Movie Month: Ralph Breaks The Internet (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Night of the Living Ralphs

(I know, we’re two days after Halloween, I’m late to making horror movie puns. I’m gonna do them anyway!)

That's a striking symbol.

Ralph broke Vanellope’s heart, and in return she snapped his heart-shaped necklace off his neck and tossed it to the depths of the Internet. He finds it smashed in two beneath the rubble of ancient, defunct websites. The little girl, on her end, is walking about and crying over this treason. Her best friend! He wanted to ruin her game, so he could keep her to himself! She’s not some… property! Oh God, there he is, at the turn of the corner…

They're all acting like Ralph, with 100 less IQ!

…He looks weird, like someone removed his brain and replaced it with ham. And what’s that? Another one behind her? They’re acting like zombies only capable of using the word “friend” when they see Vanellope! She runs off from the two, no, three Ralphs, and gets to a wider view of the Internet… SWARMED BY THEM! Ralphs everywhere, attacking every building, causing massive DDoS attacks all over the Web! They’re also attacking every user in sight, thinking it’s their “friend”, and killing them when it’s not, causing those users to lose their connection.

Ralphs! Ralphs as far as the eye can see!

And when one of them notices Vanellope, they all do.

You might not notice at first, but KnowsMore's eyes are
2D-animated on top of his glasses. The animators had fun
experimenting with animation with this film.

Vanellope flees and stumbles on KnowsMore again, who takes her into his shack for protection. The red Ralphs swarm the place. One seems to get in – the real one! Mistaken for one of the red Ralphs at first, he gets pelted by books and broken chairs. I say he deserves a couple more books to the face for what he did. KnowsMore, being a very smart search engine, exposits that this is the result of an insecurity virus that copied Ralph’s worst traits – neediness, clinginess, self-destructiveness – over and over, for thousands if not millions of copies. And they’re literally breaking the Internet.

'Breaking the Internet' is supposed to remain figurative.

Ralph immediately asks for a solution, and KnowsMore has two: Put all the clones in therapy or, with Vanellope as bait, bring them all to the Antivirus district, which will make quick work of their basic programming. They quickly call Yesss to come to help them in her luxury browser and she takes them towards the Antivirus part of town, and talks with Vanellope about the lengths Ralph went to in order to help her. This, in turn, gives Vanellope an incentive to have a heartfelt conversation with Ralph, who admits he did all this out of fear of losing her. She rightfully points out how bad of a friend he has been. As for his personal issues, they’re staring him in the face, in the form of millions of zombie-like versions of himself.

"I'm starting to see the 'needy and clingy' part.
Not so sure yet about self-destructive..."

I love the tension in this climax. It serves to turn the emotional drama of the film into a genuine threat to our heroes, and forces them to actually resolve that issue. What’s more, a lot of the visuals in these scenes are horrifying, to a level I’d say beyond what one would expect from kid-friendly horror. Emotionally-stunted zombies trying to kidnap a little girl that they call their “friend”. The apocalyptic sight of the Internet swarmed with those things. The sheer number of them. I’m an adult and the implications give me the chills. But that’s far from over as, just as Yesss’ car was about to reach the Antivirus district, the mass of Ralphs behind them forms into a hand that smacks the car away and into the Pinterest building.

Ralphzilla

While Ralph and Yesss try to turn the flipped car back up, Vanellope looks outside and sees the mass of thousands of Ralphs forming into a single, gigantic entity, with empty eye sockets. Okay, say what you want about the flaws in this film, the attention to detail is fantastic, and this thing is genuinely one of the creepiest things to have ever appeared in a Disney film. Seeing this large monstrosity on the big screen was quite an experience.

Mega-Ralph. All Ralphs sold separately.

"I'm gonna wreck ME!"

Ralph faces his own issues, using the pin from Pinterest as a makeshift hammer to smash into the monster while Yesss and Vanellope flee. However, in the fight, the Ralphzilla crashes into the Pinterest building, breaking it and almost making his little friend fall to her death – a fall halted by the monster. With its FRIEEEEEEEND in hand, the Ralph Kong climbs the giant Google building and sits at the top. Our Ralph gets up there using a flying e-mail train, catches Vanellope and takes her to safety, but is then captured and crushed in the thing’s palm.

