Why Wreck-It Ralph is Actually Disneys Most EXISTENTIALLY TERRIFYING Film

➡ The text discusses a podcast about Disney movies, focusing on the film “Wreck It Ralph”. The hosts discuss their experiences with Disney films, including watching them in different languages and their nostalgia for older films. They also talk about the characters in “Wreck It Ralph”, suggesting that they don’t stand out compared to characters from other franchises featured in the movie. The hosts also mention the influence of Disney and DreamWorks on the animation industry and the use of nostalgia in their films.
➡ The text discusses the movie “Wreck It Ralph”, comparing it to “Roger Rabbit” due to its incorporation of various video game characters and their unique rules. The author appreciates the nostalgia the movie brings, mentioning several real and fictional games referenced in the film. The text also discusses the movie’s unique concept of characters living inside a power strip, and the rules that govern their existence. The author ends by expressing surprise at how old the movie is, considering it still feels new to them.
➡ The discussion revolves around the state of animated films, particularly in America, where there hasn’t been a major hit recently. The speakers also delve into the history and cultural impact of various video games, including Rampage and Fix It Felix, and their influence on the movie Wreck It Ralph. They also touch on the success of Wreck It Ralph and its place in the resurgence of Disney animated films, comparing it to Pixar’s offerings.
➡ The text discusses the animation and graphics of a movie, comparing it to Pixar’s style. The writer feels that the movie lacks the usual Pixar polish, despite using advanced technology for more realistic reflections. They also discuss the challenges of switching to a new system, as it lacks the years of experience and tricks learned from the old one. The writer suggests that the movie’s appeal might be more due to nostalgia than the actual story.
➡ The text discusses the movie Wreck It Ralph, comparing it to other films like Ready Player One. The author notes that while the movie relies heavily on nostalgia and fan service, it still feels somewhat original. They also discuss the character of Ralph, comparing him to a wrestling heel and discussing his existential crisis as an arcade game character. The text ends with a discussion about the decline of arcades and the rise of claw machines and gachapons in Japan.
➡ The text discusses a person’s experience with claw machines and their tricks, and then delves into a detailed summary of the movie Wreck It Ralph. The movie is about a video game villain, Ralph, who is tired of being the bad guy and goes on a journey through different games to earn a medal and prove he’s a hero. Along the way, he makes friends and realizes that the journey and friendships are more important than the medal. The text also discusses some inconsistencies in the movie’s plot and ends with a comparison to the game Faster Than Light.
➡ The text discusses various aspects of the game ‘Wreck It Ralph’. It explores the possibility of characters respawning, the potential consequences if all the villains die, and the popularity of the game compared to others like Donkey Kong. It also delves into the backstory of the character Sergeant Calhoun and speculates on her connection with Fix It Felix. The text ends with an analysis of a scene involving these two characters trapped in a game called Sugar Rush.
➡ The text discusses the problematic elements in a movie where characters are laughed at for being beaten up, which is seen as promoting violence. It also criticizes the portrayal of homelessness and the idea that characters must serve a function in society or face dire consequences. The text further questions the economic system within the game, where characters work without benefiting from the income generated. Lastly, it points out the disturbing implications of anthropomorphizing characters in such movies.
➡ The text discusses the characters in the movie Wreck It Ralph, suggesting they are like ‘daemons’ summoned by coins in a game machine. It questions whether these characters are physical manifestations or just energy. The text also discusses the movie Cars, comparing it to Wreck It Ralph. It mentions a theory that the characters in Wreck It Ralph might not exist when they’re off-screen. The text also talks about halitosis and tonsil stones, and ends with a mention of a reference to Alcoholics Anonymous in the movie.
➡ The text discusses the similarities between Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Anon, and their references in Disney movies. It also talks about the distinction between Pixar and Disney movies, and how Wreck It Ralph could be considered more of a Pixar movie. The text ends with a promotion for the Paranoid American podcast, which covers a variety of topics, and their sticker sheets available for purchase.

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It’s all about the technology today. Is Matt here spare? I messed up your name. It’s the paranoid American over there. I knew you were gonna do that, man. I love this freaking Disney movie so much because this one touches on nostalgia that I care about. This was maybe the first Disney movie that I actively went to the movie theater to see as an adult. I think the very first one. So this begins by my Disney adult arc, which I don’t want to be on, but this is what started it. I didn’t see this in the theater.

I’ve mentioned before in. In Japan, like, if this shows up, it’s dubbed. So I would have to watch impure Japanese, and I don’t want to do that. So weirdly, I just noticed next week I could go see that how to train your dragon subtitled, but I don’t. I don’t think I’d want to. I don’t know. I saw the old one. That’s good enough, right? I think so. I mean, I’m a fan of watching things subtitled, but only if it’s also in the original language. So, like, what, you would go and see Wreck it Ralph? It would be in English and you don’t want to.

You don’t want to see it in English. Or it would be in Japanese. You’d have to read the English subtitles. No, if I saw it in a theater in Japan, it would just be in Japanese, no subtitles. So that’s why I was mentioning how to train your drag, I guess. That’s not an animated film, though. It’s technically live action, the one that just came out and in Japan, I think came out this week. So I was like, oh, I could go see that subtitle, but I don’t think I care. So that was, you know, it’s just like Disney to be redefining the definition of Words that define our reality to.

To where a Disney version of live action. That’s not live action. That’s still animation. It just happens to look more realistic. But they’re. They’re like, actively changing the way that we perceive the world through our understanding of words. Well, keep in mind, too, this is DreamWorks picking up that ball, right? They did how to train your dragon. Disney has been doing that certainly for the past 10 years. And I guess DreamWorks is like, hey, we want some of that cake too, you know, and it seems that they got it because that movie apparently made some bank.

I mean, it’s another one of those examples that now DreamWorks is old enough that they can start playing some of the same weaponized nostalgia games that Disney’s kind of had a monopoly over for quite a while. The only other examples I could really think about would be, like, Hanna Barbera, which isn’t really a thing anymore in the 21st century. And then maybe Looney Tunes. And Looney Tunes has tried to have a few different resurgences. Like, there was a modern version of. I think Daffy and Bugs are like Odd Couple living in an apartment or something in the 21st century.

But none of those have really taken hold. Even the new space jam didn’t really take hold. Right? So Disney and now DreamWorks are kind of the only two animated sort of dynasties that own nostalgia in everybody’s brain. Get ready for the Shrek, Assance and Pokemon too. Pokemon’s another kind of a big one. The. And maybe Studio Ghibli. Although I gotta be honest, man, most people that I know out in real world meat space tend to not even know what Studio Ghibli is like. I’ll be shocked if they even knew what even, like, the biggest Ghibli movies were about.

Not. Not the case in Japan. Everyone knows. Yeah, clearly. In fact, we’re. You know, since I’m visiting the States, we’re getting some. Some gifts and stuff for people. And she was like, oh, I’ll order a Totoro for your friend. And we didn’t realize how freaking big it is. So somehow I have to get this totoro into a suitcase or something now, right? You can. You can suck the air out of that or just stick it on a cat bus. I have a little cat bus in there too. Like, bought a cat bus. And then she was like, oh, that’s too small.

I should get them something else. And then she got a Totoro that’s way too big. So it’s a totoro that’s like 10 times bigger than a cat bus. Now you need to figure out a way to compress all the air out of that so you can put it in the cat bus. Well, you know what? I found a cat bus that had a little Totoro inside, but she told me not to get that one. So yeah, I was, this was over a phone. I’m in a store in Aki harbor and she, she’s doing that Wreck It Ralph merch.

Coming soon. I guess. I, I always like to talk about the ride scene. I know in Tokyo they recently closed Buzz Lightyear, which the Astro Blasters or whatever it is called. And I think that’s going to be reopened as a Wreck It Ralph ride. So Wreck It Ralph is, is gaining some traction in the nostalgia culture, I suppose. So here’s, here’s maybe just me from old age shaking fist at Cloud or just not connecting with the youth, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any characters. And Wreck It Ralph, despite it being like very animated, very like unique character design.

But I don’t feel like any of the main characters in Wreck It Ralph are kind of worthy of Evergreen long lasting like character design. Like I, I just. Wreck It Ralph himself is just kind of a redneck you’d find in the middle of the woods. There’s nothing really that stands out about him even Fix It Felix is kind of lame. I can’t imagine anyone carrying that much about her. And then like Vanellope, like even though she’s got like a like a design to her, she doesn’t have like this protagonist main character energy. And I think that maybe it’s just because they’re showed up by all of the different intellectual property in this movie because you see like Bowser and Mario and you see Street Fighter and you see like GI Joes, you see like actual intellectual property.

