She runs away, labelling Ralph a true "bad guy".

Calhoun abandons Felix when he inadvertently reminds her of her late fiancé. Felix asks for directions at the palace, and is captured by King Candy's assistant Sour Bill. Calhoun wanders the game alone, and discovers the Cy-bug has multiplied exponentially.

Sad and alone, Ralph returns to Fix-it Felix, Jr. and finds it abandoned. He angrily throws away his medal, then notices that the Sugar Rush cabinet displays Vanellope as a playable character. Returning to Sugar Rush, Ralph confronts Sour Bill, who admits that Vanellope was a real racer until King Candy tried to delete her code, but was unable to do so entirely. However, King Candy also locked away the memories of the Sugar Rush citizens and racers so that no one knows Vanellope's actual role. He explains if Vanellope completes a race, all of King Candy's coding will be deleted and Vanellope will never be able to glitch ever again.

Ralph frees Felix from King Candy's prison, fixes the kart, and reconciles with Vanellope, who enters the race. The Cy-Bugs emerge from hiding and start destroying the game; Calhoun, Felix, and Ralph help evacuate the characters. Unaware of this development, King Candy attempts to ram Vanellope off the track, causing her to glitch. Her glitches affect some of King Candy's code, revealing him as Turbo, who took over Sugar Rush after escaping the unplugging of his game. Vanellope flees as Turbo is eaten by a Cy-Bug, which fuses with him into an insectoid monster.

Everyone but Vanellope evacuates, as glitches cannot leave their games. Remembering from Hero's Duty that a beacon will draw and destroy the Cy-Bugs, Ralph battles Turbo and collapses the Mentos roof of Diet Cola Mountain, creating an eruption which destroys Turbo and the Cy-Bugs. Vanellope uses her glitching to rescue Ralph from the ensuing chaos.

Vanellope crosses the finish line at last, the game resets, revealing her status and memory as Princess Vanellope, the rightful ruler of Sugar Rush , though she still keeps her glitching ability, now seeing it as an advantage.

Ralph returns home, and the other characters treat him with respect. Felix and Calhoun marry, and Ralph resumes his work as the "villain" in contentment, watching Vanellope become a favourite racer.

Production

Concept and Story

The concept of Wreck-It Ralph was first developed at Disney, in the late 1980s, under the working title High Score. Since then, it was redeveloped and reconsidered several times: In the late 1990s, it took on the working title Joe Jump, then in the mid-2000s as Reboot Ralph.

John Lasseter, the head of Walt Disney Animation Studios and executive producer of the film, describes Wreck-It Ralph as "an 8-bit video-game bad guy who travels the length of the arcade to prove that he's a good guy." In a manner similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Toy Story films, Wreck-It Ralph featured cameo appearances by a number of licensed video-game characters. For example, one scene from the film shows Ralph attending a support group for the arcade's various villain characters, including Clyde from Pac-Man, Doctor Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bowser from Super Mario Bros. Rich Moore, the film's director, had determined that for a film about a video-game world to feel authentic, "it had to have real characters from real games in it." Moore aimed to add licensed characters in a similar manner as cultural references in Looney Tunes shorts, but considered "having the right balance so a portion of the audience didn't feel they were being neglected or talked down to." However, Moore avoided creating the movie around existing characters, feeling that "there's so much mythology and baggage attached to pre-existing titles that I feel someone would be disappointed," and considered this to be a reason why movies based on video game franchises typically fail. Instead, for Ralph, the development of new characters representative of the 8-bit video game was "almost like virgin snow," giving them the freedom to take these characters in new directions.

Before production, the existing characters were added to the story either in places they would make sense to appear or as cameos from a list of characters suggested by the film's creative team, without consideration if they would legally be able to use the characters. The company then sought out the copyright holders' permissions to use the characters, as well as working with these companies to assure their characters were being represented authentically. In the case of Nintendo, the writers had early on envisioned the Bad-anon meeting with Bowser as a major character within the scene; according to Moore, Nintendo was very positive towards this use, stating in Moore's own words, "If there is a group that is dedicated to helping the bad guy characters in video games then Bowser must be in that group!" Nintendo had asked that the producers try to devise a scene that would be similarly appropriate for Mario for his inclusion in the film. Despite knowing they would be able to use the character, the producers could not find an appropriate scene that would let Mario be a significant character without taking away the spotlight from the main story and opted to not include the character. Moore debunked a rumour that Mario and his brother character Luigi were not included due to Nintendo requesting too high a licensing fee, stating that the rumour grew out of a joke John C. Reilly made at Comic-Con. Dr. Wily from Mega Man was going to appear but was cut from the final version of the film. Overall, there are about 188 individual character models in the movie as a result of these cameo inclusions.

