Sorry, went a bit far on the title there. Also, it took forever to dig up that image...phew.
So this last weekend we had our first failure at trying to take our 4-year-old to a movie.
Into the Spiderverse is, let me be clear, amazing.
At least what I got to see of it. It got just a tad too intense for the kiddo though and we had to bug out early.
That means the last film I actually got to see was....
Ralph Breaks the Internet.
Since, for some reason, I've decided I want to talk about a movie, it wins as the most recent.
The kid was very excited about this one. He kept trying to convince us that the first film WAS the second film, and that we were going to see the third movie. We even had a few fights about how he wanted to "watch the first one, no not this one the first one. NO! This is the new one I want the first one!".
Yes, image search. Angry toddler indeed.
I think he enjoyed it, though honestly, the monster in the third act was a bit much for him. He stuck it out but he was on the edge.
Me, though, I came away mixed. I mean it was not at all a bad movie. It had some big laughs, even. But I really feel like there was a LOT of filler and some serious plot problems.
So, from here on out there will be
SPOILERS
So watch out.
The movie starts with Ralph and Vanellope (V from here on in I am not writing that again I had to google it and forgot and then look back to the other page then cut and paste it but the formatting was messed up so then I had to delete it and then write it again so it's V now just V) having just spent the last five years just kinda hanging out and bein' pals.
The vibe immediately is that V is totally over Ralph's nonsense and is bored and Ralph can clearly sense it and is getting clingy. Ralph tries a big gesture to help V but just ends up screwing things up and breaking her game (Incidentally, this happens while the arcade is open for business, so presumably Ralph's game is, once again, on the verge of being unplugged when he doesn't show up for work. Then again, he basically abandons them again for the rest of the movie too. Wait, am I still in the parentheses?).
They decide to go to the internet to try and get a new wheel from Ebay off the back of one of the worst Eureka Moments ever committed to film.
V ends up liking it and decides to stay in a new game, Ralph has to deal with his insecurities and let her go. I will say this for the film, Ralph 2 has much more of an actual plot through-line than the first. The first film presents a similar issue for Ralph, but while the resolution is satisfying, the movie really pulls its punches on Ralph's choices. It's made clear that he does what he does to protect her, so it's hard to fault his actions at any point. Here he's made much more actively needy and neurotic, and it's actually due to this neurosis that he actually breaks the internet, and only by addressing it is the scary monster in the third act (a crazy amount of animalistic Ralph clones chasing after V until they amalgamate into a gigantic version of Ralph) defeated.
The issue for me is the pacing.
As I said the story starts out in the arcade but it's pretty clear that the movie is not at all interested in anything happening there. It seems to want us to be convinced that this world is boring and that Ralph is cloying and man does it succeed. The initial section up to when they actually go to the internet is much too slow.
When they get to the internet things improve, but they still don't exactly zip by. There is very little actual inherent drama to their quest for the steering wheel, as it's made pretty obvious from the start that V doesn't really want to go home at all. The meme scenes with Ralph were funny, but they ground the film to a halt and felt like filler. The finale is thrilling and I think it works quite well, but it takes a LONG time to get to it.
I can hear you saying something roughly equivalent to "Pbbbbbbbbt"
Ok, fair enough. But consider this: what if instead of an extended set up to one (admittedly funny) joke in the prologue about parenthood there was an actual compelling reason for Ralph to go to the internet immediately? Something that made us sympathize with him at first so that we can learn slowly that he's been a bad friend for some time? Something that will take us on the same journey that he's going on instead of being annoyed at him being a jerk for a full movie?
Maybe at the start of the film, V has vanished and no one knows why until Ralph sees her in trouble in a Youtube (or whatever copycat made up company they used) video someone is watching on their phone. Maybe he then has to go to the internet to find her?
This would clear out some extra space to spend some time showing replacements for Ralph in his game (Qbert sating he's going to wreck it in weird symbols, Zangief crushing nicelander's heads like sparrow's eggs, etc), as well as maybe opening up opportunities to have an actual B plot in the arcade. It would also mean we head right into the adventure.
Maybe then we don't need to do the meme things? Maybe that just plays during the credits?
I dunno.
I was also fairly bummed that gaming references are a bit more sparse here. The arcade has some but seems intentionally portrayed as monotonous. There's a driving game that V wants in that has some solid MMO jokes about the player character movement and some dark and gritty references, but that's it.
Anyway, that's my feelings about Wreck it Ralph 2: No Semi-colon, Just Breaks the Internet and No 2, Idiot. No NOT No Like Short for Number, No like the opposite of yes. There is No Two, is That Clearer for You!? Which, though it has a very long, very rude name and some story problems, I liked a lot and my young son loved.