I saw a special Memorial day showing of Wall-E at a local AMC, and along with it was a trailer for Disney's upcoming Wreck-It Ralph, a CG animated feature that revolves around the world of video games. It's a movie I've been following for a while, what with my love of animated films and video games, but the trailer, while effective in selling the movie, both sparks interest and raises concerns about the film. Here are my three main reasons why Wreck-It Ralph's trailer makes the film both a must-see on my calendar and why I might be cautious going into it.
3 reasons to be excited about Wreck-It Ralph
The concept: Animated films have a very successful history in creating imaginative worlds. We've seen the lives of toys, the societies of closet monsters, and the everyday life of superheroes. The idea of an animated film set in the world of video games seems like a winning idea. It opens up a lot of possibilities in storytelling and could create a unique sense of humor if done properly.
Disney's been picking up: After the Disney renaissance, the house of mouse fell in a bit of a slump with its animated output (Lilo and Stitch aside). But since 2008's Bolt, business has been picking up for Disney, with a streak that's continued with The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, and Winnie the Pooh. Sure, they may not be Beauty and the Beast, but to say they're a step up from the likes of Chicken Little is an understatement. If this trend continues, Wreck-It Ralph should be more than worth a look.
Bowser's in it!: And he's brought friends with him. Along with the King Koopa, other licensed video game characters will appear in the film, among them are Dr. Robotnik, M. Bison, Clyde, Dr. Wily, Kano, and a Resident Evil zombie. Obviously Disney is going for a "Roger Rabbit with video games" thing, which is a potentially brilliant idea. Wreck-It Ralph already looks to do more justice for these characters than their own cinematic adaptations did.
3 reasons to be concerned about Wreck-It Ralph
The story: When I first heard about Wreck-It Ralph, it was called "Reboot Ralph," and the synopsis read that it was about a "retro video game character finding his place in a modern gaming world." It sounded like a melancholic, Pixar-esque story. As it turns out, Wreck-It Ralph is about a video game villain whose sick of his antagonist status and wants to be a video game hero. It's not that it's necessarily a bad plot, but doesn't this sound like Disney just copied and pasted the plot to Megamind and threw it in a video game setting? Here's hoping it's more than that.
It's Disney, not Pixar: Alright, so this might sound contradictory to my claims of Disney's recent hot streak. But that streak is still relatively young, and isn't quite enough to wipe the likes of Chicken Little out of our memory. Disney had a bumpy decade at the start of the new millennium, and they haven't got that completely behind them just yet. And although the CG in Wreck-It Ralph looks impressive, Disney's foray in CG animation hasn't been as consistent as Pixar's, so Ralph will have to pull out a lot of stops to be more than just another CG comedy.
Zangief isn't a bad guy…: As excited as I am to see so many classic video game characters on the big screen (and as their actual selves, Disney actually got permission to use characters instead of approximating them), there's one thing about their usage in the trailer that irks me. In the trailer, Ralph is at a video game villain group therapy session, and among the video game villains present is Street Fighter's Zangief. In fact, Zangief has a speaking line in the trailer, saying "just because I'm bad guy, doesn't mean I'm bad guy!" But if you know your Street Fighter, you'll know that Zangief is not a bad guy at all, and is actually depicted as a ridiculously-heroic figure. So if Disney couldn't take the two minutes of research it would have taken to learn that little factoid, one has to wonder just how much about these characters the filmmakers actually know.
Come to think of it, why's Bowser in the group therapy session? If the video game characters are depicted as actors, you'd think Bowser would love his job considering how much work he gets. I suppose this rant is just my love of video games forcing me to nitpick, but I just hope I won't have to be pointing out the character inconsistencies throughout the whole movie…
