The 2012 ‘Wreck it Ralph’ was a surprised hit for me. I didn’t really think too much about it until I saw it and thought “wow that’s clever”. The story ended and things were back to the normal and the bad guy was done and dusted. So usually that’s it.
But then came the sequel. I thought “God! Disney is really milking everything. What else can be done?”. I didn’t think about it that much when the first trailer dropped as it seemed instead of playing with nostalgia in the gaming world, they are just bringing it up to date about the Internet. But then…then…the Disney Princess trailer dropped. I thought “Oh my! This is brilliant! Disney playing with its established franchises and demolishing the stereotypes by turning up the volume in merely 2 minutes?” That is when I thought I need to see this. For if Disney can have fun with itself, the possibilities in the film became limitless.
And so I did. I must say I enjoyed every minute of it. The pace was a lot faster than normal Disney films and the establishment of goals was swift. The curiosity of the arcade characters about the new ‘dangerous but unknown’ Internet plug in was hilarious. And the astonishment that Ralph and Vanellope had when they were finally exposed to the Internet was hilarious. ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’ is a film about status quo versus challenging yourself. Ralph representing the status quo while Vanellope eyes were opened and had no idea how to go back to the unplugged world. That doesn’t mean that Ralph didn’t try, but he was sceptical about a lot of things and his experience was not always positive. And the insecurity in him that prompted him to try to protect Vanellope in every way he could became the main dilemma throughout the whole story.
What amazed me about ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’ is the way how they packaged a lot of technical terms and jargons into ways that general audience can understand. How they visualised concepts such as Avatars, Net Traffic, Spam Clicks etc. was totally ingenious. The way how they transformed Internet insecurity into something that is completely relevant to the movie was a home run. I don’t know whether the audience would learn more about the Internet after watching this movie but for me it really gave me new ideas to explain complicated computing concepts to other people in the future. Just looking at this aspect of the movie, I could feel that it is more than just a sequel for milking the franchise but the creators did put in a lot of efforts into making this a unique experience.
Now back to the whole Disney Princess part. Without a doubt the Disney Princess trailer was a heavy hitter as a marketing ploy for the movie. But as we all knew, sometimes all the best thing in the movies were in the trailer. Despite being lured to the theatre by this trailer, I was secretly hoping that’s not all we would see in the movie. Luckily, Disney delivered solidly in this aspect. The trailer was just one of the several scenes in the movie that made fun of their stereotypes. The subsequent scenes completely showed how Vanellope was in all ways breaking this model of what to be considered as a princess, and her take on this role was contagious with the girls. The good thing is that the movie didn’t just played on their stereotypes, because that would be just a single note that could get boring very quickly. The movie also played on their strengths and the mutual influence between them and Vanellope gave these princesses more solid characterisation than just mere caricatures of themselves.
There were other great new characters debuting in ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’ too. And they all stood out and left great and lasting impressions even after I left the theatre. Shank the main racer in the Slaughter Race game and her gang were serious, funky and funny at the same time. Yesss the Search Engine guru and the way she deployed pop ups on the browsers were one of the funniest things to watch. Also, how she explained to Ralph the good and bad sides of the Internet was spot on. And then you have KnowsMore the search bar that kept trying to predict what people wanted to search for was hilarious. I also enjoy how J.P.Spamley did his spamming and took Ralph a trip to the Dark Web.
For me, ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’ had delivered above my expectations and I personally loved it more than its predecessor. And I think that is a good thing. Especially for nowadays with so many mediocre and bad sequels to just make an additional dollar and ruined their own franchises. I hope Disney would not treat this franchise too lazily and lightly, for there was something special here with Ralph and Vanellope’s world. I believe ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’ is a movie that can be enjoyed by young and old alike.