An earlier draft of the screenplay had Ralph and Vanellope spending time going around the game world to collect the pieces for her kart for Sugar Rush, and at times included Felix traveling with the pair. During these scenes, Ralph would have lied to Felix regarding his budding relationship with Calhoun, leading eventually to Ralph becoming depressed and abandoning his quest to get his medal back. At this point, a fourth game world, Extreme Easy Living 2, would have been introduced and was considered a "hedonistic place" between the social nature of The Sims and the open-world objective-less aspects of Grand Theft Auto, according to Moore. Ralph would go there too, wallowing in his depression, and would find happiness by gaining "Like It" buttons for doing acceptable actions in the party-like nature of the place. Moore stated that while it was difficult to consider dropping this new game world, they found that its introduction in the second half of the film would be too difficult a concept for the viewer to grasp. They further had trouble working out how a social game would be part of an arcade, and though they considered having the game be running on Litwak's laptop, they ultimately realized that justifying the concept would be too convoluted. Line art sketches and voice-over readings of the scene were included on the home media release of the film.

Animation, Designs, and Camera Work

The film introduced Disney's new bidirectional reflectance distribution functions, with more realistic reflections on surfaces, and new virtual cinematography Camera Capture system, which makes it possible to go through scenes in real time. To research the Sugar Rush segment of the film, the visual development group travelled to trade fair ISM Cologne, a See's Candy factory, and other manufacturing facilities. The group also brought in food photographers, to demonstrate techniques to make food appear appealing. Special effects, including from "smoke or dust," looks distinct in each of the segments.

Music

The film's score was composed by Henry Jackman. Three original songs were performed in the film by Owl City, AKB48, and Buckner & Garcia. The soundtrack also features the songs "Celebration", "Bug Hunt" (Skrillex and Noisia remix), and "Shut Up and Drive". Early in the development process, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote an original song for the film; it was later cut out.

Video Game Cameos and References The "Bad-Anon" villain meeting features various well-known video game characters, including Bowser, Clyde, Doctor Eggman, M. Bison, Neff, and Zangief.

In addition to the spoken roles, Wreck-It Ralph contains a number of other video game references, including characters and visual gags. The video game villains at the support meeting, in addition to those mentioned above, include Bowser from the Mario franchise, Doctor Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog, and Neff from Altered Beast. Additionally, the game cabinet of the fictional Fix It Felix, Jr. arcade game is stylized to strongly resemble the cabinet of Nintendo's original 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game, with Ralph and Felix taking similar poses as Donkey Kong and Mario, respectively. The Hero's Duty game is a reference to the hugely successful first-person shooter games Halo and Call of Duty. Characters from Q*bert are shown as "homeless" characters and later taken in by Ralph and Felix into their game (Q*bert also speaks to Felix at one point using the signature synthesized gibberish and word-balloon symbols from his game, called Q*bert-ese). Scenes in Game Central Station and Tapper's bar include Chun-Li, Cammy and Blanka from Street Fighter, Pac-Man, Blinky, Pinky, and Inky from Pac-Man, the Paperboy from Paperboy, the two paddles and the ball from Pong, Dig Dug, a Pooka, and a Fygar from Dig Dug, The Qix from Qix, Frogger from Frogger, and Peter Pepper from BurgerTime. Lara Croft and Mario are also mentioned.

Additional references are based on sight gags. The residents of Niceland and the bartender from Tapper are animated using a jerky motion that spoofs the limited animation cycles of the sprites of many eight- and sixteen-bit arcade games. King Candy uses the Konami Code on an NES controller to access the programming of Sugar Rush. Throughout Game Central Station is graffiti that includes "Aerith lives" (referencing the character of Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII), "All your base are belong to us" (an Engrish phrase popularized from the game Zero Wing), "Sheng Long Was Here" (referencing an April Fool's joke around a made-up character Sheng Long from Street Fighter), and "Jenkins" (a nod to the popular Leeroy Jenkins meme from World of Warcraft). There is also a reference to the Metal Gear series when Ralph is searching for a medal in Tapper's Lost and found, finding first a Super Mushroom from the Mario franchise, and then Metal Gear Solid's "Exclamation point" (with the corresponding sound effect from the game). Mr. Litwak wears a black and white striped referee's shirt, a nod to the iconic outfit of Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day. One of the songs in the credits is an original work from Buckner and Garcia, previously famous for writing video game-themed songs in the 1980s. The Walt Disney Animation Studios opening logo is animated in an 8-bit pixelated fashion, whereas the Walt Disney Pictures closing production logo appears in a glitched state, a reference to the kill screen from many early arcade games such as Pac-Man. The high score on the main screen of Fix-It Felix, Jr., 120501, refers to the birthdate of Walt Disney, December 5, 1901.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film was originally scheduled for a release on March 22, 2013, but it was later changed to November 2, 2012, due to it being ahead of schedule. The theatrical release was accompanied by Disney's animated short film, Paperman.