And it seems that the, the character Disney IP in this movie, they can’t hold a candle to all the co stars. Well actually it’s funny. Japan is trying. Earlier this year, I think it was January to March, they’re having their Palapalooza, which is based on characters that are not Mickey, for like three months. You know, like, you know, especially around the castle, they’ll, they’ll put a bunch of stuff up for this. So it was, it was Donald’s Quacky Duck Duck Duck City. And before that it was actually Vanellope’s Sweet Pop World. So Vanellope was actually the primary character in Disneyland for like three months.

And, and I went to a Rest. I went while that was going on and went to the Italian restaurant. And all the food was made to look like sweets. So the spaghetti, they had like a mashed potato on top that was supposed to look like ice cream. And the, the appetizers were all appetizer stuff, but it looked like desserts. Right. Even though it wasn’t. And your dessert looked like a dessert too, so that made sense. But. So if I had to pick any of the characters in this movie that weren’t based on video games, I do think Vanellope might be the strongest one.

But again, I think that that’s somewhat unique because usually the titular character of a Disney movie tends to be unique enough that they stand out. Maybe with the exception of like Bambi, there’s like a handful when the main character that the movie’s named after isn’t that remarkable. And this is another one of those, like Wreck It Ralph doesn’t really stand out as a strong contender for I want that action figure or I want that stuffed animal. I’m sure that there’s some die hard fans, but the character itself doesn’t feel like it lends itself well for that.

No. He’s got a lot of personality though. You know, you got John John Riley voicing him and kind of bringing a lot of that energy. Of course, his name escaped me, but Vixen Felix, you know, he was on like 30 rock and stuff. So, you know, we are using a lot of the actors energy in these Vanellope. I get. What’s that? Sir Silverman, which doesn’t feel 100 when you know it, it’s like, yes, of course that’s her. But that, that isn’t as like instant connection, probably because she’s a kid and you, you know, don’t instantly make the connection.

But. But yeah, it is. This is analogous though to Roger Rabbit, isn’t it? Because Roger Rabbit’s like, here is Roger Rabbit, here’s our original character. Eddie Valiant’s there too. I guess the fact that I can just dredge his name out that quickly means he works. And then the rest was like, here is the rest of cartoon history. So here it’s like, we got Fix It Felix, we got Wreck It Ralph, we got Vanellope. And then here is video game history. So it’s. It’s a kind. A little bit of a similar vibe. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that just like Roger Rabbit, these video game characters have their own version of physics and rules that they have to operate within, and they do a decent job of explaining it.

Although I’m going to poke a few holes in it. Maybe you’ve got answers too. So like, some of the rules are that you can die as many times in your own game and you’ll always kind of be re resed unless the game gets unplugged or the game gets a glitch or a virus or they just straight up take the game out. But other than that, you can kind of live forever. But one of those things is that you can also leave the game that you’re made to be in. And if you die outside that game now, you actually die forever.

That’s one of the biggest rules. And they even have, I think Bugs Bunny at one point in these little kiosks that’s in this kind of like a Grand Central station area where all the different characters kind of convene in between the arcade opening and closing and on the kiosk. Bugs Money is like rule number one, don’t die. Like that’s just what you hear as you walk around. Also, we should mention that’s inside a power strip. One of the weird things about this movie is the physicality of all the digital, you know, creations, right? So it seems like behind the screen of Fix It Felix, it it is the digital world of this, you know, herky jerky moving building with its herky jerky moving patrons.

Ralph doesn’t move herky jerky, probably because it would have been annoying to watch that for the entire run of the film. But yeah, all, all the individual characters too, they’ve got like this lower frame rate as they move around and I gotta point out the Wreck it route. The actual game that Wreck It Ralph is based on is to me quite obviously the game Rampage, which was by far one of my all time favorite arcade games. I even liked the crappy like PlayStation remakes that they made later on. But like the arcade, I remember playing the arcade, I remember playing it on the nes.

I remaining it on almost every game console. And even when I get like a stupid little emulator, it’s usually one of the first games that I go and I immediately play play with. So like, the fact that Wreck It Ralph itself is based on Rampage meant that I love this movie the second that it started. Even the first time that I saw it. Should they have pushed Ralph maybe 2% more and just made him a gorilla? Then he’d be better for the merch dude. A King Kong or a lizard or a wolf man. Those were the three main Rampage characters.

Absolutely. But I feel like Ralph at the Goril. But maybe A werewolf. But maybe Disney wouldn’t feel as much ownership over the ip. Or maybe legitimately, like, it would just be them promoting someone else’s ip. A few years after this, you get the Rampage movie with Rock the Dwayne Johnson, which isn’t that great. So that. That will disappoint the Rampage gamer. I think if you’ve seen or not seen that, although it wasn’t terrible, but it’s just. It’s. There’s. There’s certain elements of Rampage that don’t make it into that movie. You’re like, why, Speaking of video game movies, too, I don’t think that this one is based on the video game.

And I think I’ve got the name of this right. But you bowl also made a movie that I think was called Rampage that is way better than the. The Rock Rampage. Okay. Oh. Oh, okay. Then maybe that’s something to check out. What’s the other one? Oh, the other one that this one weirdly spends a lot of time in. The. The directors of the film were basically like, we want to put in all these video game cameos. But it had. They were like, it has to make sense to the story. That’s. Why do we actually see Mario? Because Bowser gets lines, right.

He’s in the. Yeah, we hear about Mario, but I don’t know if we actually see the character Mario at any point. Yeah, because people are like, oh, you couldn’t afford Mario and Luigi. And they’re like, well, no, we just didn’t. You know, they were like, any place we tried to put Mario and Luigi into the film, like, upstaged, like our characters. Like you’re saying was too much. Although, I don’t know, you could like Mario and Luigi in the background, like, you know, plunging rocks out of Ralph’s dumpster toilet or something. You could do something like that if you want.

I feel like they could have made it. So I. I did kind of. At least when the. The shot was opening and you see the Wreck It Ralph game as they’re going through the arcade, I was kind of pointing out all of the real ones and all of the fake ones that they were making references to. So they got Wacka Wacka Troll, which is obviously Whack a Mole, which was also like one of the best earlier arcade games. They’ve got one called Hoop Jams, which is clearly NBA Jam Tournament Edition. Most likely, they’ve got PAC Man, Frogger, DDR Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

Like, they actually have this. Not as. Even as a standin. And you Know it’s Turbo because we see Cami make a cameo a little bit later on, and she was only introduced in Turbo. And then we’ve got centipedes, space inviters, and food fight. And then a couple of the ones that they kind of tweak the name of. There’s a House of the Dead style video game in the arcade. I didn’t catch what the name was, but I immediately recognized the logo. And then there’s a one called Fatal Assault in the background, which I feel is a combination of Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct, which were included by name.

Maybe for obvious reasons. Disney probably didn’t want any of that Mortal Kombat, like blood on their hands. No, we get. And then we get Tapper, which was root beer Tapper, which I guess they just didn’t want to put the word beer into their. Their kids movie. I don’t know which. It’s root beer. What’s the problem? But yeah, that. I just thought that was. I guess also because they had like, the character had a speaking role as the bartender. So if it was root beer tapper, they might owe people some more money. Classic Disney. But I thought it was.

It was well done. These actually did hit on a whole bunch of, like, nostalgic sort of notes. And it’s. And it sets, like, a good pace for it. And I do think that one. Now when you go inside of the Little Power strip and you’re seeing the actual characters that are inside those games you saw in the arcade, it just kind of like builds on the nostalgia trip just like a little bit more. So they’re. They’re doing such a great job at weaponizing nostalgia within the first five minutes of this movie. Yeah, for sure. By the way, the.

We did see this a fair amount. This is weirdly, this is. This is right when Disney buys Star wars and Marvel, like, cracking the how do we get boys to watch it Code. But this movie seems kind of did it, you know, Like, I wonder if they had not bought Marvel and Star wars, if this would have, like, done what Treasure Planet and Atlantis was trying to do. And there was a Star wars game in the arcade as well. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, when did they. 2012, I think is when they bought. So yeah, this is 2014, I think.

I can’t remember any good Star wars game I’ve ever played outside of maybe pinball. Oh, hold on. This movie did come out in late 2012. Wow. Now I’m feeling old. Wreck it Ralph is 13 years old. Oh, no. Okay. It still Feels like a newish movie to me, you know? No, we did what? Even being a boys, we watched it probably three or four times. Even. Even the sequel is like six years old. Yeah, I know, I know, it’s horrible. I’ve only seen the first half of the sequel, not because I didn’t like it, but because we started and then I had to go to orchestra practice, so they finished it, and I haven’t yet.

We will, of course, but I mean, it is weird, especially post pandemic. Just animated film in particular seems to have become very fragmented and weird. Like, people don’t. You know, it’s like these Disney ones come out, spray, you get Elio and Wish, which are not particularly noticed. Like, I was just listening to people talking about how this year there hasn’t really been, like, a super successful animated film in America. China has had some, of course, but as far as American production, we haven’t really had much this year because you’re like, oh, Lilo and Stitch. Oh, but that’s live action now.

