Movie Month: Ralph Breaks the Internet (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 

Finally, a review this month for a movie that is about video games, without being an adaptation of an existing series!

That titlecard was fun to make back in 2015.

I reviewed the original Wreck-It Ralph in 2015. I never thought, back in 2012, that Disney would make one of the better video game movies out there. I remember praising it quite a bit during my three-part review. It had the right amount of comedy, drama, intrigue. The characters played off of each other perfectly. The villain was great, everything paid off. I personally think it’s on its way to become a classic. If you haven’t seen it, look it up on Disney+, you won’t regret it.

There are, indeed, very few sequels on this list. That's
because the bad (read: DTV) ones are swept under the rug,
like a shameful reminder of days gone.

Disney dabbled in sequels before, However, most sequels to their famous animated films weren’t released in theaters, and went directly to home media, be it video or DVD. Usually, they were of pretty poor quality, with animation far weaker than the movie they followed up on. There were some direct-to-video (DTV) sequels that turned out better than expected, but the vast majority of them was… well, my overly-positive self hesitates to call them garbage, but if you’ve ever watched The Return of Jafar after seeing Aladdin, then you know what disappointment is. The time of direct-to-video sequels is long gone for Disney; nowadays, they prefer to put together a live-action version of one of their classics, even if those inevitably turn out weaker than the animated originals!

Ralph Breaks the Internet was the first recent Disney property to get a sequel, and a full-budget one at that. This film is considered a full part of the Disney canon, unlike the cheaper DTV films, and is only the fifth sequel to have that honor. I think it was meant as a sort of testing ground, a way to judge on the interest for sequels, seeing as other recent properties had sequels in the works (Frozen II came out last year, and there’s allegedly a sequel to Zootopia in production).

I can’t prevent myself from comparing this movie to Wreck-It Ralph, but whenever I will, it’s usually to bring a point forward. With this one, I also want to experiment with the way I write these long reviews. I thought this was the perfect film to do that. I will describe the synopsis, and use that to bring other points forward. To do this, I’ll split my review into smaller portions. Let’s see if this works, shall we?

“Never Gonna Give You Up” 

Two best friends spending some time together outside
of work hours. Wished we could do that at the moment
in real life, but... goddamned virus.

The movie takes place six years after Wreck-It Ralph. Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) have become great friends, seeing each other after work, playing around the arcade. They even get stuck once in the TRON game due to a virus (which serves as very clever double foreshadowing). Ralph is perfectly content with this little life, but Vanellope is expressing some doubts. In true Disney princess fashion, she wants more out of life; it’s not so much that she’s bored with her game, but she’s seen all of it in the six years she spent as a playable character in the roster of Sugar Rush racers.

Maybe not a good idea to go in a game that has a virus...

Special mention to Calhoun who thinks the new game in
the arcade is gonna be a blood pressure machine.
..I plead guilty, I loved those things as a kid.

That morning, Litwak arrives with a new machine for the arcade; not a game, no. A Wi-fi router, used to gain access to the Internet, as Sonic helpfully explains to the other arcade icons. However. Surge Protector (who, credit due to the writers, shows more personality in this film, in spite of having little screen time) blocks the entrance with yellow tape and tells the characters to stay away. The arcade is about to open, so the characters go back to their games – well, except Ralph, who has the devious idea of sneaking into Sugar Rush to build a custom track for his friend.

I appreciate that in both films, Sonic is the exposition guy
explaining concepts to the audience and characters. Now,
if he could explain to SEGA how to make a Sonic game...

"Oh, fff....udgecakes."

He smashes the ground and creates a long, tortuous track. Vanellope passes by it as she’s controlled by a player, and wrestles out of that player's control to race on the new track. Thus begins a struggle, with the player, that poor girl, trying to control Vanellope again, and the candy brat fighting to stay on the track. Sadly, it ends with the player turning too hard and snapping the Sugar Rush wheel off the cabinet. The racers (and Ralph) look on as Litwak tries to reinstall the wheel… only to break it in half. No worries, though – one of the girls at the arcade has looked up the item on ebay and found a spare for 200$... which Litwak can’t afford.

