Review: Wreck-It Ralph

SUMMARY: Wreck-It Ralph is the antagonist in Fix-It Felix Jr., an arcade game that serves as the launching-point for this wonderfully innovative animated film. Ralph longs to be as Good as his opponent, and even joins a Bad-Guy Support Group to try to work through his feelings of inadequacy--their mantra incorporates repeated use of the words Good and Bad, stretching the meanings to fit this new perspective of the-bad-guy-as-normal. Some of the peons in Ralph's game challenge him to win a Hero's Medal--then and only then will they treat him like a Hero (like Felix), but they know it will never happen. Ralph surprises them by going off-track and disappearing into another game, begging the question of whether his stubbornness will cost all the residents their world?

PRE-VIEWING: I am ridiculously excited for this movie. I love films that play with perspective like this, forcing a character who is typically not thought of as protagonist material into the spotlight. I love that Ralph exists in a universe not entirely composed of his own game, but where his game is like a tree branch or a country within a greater, more expansive universe. I'm interested to see how it will end, to see whether Ralph will return, empowered, to his own game or if he will make his own way in the world. It will be interesting to see what kind of message is shown. [written prior to viewing]

POST-VIEWING: Wreck-It Ralph is an animated movie with the mind of a video game. There are so many aspects to this fun film that are clearly delivered as Cupid's arrow to the heart of an old-school gamer: for example, the characters move like they would in their own games, in their own animations, even though the tech for this movie far surpasses that of Super Mario Bros. Early on, the rules of this universe are established, most of them running contrary to what Ralph, as a character, is capable of doing on his own--he steals cherries from Pac-Man and tries desperately to hide them from Surge Protector, the game security patrolman who guards the checkpoints between games and Game Central Station.

The one thing I was struck most by was the innovation of having an arcade be like a world in itself, with the power strip as Grand Central Station, and characters able to move back and forth through the cords between their game and a centralized location--when the arcade is closed, of course. This cerebral imagining of what life is like inside a video game is reminiscent of Tron, a 1982 film about a coder who gets sucked inside a computer, and The Great Good Thing, a 2002 novel about a book character who breaks all the rules and looks up at the Reader instead of playing her part.
This film is full of references, both to other video games and pop culture itself: at one point, Ralph angrily asks another character "what are you hiding in this candy-coated heart of darkness?!" The film is the definition of intertextuality, bringing all these disparate elements together, but it is not done in a way that detracts from the simplicity and soul of the movie.

At its barest, Wreck-It Ralph is truly a coming of age tale, even though the character is nearly 30 years old by his own admission. Ralph moves from his game to two others, chasing after something he thinks he wants, only to realize that he can be ok with himself as he was. The element that really clinched this arc, however, is Fix-It Felix, who follows Ralph in order to stop his game from being Unplugged forever. Felix too comes to an understanding, but it is one that Ralph has lived with his entire existence.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012). Dir. Rich Moore. Disney Animation Studios. John C Reilly, Jack McBrayer, Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, Mindy Kaling.