How do you change your dragon? Oh, that’s live action. So for actual animated films, nothing’s really hit this year, you know, we need it, man. We need a return back to the Renaissance. But I don’t think they need it. Like, Disney doesn’t care. Disney doesn’t need a return to the Renaissance. Oh, Lilo and Stitch, the gangbusters. I mean, I haven’t seen that new one yet. I imagine I’ll be like, I’d rather watch the. The, you know, 2002 or whatever one, you know? But, hey, I don’t know. Could watch it. Could love it. We mentioned. I was surprised how much I actually like the 2023 haunted mansion.

So I just wait until you see Snow White. You’re gonna love it. Yeah, I might love Snow White. I don’t know yet. This movie, by the way, in Japan, I think this is one where I think the Japanese did give it. They call it Sugar Rush here, which I kind of feel like maybe is a better title. It does change the focus. Movie. Wreck It Ralph. Sugar Rush. No, it’s just called Sugar Rush. If you say Wreck It Ralph to Japanese, they get confused. But if you say Sugar Rush, they know the movie. Okay. And does that.

Does that make sense? Vanellope, the main character. If they call the movie. That’s what I’m saying. Just changing the title kind of does that. Which might be why Tokyo was so forward with, like, hey, it’s Vanellope land for three months, you know? Well, and I don’t know. I mean, honestly, the game Rampage seems like it would have been big in Japan because it’s freaking Kaiju, right? That’s like a Japanese motif. Like, is Rampage even, like a known game in Japan? I mean, we still have arcades in Japan with. With things you can play. I’ve never seen Rampage in arcade, but Japan also doesn’t have, like, retro cage, you know, so.

But Rampage. Who made that? It was not a Japanese computer company making that, was it? I want to say. I want to say Midway. Midway. He doing that. Doing that live searching. Midway. Midway. It’s got mid. Wait, original is. Yeah, Bali Midway. Okay, so it’s not. So this was made by a pinball company because. Because Bali Midway was essentially making pinball games, and then they expanded into video games, I believe. Yeah, they did. Mortal Kombat Rampage, of course. Spy Hunter’s a good one. You mentioned NBA Jam, Cruising. You know what? I think Japan maybe didn’t play Rampage so much because it’s, you know, we would have, like, the Konami stuff or, you know, that sort of thing.

You know, Vandire games, things like that. Some of. Why would Japan. Why would Japan need. You know, it’s like, we don’t have many American cars in. In Japan because Japan makes a lot of cars, right? It’s pretty rare to see a Ford. Rampage just seems like the perfect retro Japanese game because it’s Kaiju and it’s. It was Kaiju before I even knew that that was a word or even like an ongoing motif. Like, I. That’s the whole premise of these huge werewolves and Reptilians and Bigfoots that are like the size of a building. It might be like, if America made, like, a, you know, samurai game, and then it probably wouldn’t play so well in Japan.

They’re like, we have our own. You know, we know what we’re doing with this. It’s ours. No, what about Samurai Showdown? That was a huge game in the arcades here. Right? And who made that? You’re putting me on the spot here. I can’t remember who. Yeah, I know you did not come in prepared for video game history, because I didn’t either. But my point is, I don’t. I’m not sure if Rampage was a very big deal in Japan for Wreck It Ralph. It doesn’t really matter because. Fix it Again, Fix it. Felix also adds an element because you’re not fixing anything in Rampage, so fix it.

Felix is more of what is. Was he. He’s coming from something. I’ve played something With Fix It Felix sort of characters. Not Dig Dug. That doesn’t make sense. I think Dig Dug makes sense. Okay. Felix is a bit of a. Because you’re playing Felix. Little things up, right? And there was. There was another arcade game where you had to like pump up balloons. I think like that’s all sort of Felix. Felix makes sense. But in this game, fix it Felix Jr you are playing Felix. Correct. You are fixing things. And Rampage, of course you get to be the monster.

That’s why it’s fun. So Fix of Felix does seem less fun than Rampage to me. So I. I feel like Samurai Showdown was had to be big in Japan because it was made by snk, which stands for the New Japan Project. Who were the ones that made the Neo Geo system. And they also did. Okay. Yes, it was. Yeah, yeah. Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, Metal Slug, King of Fighters. Like all those. Those are. I feel like those are big. That’s enough in the pocket. Like obviously it’s not Nintendo, but. Yeah. So that might have been here again.

It’s like. I think it just depends on, you know, the what. What you’re culturally appropriating. So for us, Rampage, Kaiju’s it’s great. And then Japan’s like, yeah, we can do better Kaiju’s because we’re Japan. Well, do you want to do some of the production and box office stuff and then I’ll do the like the story beats. Yeah, I was actually. It’s. It’s very successful. It’s not quite as out of the box as I expected. 165 million budget, which is insane. I guess I just need get used to seeing these bigger numbers now. 500 or 496.5 that it made.

Which is a pretty hefty load enough for a sequel. I guess this doesn’t quite have the coattails of your Frozen or your Zootopia, I guess, but doing quite well. This one’s in production. Not production, but being thought about like since the 80s. So here we go. They’re actually saying Fix It Felix is supposed to come across like the original 1981 Donkey Kong is. Is the vibe there? Well, I mean I get that because Wreck It RALPH is sort of at the top and there’s this little fix of Felix. It’s like jumping up through the different stages in order to like get to and fix stuff.

But you’ll never convince me that this is more Donkey Kong than Rampage. Never. Maybe. Maybe that’s why they didn’t go full gorilla with Wreck It Ralph. Because that would Push it too far into. Just like they’re doing Donkey Kong, man. If this game or if this movie had featured a Bigfoot as a protagonist, I do feel like now you’ve got that star power with the main character. Oh yeah. Well, this movie itself started off in the late 80s under the Working title High Score, which. That’s boring. In the 90s that they changed the title to Joe Jump.

Reboot Ralph. That’s a terrible name. I’m glad they didn’t go with Reboot Ralph. Wreck It Ralph’s fine. Interestingly, this is. He didn’t direct it or anything, but this is a very much like John Lasseter, like, seems to have pushed this one through which. When, when does John Laster get kind of booted out? 2016. So he’s still pretty firmly in. But this is the point where like Wreck It Ralph is basically a Pixar film for all intents and purposes. Like the successful though, right? This is like the, the first animated movie that actually starts making like a decent amount of money in a little bit while.

Well, I think Tangled is the first one, but this is following up, it’s doing the boys thing because Tangled still, you know, it’s a princess movie. So like, let’s put Flynn on all the posters and try and make it, you know, appeal to the boys. Change the title of Tangled so it’s not rapel anymore. Wreck It Ralph is pushing that ball a little farther. I, I think Tangled was more successful than Wreck It Ralph, but Disney’s starting to knock him out of the park at this point. Like this was a little Disney renaissance for animated films.

Maybe it’s not as clear as like the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast one because Pixar was still kind of around and it’s getting difficult to distinguish Pixar and Disney at this point. So I’ll get into some of the story. Unless you got some other interesting production notes that we should know. Well, I was going to just throw out the question, what is. Do you see a difference between this and a Pixar film at this point? I mean, I don’t know if these are like valid observations, but there were a number of scenes in this movie that I feel like, oh, the, the post production studio I worked at could have done this scene.

And that’s not often something that even crosses my mind as we’re watching Pixar movies because they have incredible amounts of resources their disposal, like these huge teams. And I’ll tell you the, the exact part that I’m thinking of is the very Beginning where we see Wreck It Ralph, like shut down. And then it shows them all going into like their little apartment building. And it’s shot in the. With this like orthographic camera which, which means that it doesn’t have any real perspective to it. And just the way that it was all rendered and the way that the actual animation was performed, it just, it seemed like it lacked some of the Pixar polish that I’m usually used to seeing.

Okay, this is Disney, I guess, using slightly different tech than the Pixar. They’re using a bi directional reflectance distribution functions which is supposed to create more realistic reflections on surfaces and a virtual cinematography camera capture system. But maybe that also sacrificed a few things like that, that Pixar does it differently because I guess Pixar is always focused on like textures and stuff, which is a little different than it sounds like this is. Yeah. Plus I, I see just like how video games work that you come out with a new console and the graphics on a brand new console don’t necessarily always look better than a game on the previous console because the previous one everyone’s had a chance to figure out how all the tools work and all the cool little tricks you can pull off with it.

And I feel like maybe that happens when Disney switches over to a new system that they haven’t used a whole lot before. They can’t really like leverage years and years of experience and cool tricks that they’ve learned yet because there’s, they’re starting over from scratch essentially. Yeah, I think let’s, let’s keep an eye out for that because Frozen’s coming soon, Zootopia is coming for too long and maybe by that point they’ve refined it like for me, yeah, I was always more of a. Like I’m not a major gamer, but when I am gaming I usually do gravitate to Nintendo because you know, when they put out a new system it’s like, well, this doesn’t look nearly as good as the PlayStation 8000 or you know, whichever one’s next.

