Ralph Breaks the Internet (Film Review)

No, there are no porn references in Ralph Breaks the Internet.  And no, I do not care for the film either.

There was no need for this film to exist.  It adds nothing fresh, innovative, or exceptional to the Wreck-It Ralph universe.  After having written an extensive four-part, six-thousand-word analysis on Wreck-It Ralph, I can say for certain the sequel is inferior in most areas.  Ralph Breaks the Internet ignores its established lore when convenient, is littered with dating pop culture references, uses cheap comedy, inflates its runtime with extraneous fluff, gives its main duo some really unpleasant character traits, and butchers the original’s well-crafted message.

The story goes that after six years of the same type of racing, Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) has gotten bored of Sugar Rush’s monotony.  Her best friend Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) decides to surprise her by creating a new race track.  Vanellope loves it, but the player controlling her doesn’t and—after some back and forth struggling for control—ends up breaking the Sugar Rush’s wheel controller.  Sugar Rush is unplugged as a result—the game having been previously discontinued and a replacement wheel costing too much—leaving Vanellope and her game’s inhabitants homeless.  Ralph comes up with a plan, however, to save Sugar Rush.  Using the recently plugged in WIFI, Ralph and Vanellope travel into the internet to find and bid on a wheel controller being sold on eBay.

Ralph Breaks the Internet properly establishes what I could only infer from its predecessor—that a foreign character can be written into another game’s code to give them unlimited lives there (meaning the Dynamite goon from the first film didn’t commit suicide and Turbo may still be alive).  In exchange for such clarity, the sequel screws around with its lore in other areas.  For starters, how is it that Ralph can make a new race track and interact with Vanellope while the arcade is open and games are being played?  Who the heck is wrecking stuff over at Fix-It Felix Jr.!?  Wasn’t Ralph not showing up to work the exact same situation that got his game put out of order in the last film?  Then there's Vanellope and Ralph sneaking into the arcade game Tron to race each other in Light Cycles…one, the duo note how the game has a virus yet go in any way.  Two, they are foreign game characters that only have one life in Tron playing Light Cycles—a deadly game designed around causing the other player to crash at high speeds.  In the actual Tron arcade game, the loser blows up if they crash, with the same applying to the Tron film.  Their decision is so dangerous and stupid that Ralph and Vanellope might as well have been playing Russian Roulette outside their games instead.

The film’s depiction of the internet is everything I feared it would be: cheap, lazy and soon to be dated.  After six years, the original Wreck-It Ralph holds up as well as when it first released.  The licensed video game cameos and references are all characters that have solidified themselves in video game history and/or are still very relevant; there were no “fresh new faces” added to promote or market that could have dated the film.  The film's fictional old games have a retro classic feel, while the modern games are broad enough in their respective genres to continue representing over half a decade later.  While I wouldn’t go as far as to say Wreck-It Ralph is timeless (not yet at least—give it another five to ten years), it certainly isn’t restrained to the year 2012.  Wreck-It Ralph could easily be passed off as a film made as early as the mid-2000s to the present day.

Ralph Breaks the Internet, however, is firmly dated within the late 2010s setting.  From Ralph doing the floss dance to hot pepper challenges, no one will be mistaking this film as anything made before 2016 or after 2020.  From Twitter to eBay to Popup ads, the sequel’s internet cameos and references are predictable and stale.  The film feels like it caught up to the bandwagon long after the parade’s been over, with the majority of its internet-related jokes having been done to death.  Now, in all fairness, there is some internet humor here that can be mildly amusing.  The search engine is a guy trying to assertively predict what Ralph and Vanellope want, popups being annoyingly pushy salesmen, and popup blockers being security guards all got a good chuckle out of me.