They're turning Game Central Station into Candyland!

The inhabitants of Sugar Rush are evacuated to Grand Central Station. There’s a slight window of time as the game won’t be moved out until Friday. At the end of that day of work, the candy inhabitants are moved to the surrounding games. Well, most of them. The tough part is housing the racers, those fifteen brats. Worry not! Fix-It Felix and Tamora Calhoun, happily married for six years now, have decided to adopt them. Predictably, chaos ensues.

Who wants to adopt a bratty, candy-themed jerk?
By the way, we're missing a few. There's 15 of them.

"And how is it being a dad of 15?"
"Well there's 5 I never see, so it could have been worse."

Ralph was waiting for Vanellope at Tapper’s, but instead Felix comes by for a chat. Felix is in a panic due to the new additions to his family, and Ralph is desperately seeking a way to help his candy-themed friend. They eventually remember the ebay thing from earlier (after a long scene of them yelling “eee-boy”). Getting a new steering wheel for Sugar Rush might be the only way to help both of them! Ralph immediately goes to get Vanellope, who had been moping in her corner, and tells her that they’re going to the Internet!

Too bad there are no arcade games that teach parenthood.

By the way, I hope you liked seeing Felix and Calhoun again. They won’t be in this film until the end. Oh, Ralph is never gonna give up for Vanellope – however, this film gave up on a secondary subplot. Admittedly, cutting back to Felix and Calhoun would have been very awkward. It wouldn’t have worked, is what I think… but I would have liked to see them more. Can I have some hope for a short film? I doubt there’ll be a Ralph 3…

Oh, and isn’t the Fix-It Felix Jr. arcade cabinet at risk of being unplugged while Ralph is gone? What does Felix do to prevent that? It's never addressed.

My Insecure Buddy and I 

At least, Ralph is always there to help her.

I think I’m going to address this right away, since it’s a huge plot point in this film. Was Ralph ever this insecure? He’s such a far cry from what we had seen in the first movie! Here, he’s desperate to keep his friendship with Vanellope, he’s afraid of arguing with her. It’s like all of his insecurities popped up in that six-year span!

Sometimes they'll just talk about the stuff they see around
them. Like character designs. And how Zangief keeps
those patches of hair on his body by choice.

To be fair, a lot changed in his life. Following the previous adventure, he’s become respected in his own game, everyone knows that he’s a nice guy (if rough around the edges), and he has actual friends now. He spent thirty years despised, hated, and lonely – if I was in that position and all these positive changes happened to me, I’d try to keep them in my life. This friendship means everythingto him, he’s afraid of losing it all. However, he’s going at it the absolute worst way.

Vanellope isn’t safe from insecurities, either; she’s a lot better at hiding it, though. Her worries cause her to glitch, which causes further worry. She’s very self-conscious about it. She does seem to deal with them a lot better than her 9 foot tall friend with the really big hands.

Vanellope is small enough to fit on Ralph's shoulder.
In case you wanted a reminder of the difference in
height between the two.

By the way, if there’s one thing I will always praise the Wreck-It Ralph films for, it’s for the attention to detail, especially in character design; fair, big whoop, Disney always does that right, but it’s particularly nice when it serves the plot. One of the key rules of the video game world is “If you die outside of your game, you can’t come back”. Ralph is the villain of his game, and gets thrown down the side of a building several times per day; he’s seen taking a whole lot of damage in both stories and barely feeling the pain. He’s the one character most likely to survive outside of his game due to how durable and resistant he is, and thus perfect as the protagonist. The strength helps, too.

In contrast, Vanellope is short and looks frail. She can do miracles behind a steering wheel, but she’s defenseless outside of Sugar Rush. In this adventure in particular, with the two of them venturing literally outside of the arcade and into the World Wide Web, can we really blame Ralph when he fears for her safety? He’s right to be protective, though it’s true that he’s overdoing it.

Metaphorical Internet

Well, this is about as close to talking directly to Mr. Litwak
than those two are ever going to get... outside of fanfiction.