Right. But it’s like, well, I like the gameplay. So I’ve always been more in the gameplay than the, the bling bling, I guess, which you’ll get from, from that upper PlayStation or Xbox. The old bling bling. Yeah, get your bling bling. I guess I could have just said bling, but I wanted to add some blank to it as well. It was about, I was about to say, oh, what? Inside out with it. But that’s Pixar. That’s What I’m saying at this point like inside out it’s like well that’s kind of you know that’s that’s just I guess what an office building over with the same boss.

Is that how it works at this point? I guess I’ll quickly men before you get to story wise I’ll just mention a few things they left out. We mentioned that they just couldn’t find a place for Mario and Luigi without you know basically they felt like just derailing the movie a bit. Now you’re noticing Mario they were going to put Dr. Wiley from Mega man in or rock. Totally should have. I would have loved that. Yeah you’re gonna get plenty of well no that’s not like the hedgehog. I feel like Jim Dr. Robotnik is just a few shades away from Dr.

Wiley so I guess we get something like that. But I would like to see some Dr. Wild I I played the crap out of Mega. Dr. Wiley is a robot though right? Or sorry, Dr. Robotnik is an actual robot. Right. It’s in the name. Wiley is a human being. Yeah, he’s just insane. Making the best robots ever. So you’re gonna do that. Here’s one I like I I they took this out just because they were like this will middle bloat the movie. So I get why they took it out. But Ralph was going to go into a fourth game world called Easy no Extreme Easy Living 2 which was going to be a mix of the Sims and Grand Theft Auto.

I guess the Sims part is so it’s just not like wildly violent like Grand Theft Auto but he’s just going to go into the open sandbox world and do whatever the non violent equivalent of getting the five stars that so that the police helicopters and stuff are chasing you because that’s the goal in Grand Theft Auto isn’t it? To have the five stars and the helicopters are now chasing you and you’re jumping buildings on a bicycle or something. Well every single video game getting stars is a good thing. Exactly. Especially Grand Theft Auto. So so and starting in Mario at least you look at the timer you time how long can I go five stars before I’m finished? And now I pass into my friend and hey now we’re all taking turns which is how games should work when you’re playing games with people.

Because you know if you do the missions on Grand Theft Auto you’re now you’re just watching one guy do the missions. Right? I’m okay with them not including that. When this movie started my eye went immediately to the run time, I saw an hour and 40 minutes and I was like, okay, it’s not, it’s not as bad as it could be. No, it sounds interesting, but it’s very forgivable to cut. So it’s just, just noting things that, you know, they did cut so. Because they do have what, 25 years worth of ideas flowing into this movie since it gone through multiple people and everything.

Disney did construct a. A mock aged arcade cabinet. Did have the game in it. I hope so if there were flash based versions of Fix It Felix. This is a little bit before I actually had a smartphone, so I never played those. Did you work on any Felix stuff? This seems to be in your wheelhouse. Or Wreck It Ralph stuff that seems to be in your warehouse. I would have loved to. No, I didn’t get to work on this one. The. The coolest games that I worked on were Monsters, you games and then there was like some specific goofy stuff and then I don’t know where the crossover was, but apparently Disney either owned or had a license to American Idol and I made a bunch of American Idol games.

Oh, yeah, you would much rather would have been working on Wreck It Ralph and American Idol. Oh, absolutely. No, I was. I mean, yeah, this, like I said, this was an actual IP that I was excited about. Maybe not the characters themselves, but just everything else that goes with it. Yeah, I see what you’re saying where maybe Ralph isn’t quite visually striking enough. But I, I remember Ralph. I think of Ralph properly. He’s a proper scumbum, you know, and you have to appreciate that he live. He lives out in the dumpster. You know, he’s like Oscar the Grouch, right? Yeah, well, he’s less cool.

He has less riz than Oscar the Grouch. Yeah, okay. He’s less cool in Oscar Grouch. Also, have you ever seen Oscar the Grouch’s movie? It’s Elmo’s movie with Elmo and Grouchland. No, it doesn’t sound familiar. No. Oh, he should maybe even hit that sometime. That. That is a psychedelic freak out of a movie that probably has like interesting threads to pull. So. Okay, I, I do have fond memories of Big Bird in China. Oh, does that follow that bird or was that like a TV special? It was a TV special where. Where Big Bird actually goes to China and stays with like a Chinese family and like makes friends with the kid and they go to school and.

Okay, you know what? I think I saw that and I thought I had seen the Big Bird movie. Because I was a young dumb kid and I think, follow that. Birds. Yeah. Completely different movie that maybe I haven’t seen actually, because I definitely remember the big bird going to China. He’s at the Great Wall and stuff. I remember those shots. Yep. And there’s like a. There’s a scene with like a big tree. For some reason, they’re all talking about like, the family goes to this big tree. Yeah, Big trees here too. You go to. There’s some temples.

If it’s been there a while, you’ll find some pretty striking trees. So I feel like this is a good segue to get into the. The story stuff. Yeah, let’s do it. And. And so before I even get into the describing the story, I do feel that after watching this and taking notes and like all the different symbols and all the different sort of tangents, you can go down. I don’t think that the story is even that good or engaging. I truly believe that it’s just the nostalgia that makes me care about this movie. It’s just the fact that we see Street Fighter characters and Halo characters and Pac man and like all of this is just pure fan service for the.

Throughout the entire movie up until they get to like the. The Candyland, Mario Kart world. But up until that point, I pretty sure I was sold on nostalgia alone. And I didn’t necessarily miss the lack of a story. I realized what was happening and what they were exploiting in my brain, but I wasn’t opposed to it. So I just want to point that out. The story beats themselves, I feel, are fairly shallow compared to most other Disney movies because of all that fan service. Well, clear comparison would be the Ready Player One movie in particular because that hits the nostalgia buttons harder by just letting Spielberg remake movies.

Right. I think this is a lot better. The first 30 minutes, it’s just like let’s experience Ralph’s Melees. It doesn’t need a story for the let’s let’s World Build. They. You can call it nostalgia or you could call it world building. So. But it still feels somewhat original even though you’re shoehorning all these ips and we’re Ready Player One. It’s like, oh, now we’re just going to be in the shiny planning for 15 minutes. Because yeah, you’re not wrong, man. You’re not wrong. And. And on. On that tangent because like, Ready Player One’s a great example for like a comparison of at least the storyline.

But. But I read the book before the movie was even slotted to come. Out. And I remember as I’m reading the book that I’m thinking, like, you can’t just say that. When you walked into the room, it felt like you were re watching Back to the Future for the first time. And you. And you know, there was Atari playing in the background. Like, you can’t just say nostalgic things as a placeholder for actually writing, like, dialogue or characters or world building. And. And that one did that a lot like the original Ready Player One book. Don’t.

Don’t hate me for. For having that opinion. I actually feel the movie did a better job of not just hammering the nostalgia, even though it clearly did Wreck It Ralph. I feel like if you took away all of the different characters, we’re like, oh, my God, that’s Cuber. Oh, my God, that’s Pac Man. If you take all that away, there could have been a whole Wreck It Ralph movie here that was just about the Wreck It Ralph arcade game and didn’t have to pull another ip. But that movies doesn’t exist here. Like. Like, they clearly are adding a lot of this IP and nostalgia as filler because of the lack of an actual, like, movie that’s happening in the background.

That. My opinion on this one, maybe the thing that fuels it, though, is, you know, since you’re experiencing Ralph’s melees for the first 30 minutes, it’s like a mild depression or stronger depression. And that’s sometimes when the nostalgia stuff really kicks. So you identify with Ralph. It’s kind of a bummer mood. He’s. He’s drinking at the root beer tapper bar. So when we start seeing the nostalgia stuff, it’s like when you get bummed out at night, you start looking at old pictures, right? You can’t even get proper drunk. Yeah, he’s got to drink a bunch of root beer.

Okay, so here’s. Here’s where the story and some of the rules and stuff kind of fall down for me. And maybe you can shed some different light on it. What Ralph is in this movie is essentially a heel, right? Like he’s the undertaker or he’s like a bad guy that still has to exist for the good guy to be there. And he’s not necessarily like a true villain baddie that scares you or does anything mean he’s literally a heel? So all of the. The malaise and all of like, this philosophical soul searching that he’s going through doesn’t feel that much deeper than just any wrestling heel would also go through Hulk Hogan in his NWO phase, right? Like he’s not that much different than all these characters.

So all of the woe is me and everyone sees me as a bad guy and a villain. It. It kind of fell a little short for me just because as soon as he starts going into this angle, I’m just like, dude, you’re just a heel. Embrace it. I’m having my synchro mystic viewing experiences coming in earlier this week for Time Enough podcast. We’ve been covering movies that Rod Serling, the Twilight Zone feller wrote. And just two days ago I did a podcast on Requiem for a Heavyweight, which is a. It was, it was a TV show, like a one episode playhouse thing.