The review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 87% of critics have given the film a positive review, based on 188 reviews with an average score of 7.4/10. The site's consensus reads: "Equally entertaining for both kids and parents old enough to catch the references, Wreck-It Ralph is a clever, colourful adventure built on familiar themes and joyful nostalgia." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews". The film earned an "A" from audiences polled by CinemaScore.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and wrote, "More than in most animated films, the art design and colour palette of Wreck-It Ralph permit unlimited sets, costumes, and rules, giving the movie tireless originality and different behaviour in every different cyber world." A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, "The movie invites a measure of cynicism—which it proceeds to obliterate with a 93-minute blast of colour, noise, ingenuity and fun." Peter Debruge of Variety stated, "With plenty to appeal to boys and girls, old and young, Walt Disney Animation Studios has a high-scoring hit on its hands in this brilliantly conceived, gorgeously executed toon, earning bonus points for backing nostalgia with genuine emotion." Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times said, "The movie's subversive sensibility and old-school/new-school feel are a total kick," while Justin Lowe of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "With a mix of retro eye-candy for grown-ups and a thrilling, approachable storyline for the tykes, the film casts a wide and beguiling net." Conversely, Christopher Orr of The Atlantic found it "overplotted and underdeveloped."

Wreck-It Ralph grossed $189.4 million in North America and $281.8 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $471.2 million.

In North America, the film debuted with $13.5 million, an above-average opening-day gross for an animated film released in November. During its opening weekend, the film topped the box office with $49 million, making it the largest opening for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film at the time. The film fell 33% to $33 million in its second weekend, finishing second behind newcomer Skyfall.

Budget $165 million

Box office $471.2 million

My Review

Wreck-It Ralph is incredibly inventive and enjoyable--or at least MOST of the film. Up until the movie neared the end, I would have scored this one an 8--it was that good. But, the ending managed to annoy me and create a lot of ill-will in me.

The film worked very, very well in several ways. Seeing the arcade characters on their 'time off from work' at the end of the day was GREAT. In fact, I wish I'd seen more of this--especially the homages to classic arcade games like Sonic and Q-Bert. It also had amazing graphics. But, it also seemed to have too much story--way too much story. And, at the end, just about every cliché known to Disney (even including the Disney Princess notion!) was tossed in--and destroying much of the momentum in the movie. Then, all the inventiveness was gone--and it a by-the-numbers film that just stopped being fun when the whole race plot began. Overall, a very mixed bag. I loved most of it but cannot heartily recommend it. My advice? See it once. Or, if you are a little kid and can watch formulaic Disney fare again and again, then by all means watch it until your brain drips out your ears. This should have been a lot better--it's as if Disney was more concerned about marketing than providing a top-notch film.

I think 2012 has been a very good, even great, year for animation in that I don't think I have seen an animated film I've disliked. Wreck It Ralph for me was the best animated film from 2012(although it only came out yesterday in the UK I still class it as a 2012 film), tying with Tangled as the best Disney has done since The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It has something for children and adults alike, and I don't think you have to be a video game fan to like it(I'm not exactly, more of Disney myself, but am very familiar with them through my brother). The animation is wonderful, the characters move with no problem at all, the colours look gorgeous and the backgrounds are detailed, very like the very best of Pixar actually. The music, right from the tempos, rhythms, melodies, chord progressions and instrumentation, is full of energy and the songs are incredibly catchy. The writing is a perfect blend of humour and heart, the film is often hilarious and witty as well as heartfelt and touching in equal measures and the story is fast-paced and much more original than you'd think complete with energetic-but not too frantic- action. I like the Be Yourself message, it is an important one and I personally didn't think it was heavy-handed. And of course any video game fan will love spotting the video game characters and references, there's plenty of them and all are colourfully evoked. I found it very easy to relate to Ralph, Fix-it Felix Jr is an amusing character and Vanellope is cute without being annoying or mawkish. The voice work is terrific, with the standout being the gruff vulnerability that John C Reilly brings to Ralph. In conclusion, a wonderful film and the best animated film of the year. But not my favourite of all time. 8.8/10

{'When Can I See You Again' is one of Owl City's best songs}