The two sneak through the entrance of the Wi-Fi. The interior of the machine is a bit disappointing for them at first, until Litwak logs into the machine. This creates a square-headed avatar of Litwak, arbiter’s shirt and glasses included. The avatar goes into a capsule and is sent off into the Internet, and the two video game characters follow – although Ralph can barely fit in his own capsule. They reach the Internet; it’s like a giant city, with every major website being its own building! Google’s over there, the biggest building on the Internet; ebay is over there; so is YouTube; Twitter is a tree full of blue birds; Facebook, Kickstarter, Amazon, Pinterest… And yes, those real-life brands and websites coexist alongside the fictional ones created for the sake of the plot.

This is in 2018? I’m sure if they looked, they would have seen a tiny little shack somewhere under the big Blogger banner called “Planned All Along”, with a square-head avatar of me telling them his opinion on games and movies.

The first movie imagined how Litwak’s arcade cabinets and the surge protector that connects them form a world that its characters coexisted in, and that they were able to visit as they pleased (with some rules). It’s metaphorical, but it works.

From the first movie. The place feels... alive!

A user, just before she gets crushed by a sign thrown
by Ralph. They're just a representation of someone's
connection, they can suffer injuries no problem!

On the Internet, things got kicked up a notch; there’s the city representing the websites, yes, but it goes deeper than that. An avatar doesn’t just represent its user, it also represents its user’s connection to Internet. If the avatar is destroyed in any way, they lose their connection to Internet. Their browser is represented by a little car that appears around them and takes them to their next destination. (That’s fine and all, but what if someone is like me and has a dozen tabs open half the time?) As for how they interact with the world: Sometimes, the avatars will do the actions done by their user (like sending a little heart in the direction of a video they like if the user clicked Like). As for when they speak: They either say what the user says or types, the movie is a bit elastic on that last one for the sake of comedy.

Bless them, the writers behind this movie tried to make something fun, and it does make for an interesting setting to explore, but once you explore the concept deeper, a lot of elements fall apart (I'll talk about that later).

"Only one result? The last time it happened, I... prefer
not to remember it."

The arcade characters aren’t too sure where to start, so they head to a search bar. No, not Google. The one they find is a modest place called KnowsMore, helmed by a little guy in a mortarboard cap and big glasses, named… uh… KnowsMore. The guy is one of many characters in the film who doesn’t get enough screentime, he’s a lot of fun. (Also voiced by Alan Tudyk, who voiced King Candy / Turbo, by the way). Thankfully for them, Vanellope writes in the exact combination of words leading to a single result, the Sugar Rush steering wheel on sale on ebay. They’re immediately redirected to the site in a little car, too small for Ralph.

I am actually confused that YouTube exists in that world,
considering later events in the story.

There's absolutely nothing cinematic about
Match-3 games. (Scene from The Emoji Movie.)

I bring up the brands and famous websites for a reason; one of the early critiques of this movie was that it would be too similar to the despised animated Emoji Movie from Sony, which shilled several phone apps in very unsubtle ways. The characters in the Emoji Movie stop by Dropbox, Spotify, Shazam, Just Dance and Candy Crush. However, the plot forces the characters through these apps, for the flimsiest reason (read: Going through it is shorter than passing around it, so we’re gonna indulge in some of the stuff the app does, for the sake of product placement).

ebay is the only real-life website with
plot relevance. Thankfully.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is more acceptable with this; yes, websites are all over the place, but outside of ebay, there aren’t a lot of real-life websites that are literally part of the plot. Pinterest and Google, a tiny bit maybe. However, outside of those, all the other websites get are cameos and little jokes, mostly to make this world feel full and close to the real life Internet (even though it isn’t, as I’ll discuss later), and “lived-in”. The websites and games that Ralph and Vanellope spend the most time in were invented for the movie. Though, yes, I can admit that it can be annoying to see all these websites, of which most are also recognizable brands, and feeling assaulted with product placement.

Anyway, the candy brat and the big guy arrive at ebay, walk through the spam pop-ups (although Ralph seems very interested in some of them), and enter the website in search for the steering wheel…

…in Part 2.