And in 1962 there’s a movie version starring a. Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney. But the point is this boxer who’s. They say he’s 37 years old, but Nancy Quinn was 47 at the time. He looks like it. But anyway, he, he. A doctor says, you are finished. You cannot box anymore. Which he just got punched out by Cassius Clay. So it’s like, you know what? If that ends your boxing career, so be it. You know, we can say with, from, from retrospect, you, you just got, you just got punched out by the greatest. You know, where are you gonna go from there? But anyway, the whole point of the movie is this guy who’s been beaten in the head too many times.

You’re trying to figure out how to live a life. He’s about to become a camp counselor, you know, to bring, to bring up boys or whatever. But then his old manager gets him drunk, so he shows up for the summer camp meeting, you know, schloss, and can’t do that. You know, this is Ralph behavior. The end of the movie is like, well, a lot of Xboxers can still do wrestling, right? Because the doctor doesn’t tell you after quit if you’re doing wrestling. And then I’m putting, he’s. In the end, he becomes the heel. They put him in like really offensive Indian wig.

And the last shot of the movie is Anthony Quinn, a very large, very good actor, running around the, the, the ring, you know, going, doing like the most offensive Indian thing possible. It’s like, oh no. That’s what he’s reduced to. Then the movie ends. So it’s like kind of a bummer. So Ralph, it’s, it’s a similar story to Ralph, though I guess Ralph still has his job. In this case, he can wreck it as long as the machine works. The only reason it’s maybe broken down is because he Leaves, so. And he didn’t get punched out by Cassius Clay.

He doesn’t have that excuse. But he is past his prime in a few different ways. And you know, it’s funny as you mentioned that, that Mickey Rooney was in the movie that you’re talking about about the boxer. Well, there’s also the Darren Arafnovsky movie the Wrestler that has Mickey Rourke, which is essentially the same story just played out all over again. So yeah, I know, I like I brought that up two days ago. That was my little compari, isn’t it? So I like that that Wreck It Ralph is actually Mickey Rourke in the wrestler. It is funny though, like, because yeah, Wreck It Ralph’s actual situation does have a lot of like existential dread to it.

He’s in a dying machine as the heel. You know, even the machine. It’s like they know they’re on their last legs. I mean there’s, there’s nostalgia arcade. Some of the most fun I had was going to Chicago. You pay 10 bucks and you play like just like there’s 50 games. They’re all made before 1995. You know, that’s fun. Wreck It Ralph can go in there or fix it, Felix, whatever. But the one they’re in seems to be like a functioning, I guess. In 2012, did America still have functioning arcades? Japan? Not really. I mean maybe next to like the old time, you know, phosphorus shop or something.

Yeah, it’s Dave and Buster’s now, isn’t it? Yeah. And, and even if you go to a Dave and Busters, they might have some old nostalgic stuff. But most of those games are like insert five dollar bill to sit on like a realistic looking motorcycle for about three minutes or something. Well, that place in Chicago is rocking it. Then it was like I said, 10 bucks, you could stay for two hours and just play the crap out of games like oldies. One of my absolute favorite things to do in Las Vegas is they’ve got an old pinball museum there.

And it’s kind of the same thing. You go and you pay like X amount and you just play pinball for as long as you like. I’ve. I think I’ve been in there for like six hours before. Nah. In Japan, for better or for worse, the arcades are being increasingly encroached upon by the claw machines. That’s, that’s the super popular thing that, you know, that and the gachapons. I did finally win something out of a claw machine a few weeks. So that was exciting because I don’t sit there and just put money in the thing. I just like I was at the hot spring and they have like a dinky one in the middle of the countryside.

Yeah, one. Let’s see if my 100 yen coin is lucky. And it was. Of course then I tried again a week later and put in 200 and got nothing. So whatever. I’m more for the gachapons. At least you get something with the gachapons. I’ve seen some great videos of the claw machines where someone will go into one of those places that has all the different claw machines and they bring a high powered magnet and they just try and drag any magnetic prizes like without even having to pay, just like drag them over onto the little slot.

I feel like people are maybe too polite and. And I’m respective of rules to do that in Japan. But maybe, maybe not. What I got has no metal either. It was a proper like, oh, I snagged the tag. Which I guess is the way you get that stuff. Especially if the claw is not put on full power for that whatever eighth pool or whatever. It’s a get. Get the tag. You might be in luck. So I don’t. I don’t feel bad if anyone ever cheats those games because some of them if you actually like. I had a friend that I think his family ran like a franchise, like a Denny’s or something.

And they had like almost every Denny’s had one of these big claw machines in the front and the one that they had in their store had a freaking setting in it that told you how often the claw would actually like retain. They all do. So that you could just dial that thing so that no one would ever win if even if they sat there and pumped like 300 in it, they would just never win. Unless it snagged like a weird corner of a tag or something and it couldn’t play into its normal tricks. And the trick is just that there’s absolutely no grip in like the actual claw grabbing.

Yeah, yeah. So I think that’s what happened. Just snagged the tag of like a little of a light plushie. So that came. Well done. Well done. Okay, well, let me get into the story for Wreck It Ralph. It’s not that long or deep. So essentially Wreck It Ralph is struggling that he’s the bad guy. He is. If we were talking about this being Donkey Kong, he’s the Donkey Kong. And he’s struggling that he has to be this bad guy. Even though he’s not actually a bad guy. But even when the game is off, everyone in his game at least treats him like he’s this horrible person, like he’s actually a villain, and that sort of eats Adam because this is the only place that he can actually live and like, and be resurrected.

Right. And if he’s in any other game or outside this game, you can have this perma death. So for the most part, you want to feel safe in your own game, even if you are the villain. And this seems kind of unique, at least to him, within this game. So he decides, or actually he realizes that Fix It Felix, who’s the good guy, he’s like the Mario in the Donkey Kong analogy. Well, it’s a 30th anniversary of this game, and Felix throws a party for all the other game characters, but nobody invites Wreck It Ralph. So when Ralph finds out about this and they all kind of chastise him quite a bit, and one of the side characters mentions, well, like, maybe if you get a medal at some point, then we’ll let you come and hang out with us.

With the implication being that he’s not ever allowed to get a medal in any video game because he’s a bad guy and bad guys don’t get medals. So he leaves his game of this Wreck It Ralph retro arcade game. He goes into this electrical sort of hub, and then he jumps through a couple different games. One of the games that he jumps into is sort of a cross between Halo and Call of Duty. The name of the game is Hero’s Duty. I think it’s more Halo than anything else. And they have to fight down these huge, like, like space bugs.

Kind of got, like a Starship Trooper vibe into it. And in this game, he ends up finding one of these medals, grabs the medal, but then ends up and goes into, like, this Mario World, Mario Kart sort of game world. Loses it to a little girl that steals it from him, gets it back again, and then realizes that the real journey was the friends that he made along the way. And that’s kind of, that’s kind of the entire movie. And they do some racing. Yeah, yeah, they do race and whatever. It’s. It’s not even as good as the Star wars race pod.

I was, I. You do think about the pod racing, watching this? I don’t know. I like all the candy gloop. I, I, I’d probably play Sugar Rush a bit. I’d play Sugar Rush. Warren Wreck It Ralph, I imagine. Yeah. But out of all the different racing games that Sugar Rush is based on, I feel like I would Just rather play either Cruisin USA or. Or basically Mario Kart. Like it clear. It seems clearly based on Mario Kart more than anything else. But it’s a direct combination of Mario Kart. If Mario Kart took place in Candyland or what really felt like this is maybe, maybe because of this.

Actually, I think this movie might have been the impetus of it. When my daughter is like 6 years old, so like a year or two after this came out, she really wanted to play the Temple Run style Strawberry Shortcake game a lot which kind of had the vibe. So she might there. I’m always talking about how, how I. I got programmed more than my daughter with some of these movies. But I think that one did kind of stick that in her mind. So when she was playing that she was like, oh, it’s like sugar rush. That’s what Strawberry Shortcake is that.

Did that get big in Japan? No, this was on my iPad, so it was actually from the American App Store. So do we see see Strawberry? I think Sanrio kind of has short is eating shortcakes lunch. You know, we don’t really see Strawberry Shortcake or Rainbow Bright in the States anymore. That’s also a 80s nostalgia thing. Yeah, we got Monchichi the monkey is. Is currently making a big resurgence in Japan. Like I was about, I owe them on Chichi in my bag because I got from a gachapon and I was about, I was looking at, at the ones in Akiha, not Akihabra, Harajuku.

