Here's the sit-rep from Wiki. "Wreck-It Ralph is a 2012 American 3D computer-animated fantasy-comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 52nd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The film was directed by Rich Moore, who has directed episodes of The Simpsons and Futurama, and the screenplay was written by Jennifer Lee and Phil Johnston from a story by Moore, Johnston and Jim Reardon. John Lasseter served as the executive producer. The film features the voices of John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, and Jane Lynch. The film tells the story of the eponymous arcade game villain who rebels against his role and dreams of becoming a hero. He travels between games in the arcade, and ultimately must eliminate a dire threat that could affect the entire arcade, and one that Ralph himself inadvertently started.
Wreck-It Ralph premiered at the El Capitan Theatre on October 29, 2012, and went into general release on November 2. The film has earned $471 million in worldwide box office revenue, $189 million of which was earned in the United States and Canada; it was met with critical and commercial success, winning the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature and receiving nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Wreck-It Ralph was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 5, 2013." Now let's talk about the story and my favorite and/or best parts.
Basically this movie is about a bad video game character tired of living in trash and wanting to move in the pent house and be a hero (he thinks he can achieve good hero status by getting a medal), basically Ralph is a guy who wrecks stuff in this old school arcade game and now he wants to make a change in his life and become a hero. The hero in his game is Felix, a short guy with a hammer who fixes everything that Ralph breaks. Pretty simple minded eh? Well, this is a children's movie (Walt Disney). The coolest part of this movie was the very beginning, where Ralph is in a bad guy video game therapy session. Here we have people like M.Bison, Zangief, Bowser, those ghost guys from Pac-Man, etc. What's really cool is that Zangeif talks about how he likes crushing people's heads between his thighs. He has this European accent that fits his character very well. Then they end their bad guy therapy with a mantra about how "I am bad, that is good". It's a great part of the movie. Then, when Ralph goes back to his game we see there's like a video game arcade city between all the games and I got a glimpse of some other great famous video game characters, people like Chun-Li and Q-Bert. To me this was probably my favorite part of the movie, it was that awesome seeing my favorite video game characters brought alive on my big screen tv! I won't talk about every single detail in this movie regarding the plot as its kind of all over the place and would take forever to talk about.
Next, my second favorite part was when Ralph left his game Fix-It-Felix to go to a space first person shooter game called Hero Duty. He heard from another soldier in the pub he goes to that there's medals to be earned in the game and Ralph thought if he went back to his game with a medal he would be a good guy character, because good guys earn medals. In this game the real world player shoots cyberpunk type ammunition against insects. Once Ralph is inside the game he meets the Commander, a blonde haired woman with great leadership skills and a cool sounding voice. This was just a cool part because it reminded me of games like Starcraft and Halo. After Ralph freaks out and makes the real life player lose the game he climbs up to the top of this mountain in the game and grabs a medal, but accidentally stepping on an alien egg in the process. By the way, the room where he got the medal was entirely full of alien eggs, shadowing Prometheus in that scene. Then, he accidentally activates a spaceship while the alien is alive and attacking his face! This is where the movie starts to go wrong for me. Up to this point the movie was terrific.
The ship ends up flying out of the game, leading our anti-hero to another game called Candy Rush. Once Ralph's there he throws the alien into a swampy area, thinking its dead, but it actually lives, and growing and laying eggs, something they have to deal with in the ending of the movie. After that Ralph meets a girl named Vanellope Von Schweetz, a really cool name for an adorable little girl. It turned out that Vanellope wanted to use Ralphs medal as entry to put her name in the big race (its a racing game), she thinks its a coin for that purpose and not a medal. When she turns it in it actually works. What's interesting about Vanellope is that she's a glitch in the game, her code has been tampered with by the real bad guy in this movie (who turns out to be the King of Candy Rush, but he's also an old racer from a really old racing game). He has been tampering with the code in the game for a long time, even erasing people's memories, so people have forgotten who Vanellope really is, the Princess of Candy Rush. A lot of stuff happens at this point in the movie. So much in fact, that you could say there are multiple plots to this movie. One is that Ralph is trying to become a hero and get his medal back. Two is that Vanellope wants to be a racer and get acknowledged as someone more than just a glitch. Three is that Felix is trying to find Ralph in Candy Rush to stop their game from becoming an out of order game. And four, the alien that Ralph brought to Candy Rush that Sergent Calhoun (the cool woman from Hero Duty with the big ass gun) is looking for. So there's all that going on at this part of the movie. It begins to kind of get muddled in but it works fine enough. I think Vanellope's character makes Ralph grow into something more than just an anti-hero, he's pretty much a father figure to her in the end. Vanellope's character is so kid-like, it's like watching a real life kid on an animated screen. The things she says, the way she says it, it's very authentic for what I'm guessing a 5-8 year old girl would be like. Whoever did her character is an amazing voice actor.
Lastly, the ending of the movie was ok but not great. Basically all the eggs the alien dropped out hatched and all of a sudden Candy Rush is going to be destroyed, and they think Vanellope is going to die because a glitch can't leave the game, but things happen in the end where everything is resolved and there's a great feel good ending for Ralph. Ralph ends up going back to his usual routine of being a bad guy but he has a new outlook on life because of how Vanellope ended up being one of the roster characters that real life players at the arcade like to use, despite the fact that she glitches all over the place. It''s very cool that a video game character can have such a great outlook on life, it's a great movie for kids and young adults. What is great about this movie is all the video game character cameos that appear in it, and the great animation that Disney has been known to bring us (think Big Hero Six). The voice acting was good too, especially Vanellope, Felix, Ralph, Q-Bert, and Sergent Calhoun. Final Verdit: 8/10, not quite good enough for a 9 but not bad enough to be a 7. Not bad Disney. Not bad at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment