Video game baddie gone good: ‘Wreck-It Ralph’

What pushes a bad guy to want to do good?

MANILA, Philippines - A medal and recognition by his community, at least for Ralph in the soon-to-be-released Disney movie Wreck-It Ralph.

Fix-It Felix is an arcade video game where Felix fixes everything that Ralph, the wrecking guy, destroys. It’s been that way between Felix and Ralph for the past 30 years.

From Walt Disney Animation Studios and Emmy-winning director Rich Moore comes Wreck-It Ralph, a hilarious, arcade-game-hopping adventure. For 30 years, Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) has been overshadowed by Fix-It Felix, Jr. (voiced by Jack McBrayer), the good guy star of their game, who always gets to save the day. Tired of playing the bad guy, Ralph takes matters into his own massive hands and sets off on a journey across the arcade through multiple generations of video games to prove he’s got what it takes to be a hero.

On his quest, Ralph meets tough-as-nails Sergeant Calhoun (voiced by Jane Lynch) from the first-person action game Hero’s Duty, and feisty misfit Vanellope von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman) from the candy-coated cart-racing game, Sugar Rush, who may just be his first real friend. But everything changes when a deadly enemy is unleashed, threatening the entire arcade and Vanellope herself. Ralph finally gets his chance to save the day — but can he do it in time?

I got to watch 26 minutes of the movie at the Disney Studios in Burbank, California recently. Wreck-It Ralph director Rich Moore said the movie is still in its final editing stages, so it was not possible for us to view the whole movie. But we did get a major glimpse, and it looks like the makings of another hit by Disney.

Wreck-It Ralph is an 8-bit arcade game baddie who wants to become a goodie. 

“For 30 years I have been doing this,” says Wreck-It Ralph at the start of the movie. “But it seems hard to love your job when no one else seems to like you for doing it.”

The movie starts by giving viewers a glimpse into Ralph’s life.

The video arcade opens, kids come in and play the game Fix-it Felix. Wreck-It Ralph uses his monstrous hands to destroy Niceland, the building that Fix-It Felix is called to fix each time Ralph wrecks it. The gamer earns high scores for helping Felix fix the building. At the end of the game, Ralph is thrown off the building by the residents.

In the movie, when the video arcade closes, the folks who live in the building give Felix his medal, and Ralph goes home to the rubble dump outside the building. From where he sleeps, he watches the happy folks celebrate with Felix.

Ralph decides that he no longer wants to be the bad guy. He wants to be a good guy — and get a medal just like Felix.

And it was in the following scenes that I began to see the magic that Disney always brings to the screen. It is in this search to be more than a villain that Ralph begins to feel better about himself.

Ralph leaves Fix-It Felix and travels through Game Central Station, much like New York’s famous, similarly-named train station, where I glimpsed many of the games that I used to play. There are familiar faces, including Bowser from the Mario series, Dr. Robotnik from the Sonic games, Pong, the first video game I ever played and many more that I was not familiar with.

I cannot say how the movie ends or whether Ralph resolves his dilemma, as I did not see the ending. But, from what I saw, Wreck-It Ralph is sure to bring back not only the nostalgia of playing video games but also touch our hearts as we root for the bad guy trying to be good. 

I hope he gets his medal.

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Wreck-It Ralph opens in theaters on Nov. 1.