And I thought that’s fun. Maybe I’ll get that for someone in the States. I look and it’s like 40 bucks. I’m like, what? No, I was expecting to see like 20 bucks. You know, it’s like twice as much as it should be for a really dumb looking monkey. Well, speaking of things that don’t make sense here, here’s some physics questions or maybe some game world questions that I. I came up with as we’re watching this. So the first place that Wreck It Ralph goes to, after we find out that you can die if you leave your own game realm.

So he goes into Hero’s Duty and basically the whole premise of this game is that the bad guys are these little mech bug things. And when Ralph goes and grabs that hero’s metal, he accidentally bumps into some of like these eggs and the eggs hatch into these pods. And long story short, all of these mech insect things that are in the Hero’s Duty game, they end up leaving Hero’s Duty and going into other Video games. And the first thing I was thinking of, like, well, if a whole bunch of these mech bugs show up in say, the.

The Candyland Mario Kart world, right. Doesn’t that mean that as soon as you kill some of those bugs in this Mario Kart world, the bugs die? But if the bugs kill you, you get to, you know, resurrect and there’s really no issue for you. So over time, it feels like they’re not even a threat. But. But the bugs escaping and invading all these other games are almost seen as this existential threat that everyone has to team together and fight. But I just. I don’t even get what the threat is. I guess it’d be more of a major annoyance.

Like you’re be like I. Because they do make the point. Like, Ralph brings like the one bug he thinks is dead because it drowns in what, the molasses swamp or whatever. And so it has time to breed before anyone kills one. So there’s just a ton of them by the time. Yeah, but the sugar rush people. Well, I don’t know. Here we’ll go. In gamer terminology, do you know the. The game ftl? Yeah, actually, I love. Yeah, Faster than light, right. Every once while you’re getting a case where you. You still have your cloning thing is okay, but there is no longer any air in your ship and the oxygen is too far away to fix from there.

So you gotta end the game. It’ll. You’ll never completely die because you continue to respawn, but your people. I can’t fast enough fix the oxygen so that maybe that’s what happens if you get enough of these bugs. I mean, if you’re asking for answers, there’s, you know, one I’m kind of working out. They’re just stuck in a, like, perpetual, you know, archon hell of battle or something, just getting killed by these bugs and coming back. So here’s the other one. If the bugs all escape Hero’s Duty, and let’s just say that everyone’s able to like, stomp out the rest of the bugs that escape that game.

Ultimately though, that means that if all the bugs die outside of Hero’s Duty, then the bugs are dead forever. And now Hero’s Duty doesn’t have a villain to play against. So therefore, now that game gets shut down and everyone in it dies. But all the sugar Rush bugs respond from the one bug that was in the swamp and had time to spawn. So theoretically, the 99.999 of the bugs, okay, they all get they all get to stay. Okay. Yeah. They still get there. I have a question. Since Wreck It Ralph kind of is Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong eventually gets to become the hero.

We get to have his bonanza. We get to go to his country. People love Donkey Kong. Now. It’s been 30 years. Is it just Wreck It Ralph is like. Or Fix It Felix just a crappy game that nobody actually cares about? Oh, 100. Yeah, of course. Okay. Because Donkey Kong, you know, he does. He doesn’t. He’s. Is he in the. He’s in the bad. Non. Meaning, is he. I don’t remember Bowser. Bowser gets to, you know, hang out in Mario Kart. Right. So he gets to have Wreck It Ralph’s fun, just in general. He’s always in Mario Kart.

He belongs there, I think. Yeah, I think it’s. No one wants to break it to Ralph. They don’t hate him because he’s a villain. They hate him because he’s a redneck. Now he’s a scumbam. Interesting. I don’t feel like Ralph is quite a red. I don’t. I feel redneck vibes, man. He. He wears overalls. He doesn’t wear shoes. His overalls have patches in them with, like, torn knees and stuff. He has, like, a mom’s haircut. A kitchen haircut. Special. Like, he kind of ticks almost all the boxes. Aside from maybe an accent. Yeah. I guess it’s because he lives on a pile of bricks next to a skyscraper.

Not a skyscraper. A large apartment. Freaking trash dump is where he lives. Right, Right. I mean, they can’t make it look too trashy. It’s not like he’s just living in stinky hell. I mean, might be, but I most remember bricks. I’m living in a pile of bricks, which. Yeah, okay, here. Here’s another one in. In the course of this movie, I really do like. What the hell’s her name? Sergeant. Sergeant Such and such. She’s the one that. Jane Lynch. Sorry, I’m just coming at you with the actor’s name. I can have that for you a moment? Sergeant Tamora.

Gene Calhoun. Sergeant Calhoun. There you go. Sergeant Calhoun. So Sergeant Calhoun has a, like, a weird connection with Fix It Felix or like, which is like, their version of this Mario, since I was saying guy from 30 Rock earlier. Jack McBray. Yeah. He’s the one that plays Fix It Felix. So we’ve got this kind of, like, bumpkin rube, Fix It Felix that matches up with Sergeant what’s her name? Was it again? Calhoun. Calhoun she met with Sergeant Calhoun, and Sergeant Calhoun is like a badass. She’s basically twice the size of. Of Fix It Felix. Because Fix It Felix is like, this tiny little guy, and she’s supposed to have this really dark backstory, like one of the darkest backstories in all of Disney characters, which I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s definitely very directly.

She has the darkest backstory. They say that, but I don’t know if I believe. I mean, we have seen a lot of Disney movies of this point. I feel like maybe she’s in the top 10, but I don’t know. I’d have to find room for her. But her backstory is that she’s always been this badass Halo Space Marine, except the one day she let her guard down, which was her wedding day. And on her wedding day, the aliens break into the chapel, and they basically eat her husband. And here’s the dark part, apparently, was that these insect that.

Which they call cy bugs. That these cyborg bugs. Cyborg cy bugs eat the husband, but the cy bugs then take on the form of whatever it is that they ate previously. So when we see them in Sugar Rush, they take on the form of, like, little candies. So the idea was that when the cy bug eats her husband, it then turns into her husband. So now she has to. To shoot her own husband as it’s like this transformation’s happening. So this is supposed to be, like, this big, scary kind of backstory for her that. And there’s this one scene where you and I.

I think. I don’t even know if this is an actual theory. I didn’t find anyone else mentioning this, but we see Fix It Felix say something to her that triggers her, and it reminds her of her husband. And I was just thinking, like, maybe you’re real dynamite. Something like that gal. You’re a dynamite gal. And. And he says this to her, and she has a flashback to her husband saying that to her over and over again. And I was just thinking, like, maybe Fix It Felix is her husband. Because Fix It Felix is this old retro game.

And maybe over the course of time, Fix It Felix turns into, like, a space Marine. Fix It Felix. Which becomes her husband. There’s really no other reason why he would say that exact same phrase to her in this movie in that context. And they even kind of look the same. Like, if you were to take her husband and put him into the same visual style that they render Fix It Felix in. He’s kind of a dead Ringer. So I don’t know if that’s a new fan theory or not, but I feel like that makes all the sense in the world.

Okay, so if. Let’s just. We like Wreck It Ralph. He’s a sentient guy that lives in this game. So Donkey Kong is also a sentient gorilla that lives in his game. Is Donkey Kong country a different Donkey Kong then? Because if that’s like several, you know, if that’s Fix it. Felix was a little. Was actually popular and there were five other iterations and then she married iteration five. That would be a completely different fix at Felix though having many of the same characteristics. Yeah, I mean it would be like a clone or be like an alternate universe version.

I mean if you watch Marvel and dc, you already know about all about the. The alternate universes. I think that’s all that is here. So if Koopa, King Koopa or Bowser, whatever, I’m bad Anon. If. If that is the one from Mario 64, he’s going to be much grumpier than the Bowser from Mario Kart who just has fun racing. I think so. Because you clearly see in video games they’ll often do like, like an Entourage game where you can pick the different versions of the different Marios. There was in fact there was a Mario game that I think came out for Super Nintendo at one point.

I don’t think I’m making this up where you could basically play like Mario 3 but use characters from Mario 2 in Mario 3 or 1. It was like a, like, like a mix up game that was intentionally made so that you could do like the school stuff. Like you could be Toadstool or a toad rather inside of one of these games I seen. Maybe Game Genie or something would do that for you. Even Super Mario Brothers 2 is just a completely different game and they just pasted Mario and Luigi and Princess Peach on top. Which it’s canon now though.

And don’t you say different. I mean you can play the original Japanese game, whereas Japan Super Mario 2 is just harder. It was just the same thing, but harder, you know. So I’ve got an annoying observation here too, and I don’t think it’s my fault. I think that modern society has trained me to look out for problematic scenes and dynamics at this point. And maybe 2012 when this came out, right. Maybe it’s just on the cusp, but like it annoys me that I even noticed this. But there’s this one freaking scene right where this, the sergeant and Fix It Felix are trapped inside of Sugar Rush.

