Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph is everyman in its message and predictable in its beats. Nostalgia is prevalent and familiarity thinly disguised. It’s scary when necessary, but also capable of eliciting tears when emotional points count most.
Insert Luxo the Lamp into the opening credits and Wreck-It Ralph fits right into the Pixar mold of telling a relatable story through unconventional characters and worlds, which is ironic – or not – considering it’s a Disney Animation production.
Wreck-It Ralph lives within a video game with a huge chip on his shoulder. Like many of us, his job as the game’s villain doesn’t reap the same rewards as his coworkers enjoy. After several decades of this mundane routine and shunned existence, he’s about fed up and ready to pull a pit-stop on his own personal rat race one evening after the arcade’s lights go down for the night and all the cabinet games’ characters come out to play.
The “world within a world” concept is the most blatant Pixar comparison that can be made as the Toy Story setup is virtually identical. However, Toy Story is the jewel in Pixar’s crown so this similarity bodes well for the rest of Wreck-It Ralph as it speeds down a similar track.
Gamers will recognize that Ralph’s brutish physique along with his climbing and wrecking capabilities are modeled off of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, much like Ralph’s nemesis, the hero Fix-It Felix, is a take on Nintendo’s Mario the plumber. This is the first of three clever homages to large gaming franchises, the next of which occurs when Ralph travels to another game where he’s completely out of his element while searching for the maguffin that will hopefully earn him his due respect.
In Hero’s Duty, old 8-bit Ralph gets suited up in high definition space marine attire and tasked with taking out swarms of killer bugs. The homage here is to Call of Duty and Gears of War, and the violence indicative of those games. There are no four-letter words, but young kids will definitely get spooked when the bugs attack and the soldiers start blasting them into gooey bits.
Ralph’s final stop is in Sugar Rush, a blend between Mario Kart and Candyland. It is here that Ralph meets a young girl known by others as the “glitch” and discovers an outcast not unlike himself. Both are destined for greater things, of course, but not before some road bumps along the way and a genuinely touching sendoff.
There are plenty of licensed video game character cameos in Wreck-It Ralph ranging from Bowser to Street Fighter to Q-Bert. The beauty of Blu-ray is you can hit pause when the story visits Game Central Station and try to identify the scores of characters being shuttled off to their respective games.
Wreck-It Ralph doesn’t blaze any new filmmaking trails but what it does, which follows closely in the footsteps of Pixar’s finest narratives that rely heavily on metaphor, is executed efficiently and effectively.
I only wish John C. Reilly as Ralph didn’t sound so much like Ray Romano complaining about his life and career. Unless that was deliberate; in which case, job well done.
As a side note, Wreck-It Ralph is now at least the third motion picture involving video game arcade machines that resonated with audiences, the first two being Tron/Tron Legacy and The Last Starfighter.
High-Def Presentation
Wreck-It Ralph is a virtual color wheel’s worth of eye-popping visuals whether coming from the old 8-bit Fix-It Felix 2D game or the modern Hero’s Duty 3D first-person shooter. The 2.39:1 1080p transfer looks superb, rife with incredibly fine detail and without flaws whether viewed in 2D or 3D. And that’s the original aspect ratio in 3D with no cropping, for the record.
If presented with a choice, I’d have to pick the 3D presentation over the 2D presentation as there is some incredible layering at work in the film. Sure, there are some “in your face” protruding objects that come at the screen, but they are minimal and fit the overall creative direction. Virtually the entire Hero’s Duty sequence from the attacking bugs to looking down the rifle of the soldier’s guns are examples of 3D at its cleanest and finest.
Disney has given Wreck-It Ralph a 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix and it is about as impressive as possibly can be. From the candy-littered raceway of Sugar Rush to the flat building of Fix-It Felix to the alien world in Hero’s Duty, there are so many varying types and intensities of sounds and music that all sound equally relevant and important. There’s never a moment that cries out “this should sound better,” but there are plenty that push the envelope. Much like in the visuals department, Hero’s Duty puts forth the best aural assault that Wreck-It Ralph has to offer.
Beyond the Feature
Wreck-It Ralph on Blu-ray 3D is labeled an “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” which also includes the film on Blu-ray, DVD and digital copy. The outer sleeve has a cool lenticular 3D effect of Ralph and several other characters.
The highlight bonus feature is the Paperman short which recently won an Oscar at the Academy Awards. It’s a wonderful little story that seamlessly blends hand-drawn and CGI animation. It is available to view in 2D or 3D, the only such bonus feature with this option.
The remaining bonus feature are all presented in HD and while each interesting in its own way, as a group they don’t quite add up to meet what I consider “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” minimal requirements.
- Bit by Bit: Creating the Worlds of Wreck-It Ralph ( 17 min) – Director Rich Moore walks through the different worlds seen in the film, from the Game Central Station to the various games that connect to it.
- Disney Intermission: The Gamer’s Guide to Wreck-It Ralph (9 min) – This fun feature that also appeared on Peter Pan takes you into cool Easter Eggs when you pause the film, courtesy of host Chris Hardwick from The Talking Dead fame.
- Deleted and Alternate Scenes (14 min) – A quartet of storyboarded scenes with optional and recommended director’s commentary to give each scene some context.
- Video Game Commercials (3 min) – Commercials for the fictional games from the film that are created to reflect the times in which the game was originally released. As such, the Fix-It Felix commercial looks as if it was recorded off a VCR from the early 1980s.
Wreck-It Ralph plays more like a Pixar film than anything Disney Animation has delivered in the past. Whether this is a new direction for the studio or a tip of the hat we’ll never know, but it’s a solid if somewhat retreaded film that gives Disney a one-two animation punch under their growing umbrella.
Video game enthusiasts will get more out of Wreck-It Ralph’s many homages than casual viewers who are more in tune with the Angry Birds phenomenon than Sonic the Hedgehog. Regardless of one’s video game prowess, Wreck-It Ralph tells a relatable tale that is a rainbow of finely detailed imagery whether viewed in 2D or 3D. You would have to be Scrooge in the flesh and lost complete touch with your childhood to walk away disappointed.
– Dan Bradley
Shop for Wreck-It Ralph on Blu-ray 3D for Blu-ray for a discounted price at Amazon.com (March 5, 2013 release date).
