Planned All Along: Movie Month: Ratchet & Clank (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1. Read it to know what's going on here.

"Alarms flashing red... never a good sign."

The Galactic Rangers are launching an attack on Chairman Drek’s forces, but realize that their weapons aren’t working. Qwark says he’s going in before them to try and reason with Drek; he’s actually joining his new employer and enjoying some guilt-free betrayal. Well, it’s not guilt-free, he’s just too goddamned stupid to realize how much damage his actions are causing.

I hate this guy.

Seriously, if there was a template on TierListMaker for the characters in this film, I’d rank Qwark at F minus minus… minus.

The Rangers retreat… well, all but Ratchet, who instead heads directly towards the Deplanetizer, launches himself at it, and infiltrates the ship. The Rangers’ main vessel, in return, gets the visit of Victor, the Sylvester Stallone machine, who found out that the defective robot, now known as Clank, is with them.

"It's just a wannabe Death Star!
It can't be THAT complicated!"

If you needed reasons to despise Qwark...

What makes this film a bit difficult to describe in my usual fashion is that scenes tend to alternate between plot threads. On Ratchet’s side: He infiltrates the enemy ship, but is captured by Drek before he could prevent the Deplanetizer from firing. As he’s escorted to an escape pod (the lombax is made to stay alive so as to see the extent of his failure, per Drek’s request), Ratchet sees Qwark being all buddy-buddy with the crew of the villainous ship. Well! Didn’t take long to find the mole! Ratchet watches Planet Novalis get shredded into pieces as his pod is flung out. Qwark gets to see the destruction of Novalis as well… and then finds out that one of his worst enemies, Doctor Nefarious, is also working for Drek.

I learned in my research that robots in the R&C universe
are waterproof; the only reason water works against Victor
is that he was heavily damaged by battles over time,
and his systems are no longer protected.

Meanwhile, Elaris and Clank are fighting off Victor, who snuck aboard the Rangers’ vessel. The war machine knocks Elaris against a water conduct, which breaks it, and Clank notes that the tough robot is scared of water. Clank gets his hands on a gun that creates rainstorms. He fires it over Victor’s head, causing rain to fall on the large baddie and… er… rusting him to death. Can’t believe that’s really the way to describe it.

"So what do we do now?" "Same as usual - let's be heroes."

Following his failure, Ratchet, who was brought back to Veldin, is tearing down his posters of Captain Qwark. Broken pedestals – I know the pain, buddy, I’ve been there. However, some good words from Grimroth help bring his spirits up again. Which is good, as the Rangers have been contacting him constantly to return and help them. Clank even passes by to convince him. It’s a good thing that it works, too, as the rest of the Rangers had come along. As it turns out, the enemies are planning to wipe out a last planet, though they’ve yet to decode the plans and figure out which one. Elaris brings up the possibility of moving the Deplanetizer away from that last planet, and Ratchet may have just the right item for that… And so the team gets to work on upgrading their spaceships, all under the supervision of Zed, who had been left behind by Drek, and has thus joined the Rangers.

It's like trying to fit 5 different puzzles together.

On the villains’ ship, the Chairman has a quick funeral for Victor, who got rusted beyond repair. Gee, the character voiced by the biggest name in the cast didn’t even make it 2/3rds of the way through the film! I guess Stallone was too expensive to keep around. This wasn’t all for naught, however; all the pieces have been gathered, and so a new planet comes together… and it’s a mess, the parts fitting poorly together with magma flowing between the cracks. Drek sees this as an absolute win!

An evil bastard, with an eviler bastard.

Although he’s confronted by Qwark, who asks him about Doctor Nefarious’ presence on the ship. I don’t know if it’s Qwark being smart for once, or the actual villains being really bad at hiding their true intentions. Showing up, the nasty doctor makes sure to rub salt in the wound, reminding the Captain that he was talked into this to attain even more fame. The two shoo Qwark away. After the big dummy is gone, Nefarious turns on his employer, using a weapon (which he seemingly pulled out of nowhere) to turn Drek into… a sheep. Okay, some weapons in this film were silly before, but this is ridiculous. The evil doctor is also responsible for putting one more target on the Deplanetizer’s list. But hey, he’s nice enough to send the chairman-turned-sheep into a pod and onto the planet that was just created.