And there’s these Laffy Taffies, and they’re falling in this Nesquik, and they realize that, okay, the Laffy Taffy are, like these vines, and if they make them laugh, they’ll come down and they can grab onto them, which will save their lives, because otherwise they’re going to die in this. This Nesquik that’s basically Nesquik sand that’s eating them alive. And they realize, kind of like babies, for whatever reason, babies like to see people get hurt or injured, and they laugh about that. They realize that the Laffy Taffy, every time the sergeant punches or slaps Fix it, Felix.

They laugh and they come down a little bit. So the gag becomes like, just keep hitting me. Keep beating me up, because that’ll make these Laffy Taffies lower down to save our lives. And here’s the annoying thought is, like, this is just a very problematic and toxic relationship right off the bat. And the premise is like, you’ve got a theater full of people watching the screen and just witnessing assault and domestic violence and laughing about it. And it’s one of those, like, you can’t swap any part of this and still have it be acceptable. But the fact that, like, the hot lady is beating up the nerdy guy for some reason, that’s acceptable in 2012.

And. And it bugged me, okay? I was sitting there having the real. The. The annoying rule. Thought I was like, he’s. He just lost a tooth and stuff. Does that mean that is a permanently lost tooth? Because he’s a sugar rush, swollen eye. Like, he. That’s what’s. What’s kind of interesting about is that actually show him getting physically damaged. He gets, like, a shiner, and then she hits him again. He, like, loses a tooth. Like, it’s somewhat violent, and everyone’s just, like. You can imagine, like, everyone in the theater laughing about this and the Laffy Taffy are laughing about this.

I mean, if this were Fred Astaire, you know, actually punching Alice to the moon, it loses some of the. The comedic flair, I think. Well, if they were intentionally thinking Roger Rabbit, though, doesn’t. Is that what Eddie Valiant does at some point, he starts beating himself up so the. The weasels will start laughing? Of course he’s doing it himself in that case. Like, this is something that, for whatever reason, even human babies, like, they laugh at people getting beat up. All right? But I guess in that case, he’s doing it to himself, which maybe makes things better, I don’t know.

Or may. Hey, you Know what? You don’t know what Felix is into. Maybe he just really likes that stuff. There’s also a few different digs in this movie at homeless people. One of them is that they show Q. Bert is begging for food because his game got shut down and he doesn’t have a home anymore. So in this kind of like Grand Central Station, he’s literally sitting on the ground in a corner with a cardboard sign that’s like, we’ll play for food or something and wreck it. Ralph smuggles him a cherry from the Pac man game.

And then later on, Vanellope makes this comment where she’s like, I bundle myself up in candy wrappers like a little homeless lady. And it’s kind of like this cute little funny thing. And as soon as she said that, and I thought back to the Cuber begging for food. Like, does that mean that they can starve? That these characters can starve? They’re outside their game. And that’ll also be permadeath. But it also feels like it’s instilling this idea in children watching the movie about you have to have a functional role in society, otherwise you will become homeless and you will die.

Like this is is reiterated throughout the entire theme of this movie from start to end, that if people don’t find you entertaining and you’re not providing some sort of an experience for this outside world, that you will actually lose your home, become homeless, starve to death, and die forever. Hey, the Roman Empire stopped having gladiatorial battles, and it crumbled. I’m not quite sure which came first in that case, but great game, too. Total war. Rome, Great game. Oh, that. I think my computer couldn’t run that at the time, so I just had to go back to civilization.

The game Civilization. We haven’t talked much about King Candy, AKA Turbo, which I. You know, that is. I guess it’s a B plot. But he’s keeping Vanellope out of the game because he’s basically hijacked Sugar Rush since he can no longer be in his own game. They call it. It’s a verb, too. They call it going turbo. Going turbo. You’re like, what does that mean? And then they. Three fourths of them. Yeah, they use the phrase a few times before they explain what it is. And it doesn’t really make any sense because the first time they said it, like, going turbo.

So what? Just like going faster? And again, like I mentioned, when I saw Cami at the beginning, I was like, well, that’s Street Fighter Turbo. Are they saying that Like, Turbo was a bad thing. Well, it turns out Turbo was the name of another protagonist in a different video game that got kind of like, canceled and removed. But before they took the game out, the character named Turbo jumped out of his game and he jumped into another game. I think it was like Grand Prix or something. That looks like an old Grand Prix game. And that when he was in that game, he distracted the other players, and eventually they were like, oh, this game’s glitching.

So not only did it take out his game, but it also took out the game that he infiltrated. So going Turbo is kind of like going rogue. But going rogue in this world means that they can shut your game down and everyone inside of it dies. Right, Right. So, you know, keep your place in society or everyone dies. You know, I. I did have to write down the. The quote though here, that Turbo is a mangy dog chasing a cautionary tale. I. I like that. So. And we find out at the end of the movie that Turbo also becomes King Candy, who is the.

The head guy inside of the Sugar Rush Mario Kart game. So he posed to be Vanellope. Right. That’s where he kind of hijacked it. Right. He. He hijacks it and. And he causes this glitch to start happening. And then the glitch manifests itself in Vanellope, and everyone blames Vanellope as a. Vanellope is some kind of a virus that needs to be avoided. But really, that glitching was caused by Turbo injecting his code into this game. It gets kind of convoluted. I wouldn’t say deep. It gets convoluted. Yeah. Let’s see. Anything else I’ve got here? Oh, yeah.

At the end, speaking of when they are defeating Turbo, that was one of the more phallic things I’ve seen in a Disney movie where it has the. They get the Mentos volcano to explode or something, and it just, like, has this, like, massive ejaculation, which I thought, that’s kind of weird. Followed by being a bunch of chocolate. I’m like, hey, where’s this going? So I just realized that those were Mentos. Yeah, Good call on that. Oh, they do call it out as Mentos because I put a note that I. I sometimes buy a ramen a Mentos.

Yeah. Because there’s a Mentos and Diet Coke thing, right? That if you eat. Have Mentos and Diet Coke, your stomach will explode. So you’re kind of riffing on that. Where’s the Pop Rocks? Maybe it’s Mentos and. Or Pop Rocks. So one other note that makes this movie feel like it’s trying to teach you about economics, at least in some different levels. Not just through homelessness and starvation and ultimate death if you don’t serve a function in society, but also that these games cost money. The whole mechanics of any arcade game and the difficulty levels and all of the different game mechanics are all based around extracting more money from you.

Right? Like, they were called quarter pushers at a certain point. And it’s meant to, like, have a very specific pace for you to die at a very specific pace, so that you’re constantly pumping money into this thing, yet there’s really no reference to any benefit that the characters, the actual video game characters get any extra fulfillment or reward for being in a popular game. They just get to not die. Right. But that also means that if someone were to go and play, say, Sugar Rush over and over again, and all of a sudden sugar Rush is making all this money, no one inside the game benefits from any of this extra income.

So I almost feel like there’s another analogy here that this is talking about. Like they’re all slaves. Like, they’re all working within an actual slave system where they’re being forced to work for real, legitimate capital outside a system that. That they can’t actually even participate in. No. In this construction, we, you and I, are the archons that go and play these games. We’re keeping them trapped in there. Right. You know, if it. If it breaks, get a repairman and see if you can fix it to bring it back to residential. Okay with that? I’m okay with being an archon.

Yeah. But that is the interesting thing, when Disney and Pixar or whatever does keep anthropomorphizing more, you know what I’m saying? You know, Toy Story, that once you think of it, the more you think about, the more the implications become very disturbing. Wrecker Ralph, the more you think about it, the more the implications become very disturbing. You know, like you said, they are slaves that are to the whims of things they can’t control and don’t matter to their masters. Because, you know, when the Wreck It Ralph machine gets taken out, you know, I haven’t played it for 15 years.

Anyway, you don’t care. Right. And. And because the characters in Wreck It Ralph aren’t even physical manifestations, right? These are electrical impulses that exist within this power supply brick, essentially. So they don’t. Weird thing. They’re physically in the power supply. They’re Physically moving through the corbs cords. Well, kind of particles or waves, though. Good point. But they have the shot where they physically show behind the screen, like, so the Wreck It Ralph people are in their three dimensional building and they can see it and, you know, from the outside. I feel like we’re still on the fence, though, whether or not they’re.

They’re physical manifestations, because they could still just be electrons or just amalgamations of energy that are sort of like collectively seeing the physical world outside without being physical themselves. But the. The point being that if they aren’t physical manifestations, then all these characters are essentially the classical definition of the word demon or daemon. So almost like there’s a solid, like, Solomonic magic of summoning these daemons using silver tokens and coins. Right. Like a quarter you would use to summon a daemon. Like, these are demons on demand. Like, you pay money into a machine and a demon comes to life and you get to interact with this demon until the amount of money that you paid for goes away.

