By Amy Poole | Follow on Twitter
Wreck-It Ralph Review, otherwise known as: The Awkward Moment When you and your plus one are the only adults in the cinema not accompanied by children.
It’s two weeks before Wreck It Ralph, the new animated Disney movie officially hits cinemas; me, my plus one, some employees of the Disney store (which is already selling merchandise for a film yet to be released on this side of the world) and some lucky winners of a local radio station competition pile in to see Wreck-It Ralph in 3D.
Wreck-It Ralph follows on from Dreamworks Megamind in that it takes the “bad guy” archetype and explores and turns it on its head. In Megamind it’s superheroes and about what does the bad guy do when he wins? In Wreck-It Ralph it’s what happens when you don’t have a bad guy in a game? What happens when your bad guy wants to be the good guy?
It all starts when Ralph decides he wants to be the good guy and steals a medal… Okay, so I’m not going to go into the plot of this film, I don’t want to spoiler it for you, and let’s face it; we’re not going to be seeing it for what happens. We’re all just going for the game references so that’s what I’m gonna focus on here.
“Programmed with the most tragic back story ever”
5. It’s Not Just For Kids
So yes, this is a kids movie, but I’m assuming most of you out there are over the age of ten and don’t necessarily have tiny children of your own dragging you to this film. But you should probably go anyway. Although the vast majority of this film takes place in “Sugar Rush”, a candy themed race game (pink for the girls, race cars and male protagonist for the boys), there are still some great references for us so called “grown-ups” to enjoy.
For example Jane Lynch voices a Mass Effect Shepard-esque character from a first person arcade shooter called “Hero’s Duty”. Basically, Halo/Mass Effect/whatever; you get body armour, a big ass gun and shoot space bugs. Anyway, she’s awesome, leaving aside that I love Jane Lynch in anything and everything, the character herself is ace. Her figure is a perfect parody of any and all women in first person shooters (huuuuge boobs, tiny waist, Kevlar panties) and her dialogue is full of random over the top similes that would make sergeants in Full Metal Jacket jealous.
Yeah, she’s my fav. It’s thanks to her and Fix-It Felix that I will now be insisting that people now refer to me as their “dynamite gal”.
4. Gamer Reference Heaven
Obviously, when you set a film like this in the world of arcade games there are going to be a ton of references, and sure enough there’s brief shots of Street Fighter, Pacman, Sonic and Q*bert. These are the most obvious ones, I’m sure there are tons more, especially in the panning scenes in Game Central Station (i.e. the extension cable). But I think my favourites are King Candy’s safe being a NES controller ( the code is UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START, as if it would be anything else) and the Oreo guards. Also look out for the graffiti for FFVII and Warcraft references.