Wait, is everything actually going according to plan?
Something's about to go wrong...

The final target is Umbris, a planet with an unstable core which, were it to be shattered, would explode and destroy its entire solar system. The Galactic Rangers have little time to act. Due to how the film presents its action, we see the heroes accomplishing Elaris’ plan while she describes it; Ratchet sneaks onto the Deplanetizer while using a holographic disguise of Qwark. When inside, the lombax and his robotic friend will deactivate the ship’s core by stealing its stabilizer. Then, Clank disables the weapons and other systems.

The home of 40 million people, versus his
own fame. We all know what this idiot chose.

Nefarious was about to flee in a pod when the heroes put their plan into motion; but he can’t let those heroes meddle around, and thus he elects to deal with them himself. Qwark also sees that Ratchet had snuck aboard, and goes to fight the cadet Ranger. Ratchet says that he no longer see Qwark as a hero as his betrayal led to millions of lives ruined; and the captain, in return, snaps back that the lombax took his fame away from him, with the ex-hero bitching and moaning like a baby who had its lollipop stolen. Have I mentioned that I hate Qwark? I do. A lot.

"This is silly, even by our standards."

He's not nearly smart enough to say it like that, but I can
imagine Qwark going "I... I think I like fame as a hero
more than I'd like fame as a villain."

A fight ensues, and it’s impressive. I think I should say that the animation in this film is actually very good; the models, the details, the movements, the scenes, the rhythm. It’s even got the comedic timing down. For its 20M$ budget, it never ceases to wow me. The battle between Ratchet and Qwark is a nice display of the animation’s quality. Several weapons used here and throughout the film were lifted from the series, another great element to mention. Alas, this fight is short, as Qwark overpowers the lombax with a gun that creates a tornado. Thankfully, our hero manages to reach out to Qwark (with the help of a collectible trading card representing the space savior in better days), and the captain realizes the full extent of his screw-up, abandoning the fight.

Rule #478 if storytelling: The villain must always come
extremely close to success.

Nefarious arrives on the scene and calls out Qwark on how badly the captain and his Rangers mistreated the scientist back when he worked for them. The short ensuing fight is interrupted by the Rangers, who have equipped their ships with Mag-Boosters, the powerful magnets designed by Ratchet, in order to redirect the Deplanetizer’s gun away from Umbris. It seems to affect the gravity inside the ship as well, tipping the platform the characters stood on. In spite of Qwark’s efforts, Nefarious reaches for the button and smashes it, the ship readies to fire… and misses Umbris.

Lucky Drek, he got to witness his personalized apocalypse.

Cut to the newly-created planet, which Chairman Drek (still in sheep form) has crash-landed on. He comes back to normal… just as the beam hits his planet, destroying it and killing him. Good riddance, he reminded me too much of Crazy Frog. It was unsettling. As for Nefarious, he seems to get the upper hand, but he’s smashed aside by Ratchet and tossed all the way down and into the Deplanetizer’s power core, seemingly atomized as a result.

Holy crap, the villains got some very brutal
comeuppances in this film.

However, the large ship has entered the Umbris atmosphere and will crash down soon. Ratchet, Clank and Qwark hurry to a teleportation station. What happens is a lot more awesome than what I’m describing, but the three manage to teleport back to the Rangers’ vessel in the nick of time.

Best buddies across space, time...
...and soon, across dimensions too!

Following this victory, the Rangers are welcomed back at Veldin like the heroes they are. Well, except for Qwark, who decided to cash in on the public relations tricks he was taught; he published a book and will go on an apology tour. I sincerely hope he gets tomatoes thrown at him. Ratchet has gone back to working for Grimroth, repairing ships for customers. But as he tells Clank, who comes by for a friendly visit, he’s still a Ranger, and will gladly return to help them as soon as a new threat arises.

