We take a stroll through "Game Central Station" in this review of Wreck-It Ralph. Tired of being treated like the bad guy, Ralph starts on his quest for a golden medal so he can be treated like a hero. He enters the game Hero's Duty, claims the medal, but gets catapulted into the racing game Sugar Rush with a cy-bug in tow. The adventure stars when he meets Vanellope Von Schweetz, a glitch in Sugar Rush, who steals his golden medal and uses it as a token so she can participate in the race. He said...
A love letter to gamers. That's what Wreck-It Ralph is. Bear in mind, I'm not talking about the typical "casual" gamer that flicks birds from catapults and answers the call of duty. No, I'm not talking about your tablet-toting soccer mom or cubicle farmville addict. I'm talking about the core gamers. Wreck-It Ralph is an homage to what has become "the classics" while still mixing in the modern age. I would call myself a core gamer, and because of the subject matter, I'm going to do this review like one. If you want a review from another perspective, go down this page a few notches and check out Krisma's take on it.
Aerith Lives. And now, so does Ralph. Wreck-It Ralph does something that I can't recall too many others doing. It uses iconic video game characters and references (a lot of them) and actually uses them well. Just from the header image alone you can see plenty of cameos from very popular games and/or franchises. Kano actually DOES do his classic heart-ripping fatality (although it is on a zombie, so I guess he's technically not killing him). It caused controversy in some circles, but I thought it was awesome they put it in nonetheless. Who says Disney doesn't like to push the envelope every now and again?
That's just one of the many, many examples of references in the movie, but you're probably tired of reading about them and you can just go google them anyway. Ok, one more that I got a kick out of was when Ralph was rummaging through a box and the Metal Gear Solid "!" appeared. Classic. Where the movie really shines though is in its implicit references. The game Ralph is from is probably some kind of mashup of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. but set in the modern age. Fix-it Felix is pretty obviously an homage to classic Mario or Jumpman in the Donkey Kong games, and Ralph himself is big, bulky and throws stuff down at Felix much like Donkey Kong. That got lengthy real fast, but the point I'm trying to get across here is that everything in this movie is an homage or reference to some other games.
The story is about Ralph leaving his own game in order to become a hero. He's sick of the day in, day out bad guy business. The opposite reality of this movie portrays all the characters in the game just acting their parts as the user plays in order to keep getting more plays to stay plugged in. All of the games in the arcade are (quite obviously) connected to electrical sockets. Inside of those power strips is "Game Central Station" where the characters go once the arcade closes shop, with some even being left behind once their game is canned.
Without getting too much into the nitty-gritty of the plot, I'll just let you know that Ralph bounces around a few places: his own game, Hero's Duty (A riff on popular war/sci-fi fps's: Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, etc.), and Sugar Rush. Sugar Rush is a tongue-in cheek reference to all the racers of old, probably most notably the different iterations of Mario Kart, maybe even Diddy Kong Racing. I really enjoyed how they were able to integrate popular gaming culture and references without needing the explicit characters and still creating their own environments. It was a lot of fun to see what kind of movie could be made by, well, gamers. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. For any movie to be this meticulous it must have been made (or at least largely creatively directed) by gamers. I refuse to believe otherwise.
Even though this movie is what you might typically expect of a Disney movie (heart-warming, bright, unrealistically positive) on a lot of levels, it carries over well to many audiences (something you might also typically expect of Disney movies). The dialogue can be clever, the video game references innumerable, and the visuals are crisp and eye-catching. There's a lot of good character development and they get you (got me at least) to the point of being emotionally involved with the characters. The climactic scene got me a little teary eyed and I was glad I went on this ride with that big, clumsy oaf in the overalls.
That's not to say the the film was without its faults. I think that they could have done a better job combining the different segments of the movie. To some extent it feels a bit episodic since Ralph travels to different games and the scenery shift is so sudden and immense. I would have liked them to explore the scenery of the games a bit more and integrate them into the story line better, but I can understand issues due to time constraints. I know that no movies get it right, but being an engineer, I have to nitpick at the way they represented the guts of a game's programming. They did a much better job of representing code than other movies, but I have to say it could still stand to be more accurate. Really, I don't have many too bad things to say about this movie and I personally enjoyed it a great deal.
Positives
Great visuals and environments
Plenty of references for gamers to get excited about
Accessible to many audiences
Fun for the kids and adults
Negatives
Feels a bit episodic
Programming doesn't exactly work that way.
9.2/10 - Go see it!
She said...
Confession time: I'm not a gamer. The only games I've really played are Bejeweled and Temple Run, but I watched this movie with Tim because he was so excited about it. And I'm glad I did because it was so fun seeing all the cameos from popular games like Street Fighter, Sonic, Pac-Man, and even Dance Dance Revolution!
All the actors were good at portraying their characters and John C. Reilly really made me feel like he was Ralph. But every time I heard Sgt. Jean and Fix-it Felix, Jr. talk, all I could think of was Jane Lynch in Glee and Jack McBrayer in 30 Rock. It kind of bugged me because instead of thinking of them as the characters they portrayed in the movie, I kept thinking of them in their most popular roles instead. Jane Lynch acted like she always does on Glee and although McBrayer embraced his character more, I just couldn't get 30 Rock out of my head. This isn't a big negative to the movie though and I'm sure most people could get past that.
Ralph's character development and Vanellope's role in the movie really surprised me. Vanellope was very self-assured and embraced her glitches in contrast to Ralph's dissatisfaction and insecurity. I appreciated the message that Disney was trying to say through their interactions with each other and it made the characters that much more relatable.
I agree with Tim about the transitions though - they weren't as smooth as they could've been and the movie jumped around a lot between the different games. However, the special effects and the backgrounds were superbly done. Everything was crisp and clean and it really made me want to jump in Sugar Rush and eat everything! The sound effects and game-like character gestures and movements made me feel like they were real games and that I was living in the same world as them.
There's not a lot of bad things to say about this movie and as a whole children and adults will have a great time watching it. All the gamers out there will appreciate the references and even if you're not a serious gamer like me, you'll still enjoy all the game cameos and special effects.
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