Damn, I love this climax.

Aw, they're making the monster sad.

To save Ralph, the girl tells Ralphzilla that he won. That she’ll stay with it. Ralph disagrees quite loudly, and finally has a serious talk with his many, many selves. He says that she has to be allowed to live her dreams. That she has to be let free. That it’s gonna hurt, but that as her friend, it’s the right thing for them to do. The kaiju-sized monster actually listens this time, and is torn on the issue, but soon understands and puts her down. It worked. Ralph put all of his clones in therapy, and it worked. What he didn’t count on was the mass of Ralphs lighting up and disappearing… with him now falling down from the great height of the Google building!

Picture taken seconds before a disaster.

Wearing a dress isn't anywhere near the most embarrassing
thing Ralph did those past few days.

That’s okay, Spamley is coming with his browser- oh wait, no, Ralph breaks through it. Epic fail. But who’s that? The Princesses from Oh My Disney? Why, of course they weren’t just gonna be a passing gag! Using their combined powers (they're borderline a superhero team), the princesses create something that halts Ralph’s fall, putting him in a princess dress with parachutes attached, and they land him safely on a mattress, where he is then awoken by Tiana… using Naveen in frog form to kiss him. For bonus points, the entire rescue scene is scored with a track that combines the most important song from each princess's movie.

At least he has kept his dignity. Sort of.

(Fairly) Happily Ever After

This is a goodbye, not a farewell.

Cut to a few hours later. The Internet is recovering from the Wreck-It Ralph Virus. Some places have suffered more than others, but things are getting back on track. In that time, Shank was actually able to add Vanellope’s code into Slaughter Race, so she’s really part of the game now – no disappearing if the game has to reboot. Don’t ask me how Shank did it. It’s a bit of an ass pull, to be honest. It should have taken far more than a few hours, if everything was done correctly. It really does feel like Vanellope “going Turbo”, to quote the previous film. This was allegedly meant to mirror the lesson of the previous film (“Be yourself and be happy of what you have, you don’t need more”) by offering an opposite, but equally-valuable lesson (“You can leave your past behind to chase your dreams, but be honest about it to those it may affect”) with a lesson on top about learning to let go. As a result, on the surface, it clashes pretty strongly with the moral and the set rules of the preceding movie.

Huh. I hadn't pinned Sonic as the reader type.

Ralph, making food? I have doubts.

At least they can keep in contact using the communicators from BuzzzTube. And Ralph makes sure to give Vanellope one half of the candy pendant. Ralph goes home. Some time later, the big guy narrates: The Sugar Rush arcade cabinet has been repaired with the new wheel. Somehow, Felix and Calhoun have been able to raise the fifteen bratty candy racers into graceful competitors, compared to the jerks they were before. Yeah, even Surge Protector can’t believe it. As for Ralph, without his little friend, he’s made greater efforts to socialize with the rest of the arcade, joining Zangief’s book club and the arcade’s inhabitants organizing group events in the various games. He’s kept in contact with Vanellope, who will come visit every now and then when Slaughter Race is going through updates… oh, once every couple months. And Ralph is at peace with all this.

See you soon.

Roll credits… We do get, during the credits, the trailer scene where Ralph and Vanellope go in a mobile game and overfeed a rabbit until it explodes, scaring the little girl playing it.

Oh, there’s also a bonus at the end where Ralph rickrolls the audience. What? That’s the only major meme that Ralph hadn't done yet!

"Never gonna wreck you up..."
Boom! Just like that, 793 million views!

Final Thoughts

Flossing looks dumb anyway. Ralph, do a riverdance!