You'd like to, huh?
Sorry, no sequel for you.

Speaking of… past the voice actor credits, we have a scene revealing that, against all odds, Nefarious has survived both his atomization and the crash on Umbris, and has been rebuilt by robots, very much unwillingly, into a robot. Not a surprise for fans of the series, but this sequel hook will remain unused as there won’t be a Ratchet & Clank 2. Gotta have goddamned sequel hooks in video game movies… (Oh, there’s also a post-credits fourth wall break, but nobody cares.)

And so ends the story. I’m a bit torn on this one; for starters, let me admit that I actually enjoy it. As mentioned earlier, I am very impressed by the quality of the animation done by the Rainmaker Entertainment studio from Vancouver. It’s a well-made film; the plot hits the dramatic beats, but provides plenty of comedic moments that made me laugh the first time, and still give me chuckles now and then. The characters created for the film were also quite enjoyable. There's a lot going on, but the film is edited in such a way that the plot threads are never left hanging for too long. It’s a pretty enjoyable ride overall.

Stallone is, strangely, both too much and not nearly
enough in the film.

The film has a great cast of voice actors, with fairly famous names for several of the characters (again – they got friggin, Sylvester Stallone to voice a robot who’s only in 2/3rds of the film!), but keeps the game’s voice actors for the most important characters (James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye and Jim Ward as Ratchet, Clank and Captain Quark, respectively). Taylor and Kaye even get “with” credits above the others, along with Stallone!

The film has its fair share of Easter Eggs and references to not only the game it’s based on, but also the entire R&C franchise, mentioning characters, items and places from other games in the series, and throwing in a handful of references to other series, such as the very quick appearance of Daxter and Sly Cooper in Clank’s database).

That said… the film’s greatest weakness is its story. There’s very little here that we haven’t seen before. The gadgeteer genius kid growing up on a desert planet, joining a group of galaxy saviors, with a betrayal somewhere in there? And a ship that can destroy planets? As if to hammer the point home, the film’s transitions between scenes are wipes. Like in Star Wars. Most elements of the plot are things that have been done before. Most scenes will make you think “Wait, didn’t I see something like that in [insert film here]?”. The jokes, as well – the film plays on self-awareness and lampshade hanging, but goes for gags that are really easy to make in that department, though thankfully it mostly moves away from those as the story progresses.

And if you were hoping to see something fresh and new in the R&C universe, you’ll be disappointed; this movie’s story is directly lifted from the game released a few weeks prior, which itself is a reboot of the first game. The film does clear up a handful of plot threads that the game wouldn’t cover, such as Nefarious being an ex-Galactic Ranger, as Imsomniac Studios could only use a small number of movie scenes in the game. In short: Play the game if you want the longer, interactive experience; watch the film if you want the full story.

That said, I wouldn’t call the film bad. It may feel average at best. I would rank it just a little above average – enjoyable enough on its own, but not groundbreaking. It could have done decently in theaters, were it not for a little movie nobody’s heard of, released a month prior, called Zootopia, which was still going strong and making bank all over the planet. “And if we’re taking the kids to an animated film we’ll go see the Disney one, even if it’s been out for a while.” The result? For its modest 20M$ budget (which is pretty low for an animated film), the film only made back 14.4M$. What didn’t help is that the franchise isn’t famous everywhere, so it was already at a disadvantage in some countries. Alas, the box-office bomb stats of this movie means that further projects based on marketable PlayStation franchises were dropped (such as the Sly Cooper movie – sorry, fans).

But, to end on a happy note, the Ratchet & Clank franchise has survived, and will be getting a new game soon. The reveal of the new (female?) lombax character broke the Internet. I won’t be able to play it, I don’t have the budget for a PS5. But I’d love to see the direction this new game takes the franchise in.