The film’s most original bits of internet humor involve Ralph disrupting (“breaks” if you will) the system.  One scene Ralph smashes a WIFI character persona, causing the real person to get disconnected.  In another scene he physically rotates a video sharing system, causing his video to receive another’s likes instead.  Ralph Breaks the Internet’s best bits of comedy, however, don’t involve the internet at all—they involve those licensed video game characters brought over from the last film.  Two very funny scenes are Ralph and Vanellope debating whether Zangief waxes and when Ralph goes to Zangief’s book club.  The latter really cracks me up—from Zangief seriously discussing the novel, to Ralph wearing his reading glasses, to Sonic misconstruing Ralph’s uncertain response as an insightful look into duality.  Yet it is also somewhat dispiriting to see the sequel’s funniest bits come from relics of its predecessor.

Minor Spoilers Begin: Ralph Breaks the Internet’s big trailer eye-catcher was the Disney princesses all showing up in CGI.  Their first appearance is when Vanellope visits a Disney fansite in the film’s biggest scene of filler and blatant product placement.  The entire section serves little purpose to the plot and is there primarily as fanservice and advertising.  The website along with the princesses, Storm Troopers, Eeyore, Iron Man, Groot, and Stan Lee “cameo” could have been removed without disrupting the plot at all—especially since their few minor scenes of actual importance could be flexibly transferred to relevant supporting characters.  It’s also really weird see a Disney film openly mock Disney films.  It’s one thing to make tongue-in-cheek remarks like in Zootopia or create distinct parodies like in Enchanted, but to have Flanderized versions of their actual characters just feels strange.

There’s a scene where the princesses mock the stereotype of how people believe all their problems get solved when a big strong man shows up.  While this makes sense for some of the more modern princesses, for the majority of pre-2000s Disney princesses this is actually true.  So why exactly are they questioning why people believe such stereotype when it’s quite obvious why they would believe it (it's a similar reasoning as to why people might judge gentle giant Ralph by his role of angry bad guy).  Then "Princess" Vanellope flat-out agrees with their sentiment despite:

      1. No character having ever stated such to her on-screen.

      2. A big strong man actually being the reason all her problems got solved in the first film.

Writers cannot just throw in female-empowering statements to please audiences when most of the females involved do not actually embody said statements (or maybe they can, seeing how no one’s been questioning such contradiction).

Ralph Breaks the Internet has a ton of fluff and filler that serves little, if any, to progress the plot.  The Disney fansite is the film’s biggest offender, but there are plenty of smaller moments throughout.  There’s a bunch of new characters and only a few really serve a purpose, with the rest there for mediocre and/or subpar jokes.  Shank (Gal Gadot) is probably the most interesting and distinct of the new characters—being a gang leader in a Grand Theft Auto/Saints Row-inspired game called Slaughter Race (albeit completely absent of visible guns because PG rating).  The film has one (and only one) great action scene where Shank and crew chase Ralph and Vanellope after the latter steals their car.  The scene is engaging and entertaining, made even more so by my accompanying friend who was grinning from ear to ear at the entire car chase (the guy loves cars).

Shank, however, is still a far cry from Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), who I really miss along with her husband and boy scout hero Fix-It Felix Jr. (Jack McBrayer).  While Felix and Calhoun return for the sequel, their roles are sadly downgraded from major supporting to minor characters near-equivalent to Q*Bert's importance in the first (essentially extended cameos)—being given a very small subplot involving taking care of the remaining Sugar Rush racers.  Yet perhaps it is a blessing the couple barely show up, as it may have saved them from the same treatment Ralph and Vanellope received.

Poor Ralph got Flanderized hard here.  His intelligence has been dumbed down a few pegs to the point where he, at times, literally acts like a giant baby.  The man is completely oblivious to why Vanellope is sad her game got unplugged despite the many, obvious reasons, and then proceeds to act like a massive jerk after hearing Vanellope spell out her reasoning for wanting to live in Slaughter Race.  He nearly gets Vanellope killed from an absolutely inexcusable action and is the reason for all the bad things that occur in the finale.  Unlike in the last film where Ralph’s irresponsible actions are entirely understandable and forgivable due to his prior situation and long history of ill-treatment from colleagues, I have no empathy or compassion here for Ralph’s dangerous, moronic behavior.

