A Complete Analysis of Wreck-It Ralph Part 1: The Hypest Trailer (Film Analysis)

On June 6^th, 2012, Disney released its first trailer for Wreck-It Ralph—an upcoming animated feature about a sentient arcade game character who wants to be more than his designated role.  Sounded like the standard Disney story, and it looked that way too…that is until the above scene appeared in the trailer.

Bowser from Super Mario, Doctor Eggman from Sonic, M. Bison and Zangief from Street Fighter, Kano from Mortal Kombat, the orange ghost Clyde from Pac-Man!  All these famous video game villains (save for Zangief, which I’ll get to later on) together in a one spot in a theatrical film!?  That single scene was, to put it lightly, a bit jaw-dropping in its day.  It got video game viewers, including myself, hyped and ready to spend their cash on seeing Wreck-it Ralph—but why exactly?  After all, most of these notorious video game villains had already appeared in feature films and been met with disdain by their respective series’s fans.  What made Bowser, M. Bison and Kano’s appearances here in Wreck-It Ralph any different from their previous theatrical debuts? 

For starters, said villains were not live action like their previous theatrical incarnations—they were animated with identical appearances and body proportions to their video game counterparts.  Then there was the aspect of the people behind Wreck-it Ralph’s creation.  Disney, a company known for making high quality animated features were producing and releasing the film.  Sure, Disney had been having a string of not-so-hot features in the 2000s, but it was the 2010s, with films like The Princess and the Frog and Tangled showing promise at Disney getting their game back.  Yet Wreck-It Ralph wasn’t just a Disney animated feature about video game characters, it was a Disney animated feature about video game characters featuring actual video game characters!  The above scene alone screamed Who Framed Roger Rabbit 2.0, with the remaining trailer being equally as promising featuring other famous video game characters like Q*bert and…Q*bert…………huh.

Ok, maybe the remaining trailer wasn’t…even close to being as promising as its BAD-ANON scene.  In actuality, when going by the remaining trailer, certain viewers began pointing out the general lack of actual video game characters.  While there were those, like me, who still clung onto hope that Wreck-It Ralph would end up being Super Smash Bros. the film, those savvier and more experienced with movie trailer trickery caught on that Wreck-It Ralph would most likely be a standard Disney story featuring primarily original and/or homage characters and settings with only brief cameos and references to actual video game characters.  The latter turned out to be true with a few minor exceptions and one major one.  Wreck-It Ralph primarily features original and/or homage video game characters and settings.  The majority of actual video game characters ended up being cameos and/or references.  The film did not end up being Super Smash Bros. the film, nor—as I’ll expand upon further down—Who Framed Roger Rabbit 2.0.

At the time, I was genuinely disappointed by such outcome—walking out of the theaters not receiving what I thought had been promised to me.  Funny thing was, I still enjoyed the film, yet the disappointment ended up overshadowing my general enjoyment of the feature.  Yet that’s the beauty of revisiting a film with the knowledge of what’s to come.  On my second viewing, I knew what to expect from the film’s array of cameos and references—being able to move past my original overshadowing disappointment and enjoy the film’s story and characters for what they are.  As a result, the film ends up being a far more satisfying experience.  Where Wreck-It Ralph falls short in cameos and references, it—barring some rough patches—succeeds in storytelling, pacing, world-building, characterization, reconstructive tropes, and an overall refreshing message.

LINK TO PART 2: World Building, Level Design, and Strange Thematic Shifts