Disney Movie Challenge: Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

 Disney Movie Challenge

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

WHAT IS THE DISNEY MOVIE CHALLENGE: With Disney+ making available almost all of their films from the vault I thought it was a good time to watch all the theatrically released feature length Disney Studio Animated films. That’s a lot of qualifications so what does it all mean? It must be a film developed and released under the Walt Disney Animation Studios (so no PIXAR or Tim Burton stop motion films). Must have been released in theaters (no direct to video releases). And feature length (no shorts that played prior to the features). Currently there are 59 films. Starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 going to Raya and the Last Dragon in 2021. 

Wreck-it Ralph is a movie that sounds like it shouldn’t work.  It’s about a video game villain who sneaks into other video games.  The movie is filled with random references to other video games and seems to want to tap into that 80’s nostalgia by making the main game an 80’s like arcade game.  Despite everything going against it the movie works.  

The movie starts with Ralph (John C. Reilly) at “Bad Anon” lamenting how he is tired of being a bad guy.  We then learn that it’s the 30th anniversary of his game “Fix-it Felix Jr”.  Jealous that Felix (Jack McBrayer) gets all the credit, Ralph sets out to find a medal.  When he hears there is a new first person shooter game called “Hero's Duty” that hands out medals if you win he jumps into that game.  Causing total chaos in the game he eventually gets his medal but is chased out of the game by psy-bug and he crashes into a different game called “Sugar Rush”.  “Sugar Rush” is a car racing game that takes place in a land full of candy.  After Ralph crashes there one of the bugs from “Hero’s Duty” gets sucked into a taffy swamp and a character from “Sugar Rush” named Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) steals his medal.  The other racers in her game consider her a glitch and won’t let her race.  With the medal she is able to enter the race.  Meanwhile with Ralph missing, his game is threatened to be shut down for good.  Felix heads out to find Ralph and teams up with Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch) from “Hero’s Duty” to get Ralph and the bug that escaped with him.  Back in “Candy Rush” Ralph finds out that King Candy (Alan Tudyk) rules the land like a dictator and he teams up with Vanellope to take him down.  Everything collides at the end with a big race,psy-bugs that begin to eat all the candy, and an evil secret about King Candy comes out.  

The idea of making an animated movie about video games goes back to the 80’s.  Disney’s first attempt at a story was called “High Score” in the 90’s it was changed to “Joe Jump”.  Finally they started working on a story with Fix-It Felix as the main character.  Eventually they came to realize that a bad guy looking for redemption would make a compelling story and made Ralph the central character and was tentatively called “Reboot Ralph”.  According to director Richard Moore they didn’t want to base the movie on an actual game because "there's so much mythology and baggage attached to pre-existing titles that I feel someone would be disappointed,". It turns out that it was probably the right idea as most movies based on video games fail. Being able to make their own mythology lets the story be more freeing.  But also filling the film with other video game references lets the audience have fun with the familiar.  The balancing act with that is to not do too many references where those that don’t play video games would get bored.  They walked that thin line perfectly and those that know will get some jokes but there's so much other stuff going on that those that don’t know can still stay interested.  

Setting the movie in a world of video games let the animators create a bunch of unique worlds.  From the 8 bit world of “Fix-it Felix Jr” to the frenetic energy of “Hero’s Duty” and the ultra colorful world of “Sugar Rush” each had a feel all their own.  Not being tied down to one look makes Wreck-it Ralph stand out among other Disney movies and really adds to the world building and mythology of the movie.  

What truly makes this movie work is the clever writing by Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee.  They were able to take video game caricatures and not only give them personalities but also give each one a backstory.  These three dimensional characters really came to life and you felt a connection with each one.  Obviously the friendship between Ralph and Vanellope takes center stage but you never feel like any of the other characters get the short end of the stick.  The writing team also came up with clever bits.  One of my favorites is the opening bit with all the bad guys.  It is so much fun and the bad guy's affirmation cracks me up.  

Overall: A fun movie with clever writing and great visuals.  While those familiar with video games will get a kick out of some cameos (I personally love the Q-Bert cameo) you don’t have to have any knowledge of video games to enjoy the film.  

Random Facts

The animators spent all their life learning how to animate motion so it looks smooth that they had to unlearn everything to animated the 8-bit jerky motion of 80’s video games. 

Disney had permission from Nintendo to use Mario but they couldn’t find a place to make it work without it feeling forced. 

Made $49 million on its opening weekend.  At the time it was the largest opening weekend for any Disney animated film. It was also the 12th biggest film of the year. 

Lost to PIxar’s Brave for Best Animated FIlm at the Oscars.  This was considered an upset as most thought Wreck-It Ralph was better.  In fact most people felt that Wreck-It Ralph felt like a Pixar movie and Brave felt like a typical Disney Princess movie.  

King Candy’s voice and design was based on Ed Wynn’s Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland

  

It has been reported that there are 188 classic video game characters in the movie. 

The high score on Fix-It Felix Jr is 120501 which is a reference to Walt Disney’s birthday of 12/5/1901