Vanellope doesn’t get off scot-free either.  She commits an offense arguably as bad as Ralph’s—ditching her responsibilities as a ruler.  Vanellope is Sugar Rush’s president, or she was at the end of the last film when she changed Sugar Rush’s ruling system.  Now, she’s back to being a princess because either the writers forgot her previous decision or, far more likely retconned her back to connect more with the other Disney Princesses.  Either way, she is Sugar Rush’s ruler, with a responsibility to rule over her kingdom and subjects that have been shown to be bratty kids and/or idiots. MAJOR SPOILERS HERE She ditches that entirely for her own desires and freedom, and that pisses me off.

For starters, Vanellope's decision completely disrespects the original film’s well-crafted message.  That sometimes there are jobs that are not always pleasant and/or what we truly want to do—yet these jobs must be done, and we are the best suited for them.  Nonetheless, we can still make the best out of these situations through modification.  That’s what should have been learned here…again (because the first time apparently wasn’t clear enough).  Vanellope wants to live a wild, chaotic, open-world life in Slaughter Race, but can’t because then her kingdom would be without an intelligent, kind leader.  So, she excepts her responsibly and goes back to Sugar Rush, but similar to how Ralph brings Q*Bert and the other unplugged game characters to help him out, Vanellope changes up how Sugar Rush works—making it more open world and wild by altering the game’s code and landscape.

Now, the reason behind Vanellope’s self-centered decision most likely has to do with a misguided attempt at female empowerment.  The concept of a princess breaking free of her expected role and doing what she wants has been a Disney staple since the beginning of their Renaissance—taking in criticisms and evolving in progressive ideas over the years.  The concept is certainly noble—albeit always played safe—with each decade’s iteration being met with praise for its advancement in strong female characters (as well as those who unfairly turn

On occasion, however, such noble intentions come in stark conflict with other noble ideals and end up being detrimental to progressing female characterization as a result.  The conflict here is freedom to do what one wants versus responsibility as a leader.  Frozen has issues with this conflict, but Ralph Breaks the Internet takes it to a whole other level: nearly to Mulan II levels of idiocracy.  Imagine if in The Sword in the Stone, young Arthur told Merlin, “Ehh, you know what?  I don’t want to be king.  I’m sure these people will do just fine without me in the Dark Ages.”  Or if Simba didn’t want to be the Lion King and let Scar take over to permanently pursue living a Hakuna Matata life.

Yet everything works out in the end for Sugar Rush thanks to a Felix and Calhoun’s offscreen activities—which ends up being used as a cheap gag towards parenting.  It strikes me how this whole situation could have been saved by giving Felix and Calhoun a visible subplot where they teach the Sugar Rush racers responsibility and leadership skills.  The subplot could have been around ten to fifteen minutes long, which wouldn’t have made the film prolonged had they cut out all the Disney fansite filler in its place.  The story could then have Vanellope go back to accept responsibly, see the Sugar Rush racers now have the leadership skills to run themselves and decide to go live in Slaughter Race, leading to the film's third act.  Vanellope acts responsible and Felix and Calhoun get to have actual screentime.  Instead, Vanellope ditches her leadership role without thought to her kingdom (she doesn’t even inform them in-person), and it all miraculously works out for Sugar Rush because Disney always has to have their positive endings regardless of what lessons were learned and/or ruined as a result…yayyyyyy. MAJOR SPOILERS END

It’s not that I don’t see, nor appreciate the grand overall message Ralph Breaks the Internet is trying to get across.  Friends sometimes need to move and/or go their own way and it can hurt, but as a friend, we need to accept and support their path—for close friendships will always remain regardless of the distance.  It’s a great message for kids as well as some adults, but it’s told at the cost of sullying two great characters, butchering another well-crafted message, and being smothered by a swarm of stale references and/or superficial filler.  The latter ends up being Ralph Breaks the Internet’s biggest offense—even more so than the butchered message.  Whereas Wreck-It Ralph is an original story first and video game cameos/references second, Ralph Breaks the Internet is first-and-foremost a barrage of website cameos and internet references connected by a poorly-constructed story.

P.S. Ralph Breaks the Internet has no lovely opening short or a redesigned Disney Animation Studio's Logo like Wreck-It Ralph did.