Ralph Breaks the Internet is… divisive, to say the least. That was bound to happen to any film that prominently features the Internet, because the viewers tend to be far more knowledgeable about its inner workings than the film’s makers are. Everything goes by fast on the Internet; things are instantaneous, and fame is fleeting. Websites come and go. And movies take a lot of time to make. As a result, a movie about the Internet is going to be dated anywhere from weeks to years after its release. In a couple years, perhaps some real websites featured in this film will no longer exist. Memes tend to be momentary as well, so featuring them in any capacity will date a film really fast. I only remember the floss because it’s the go-to memetic dance people know from a video game, and even the Sonic movie used it!

The first film set that a game cannot function, and will be
unplugged, if a vital part of it is missing. In the first film,
it's a character. In the second, it's a physical piece.

A good sequel builds upon the foundation of the film(s) it follows, and expands on the ideas and concepts to explore new and interesting scenarios. RBTI builds upon the concept of a living arcade to create a living Internet, with most elements of the Internet getting its equivalent. Programs, algorithms and pop-up ads are its normal denizens, while users go around from site to site in their browsers. Fair enough. The movie also builds on the rules of the previous movie, namely “If you die outside your game, you die for real” and “Game-jumping, not a good idea”. Yeah, that last one gets thrown out the window…

Vanellope game-jumping into Slaughter Race is meant to be a much happier lesson, since she gets to follow her dreams instead of staying with what she knows, but it clashes so strongly with the rules and morals of the previous film that it annoyed a lot of viewers. I was one of them. I think it still annoys me a little; I do understand the intention, but the execution isn’t great.

Is either Felix or Sgt. Tamora Calhoun your favorite
character? Too bad for you!

The lack of Felix and Calhoun for 80% of the film; Ralph becoming this extremely insecure guy for the sake of the plot; the omnipresence of product placement, even if it’s for the sake of making the film’s Internet feel close to reality; Shank’s bogus excuse for killing off players for the sake of challenge, when she doesn’t even give them a chance to actually fight; the ridiculous monetization system behind BuzzzTube, through which Ralph somehow still manages to collect the money to pay for the Sugar Rush steering wheel; the very weird time frame in which most of the film takes place; the shameless Disney self-promotion; the inevitable fallout between friends that leads to the protagonist doing something stupid, severing the friendship, and paving the way for the climax. These are some of my issues with the film. Some annoy me more than others. I see all of those as valid critiques of the film, and even then I’m sure there are things I didn’t notice.

All that detail.

But for all the criticism I have for the film, there’s still a lot of good I can say. The metaphor of the living Internet, while a little clumsy at times, is an interesting idea that manages to (mostly) make sense. I can’t fault them, it was a lot of moving pieces, and some were not going to fit entirely right. Then there's all those times Ralph and Vanellope encounter the “real world” in some way, which leads to funny moments. The new characters made for the film are enjoyable; KnowsMore, Spamley, Shank (even if I still disagree with her point of view that players who have been gaming non-stop for 31 hours didn’t put enough effort in the game!), and even Double Dan.

Are those Mario question blocks in the background?

Then there’s the sheer amount of detail, with some scenes featuring thousands of unique users, and some of the finer details, right down to character mannerisms and the mechanical and erratic way players move in Slaughter Race, much like actual characters from a multiplayer online game. In spite of it being self-promotion, Vanellope’s time at Oh My Disney leads to a lot of great scenes. “Casual Princesses” is one of my favorite things to come out of this film. I appreciate the mention of “don’t read the comments”, even if the movie doesn’t do much with that in the end. Vanellope’s musical number is a hilarious self-parody of the usual Disney tropes. And, to top it off, the final threat with the army of Ralph clones and their combined form…

In short: If you're willing to dig into the details, you get the
impression that the animators at Disney tried to have fun
doing this one. A lot of fun. Perhaps at the detriment of
quality in places, but the whole film has a big sense of fun.

I’ve listed a lot more things I like about this movie than things I dislike. I think I like it just fine, because I see enough positives in it to find it enjoyable, and its flaws, while they can be annoying, don’t take me out of the experience too much. I would say it’s up to each to make up their mind on it. And if you don’t like it because the film’s issues are too big for you, I definitely get it.

This concludes Movie Month. See you, hopefully soon, for new game reviews.