Again, it literally. It literally feels like Solomonic magic. So none of the characters you’re seeing have a soul in this movie you’re in except for that little girl who’s trying to play hero’s duty. And it breaks. You know that no one has a soul. Wreck It Ralph has no soul, except Felix has no soul. Turbo has no soul. I believe that. Absolutely. What do we come down? The cars, by the way, the cars have a soul and cars. I think so. I think that cars are a different exoskeleton version of humans. Like, there are humans inside of those cars, but their bodies are just like a big amorphous Cronenberg, like Biopod, sort of amalgamation.

Also, we are clearly in the physical world in Cars. So, like, we’re having trouble working out like. Like, you know exactly what’s going on here. So the other thing is, like, fix it Felix. That’s always. You’re always seeing the building and you’re always seeing the dump on the side. Right. So Sugar’s Sugar Rusher heroes duty, I assume, are having a fair amount of cuts. So what happens to all the characters that are not in the scene when it cuts? Do you only exist when you’re on screen? Right. Well, you know what’s funny is, like, this is in.

In the video game terminology, this is called culling. But like, in the real world version of that, the word culling has so much darker, darker implications to it. Right, right. Like calling the herd. We’re finding some darker implications here. I mean, it’s not making me like the movie any less. The other reason I brought up Cars, I made a note that I was like, I, I. You really liked Cars. I, I was like, I like this movie better in cars. I was curious if you, if you put them head to head, which ones, which one’s on top for you? I, I think that the story of Cars is, is far superior to this one.

But I do think that cinematically and nostalgia factor, this one can edge cars out. But I, but I think my, the biggest thing with cars is that going into cars. I guess I had always assumed it was a movie for five year olds and that there was nothing that I was going to get out of that as someone that wasn’t a 12 year old. And I was just pleasantly surprised that it was a lot deeper than I thought it was. I wouldn’t consider, I don’t think any philosophical idea of this movie deep whatsoever unless you start getting into, like, are these Solomonic, you know, daemons or these classical Greek daemons that have been summoned for individual purpose? But that’s not really the movie doing the hard work.

That’s us doing the hard work. No, the whatever would waved through the hallucinatory visions and the oracle at Delphi, you know, that’s, that’s, that. That was wreck it Ralph 3,000 years ago. Just. Yeah. Hey, we’re trying to call it here. It’s your call. Disney podcast. You got any other notes you want to scrape into? I think I mostly gotten through mine. My only one I noted was, isn’t holotosis just the marketing thing? They bring it up like, oh, you have hella toast. No, I think that’s real. I think that’s real. Okay, and, and which is separate from having a tonsil stone.

Apparently, tonsil stone can be even worse than halitosis. Ooh, that sounds like bad news. Anyway, like, videos where someone does, like, smelling salts and they just like immediately cough up a tonsil stone. I, I have nothing. I don’t know anything about the world of tonsil stones, which makes me happy so far. I, I think it’s a combination of bacteria and calcium deposit that actually burrows itself like a pimple on the back of your throat. And over time just keeps building more and more up until you have like an actual stone, like a, like a, like a philosopher’s stone made out of just horrible, like, unprocessed bits of food and deposits.

And then it gets so bad that it’ll start to stink and they, in some cases they can just kind of like squeeze it Out. Like squeezing a pearl out of, like, a clam a little bit, I guess. But if it doesn’t come out that easily, then it’s, like, surgically involved. They’re weird, man. It’s like, I didn’t even know that they existed. But I get all these ads on social media all the time. It’s like, do you need to get rid of your tonsil stones? Like, I don’t know, do I. Do I even have one? I think I still have tonsils.

Oh, it’s. Oh. Interesting. Same. Psychologosis is a genuine or non genuine. So about half people are just convinced that they haven’t. Then the other half do. So this is like Morgellon’s disease? A little bit. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that one. That’s another. That’s another where you get the little black threads coming out of your. Yep. Okay. The little nanoparticles. That. Mitchell is the one that was on about it. I’ve heard about this. Yeah. I think Joni Mitchell was claiming she really. Okay, that’s interesting. I didn’t know. No, I only know about this through, like, weird chemtrail weather manipulation, conspiracy theory angles.

Oh, I think I heard one of those where they mentioned it. I think it was Joni Mitchell who. Who was kind of on about that. Yeah. I haven’t noticed in my. Myself, so that’s. That’s nice. The only other things that I had up here, I just wanted to be a little bit comprehensive here. There are some fan theories that I didn’t think any of them were that freaking. None of them really knocked my socks off. One of them was that Vanellope is not a glitch, but a virus, and that she really does have the capability of destroying other games.

I don’t know. I mean, I get it, but I also feel they kind of explained that away explicitly. When they’re on the side of the cabinet. Yeah, she’s on the side of the cabinet, so that’s. Okay. That was one of them. The other One was that Mr. Litwack, who’s the one that owns the actual arcade, that somehow he’s aware that all the video game characters are conscious and they’re sentient and that he’s just a sadist and he just likes seeing them suffer and, like, unplugging them and knowing that they’re gonna die. I don’t. He’s a demiurge, and he’s a.

He’s a demiurge. Yeah. I don’t. I don’t necessarily Know if that one holds any weight, but that seems to be another one of these popular fan theories. He’s the Christopher Robin, the Antichrist. So that’s most. I think. I think I like that one a little bit. Is that Fix It Felix is actually Sergeant Calhoun’s real husband, just reincarnated in a different game. Well, I. I like that theory, but, yeah, I think Fix It Phoenix would be like the much earlier iteration, which is why he would seem so kid like next to her, you know, but you take again Mario.

If you take Donkey Kong Mario compared to Super Mario Wonder, it’s a pretty different Mario, you know. And this one also, I’m not keeping a good tally yet, but this one has a reference to Al Anon or Alcoholics Anonymous, but it’s called Badanon. And they’re all, I guess, trying to work through the fact that they’re bad and they have their own serenity prayer. The. I don’t remember it verbatim, but it’s like something being bad is good. I’m bad, and that’s good. Yeah. Yeah. So, like. And I just thought it’s interesting because the only other movie that I can remember that had a direct reference to Alcoholics Anonymous was Finding Nemo, and it’s the sharks that are trying to give up the fact that they’re eating all of their friends.

But I. And here they’re just trying to accept it, though, right? Yeah, they’re. Well, they’re. Well, again, Al Anon isn’t the same as Alcoholics Anonymous. So Al Anon is just, like, trying to work through something that is affecting your life. Not necessarily that you’re doing anything bad or that you need to change, but you’re just, like, working through some stuff. And just the same way that I feel like there’s a short list of Disney movies which use guns as weapons in the movie and not just as props. Now I’m making another list in the back of my mind of all the alcoholics and like, narc narc, autonomous Narcotics Anonymous references in Disney movies, because there’s now there’s at least two.

And I’m probably sure that we might have missed one other one somewhere along the line. Here’s one other thought I have. We noticed that some, not all of the Pixar movies tend to have less of a Dixie Disney proxy. And this one, again, it feels kind of Pixar as well. And it seems it has all that bureaucratic stuff like we see in the Pixar is. Maybe that’s because John Laster is Executive producing. And it doesn’t. You can stretch the taffy pun intended, I suppose. I mean, Vanellope lose their game at the back, but there’s not a particularly strong proxy in here unless you.

There’s no parents. There’s abs. Like. Like, Ralph doesn’t have parents. Felix doesn’t have parents. No one, really. Even though his name is fix it Felix Jr. We don’t necessarily see that he’s got a father or a dad or kid. So even if someone were to get kidnapped or, like, die in this game, there’s really no concept of age or actually being kidnapped or taken away from someone. But, yeah, that might be one of the things that just tonally did make me think of this more of a Pixar, even though it’s not, you know, like. I mean, I feel like we’re allowed to say whether or not it’s more Pixar or not.

And I would say that this does make this more of a Pixar movie because it lacks a very clear Disney proxy. No. So just want to throw it out because we usually mention we. We had not mentioned that one yet today. So shall I wrap this one up then? Yeah, let’s do it. There’s actually. I don’t know, this in a reference to, like, we get to decide if it’s actually a Pixar movie or not. There was, ma’. Am. I’m gonna botch this a little bit. I want to say it was either called the D Death of an Artist or the Death of the Author that basically put forward that concept that once you release a story out into the world, even if you wrote it thinking that the characters were a certain way and the story was about a certain thing, once the whole world consumes your story and they collectively decide.

No, the story is actually about this. That the world collectively is right and you are wrong. Even if you’re the one that created the thing. Yeah, I guess that, you know, it’s like John Leno is like, I never listen to any of the Beatles music because all I hear are the mistakes, you know, where we don’t think, yeah, hippie. Damn hippies. Maybe Wreck It Ralph could reinvent himself as a bit of a hippie. You know, he’s already not wearing shoes and has wild hair, so he looks like someone you’d see at Woodstock in the background. Redneck hippie.

There we go. Maybe that’s his. His speed. He’d be shouting, play Free Bird. Anywho, what’s going on in your end, man? If you like these breakdowns you’ll really like the rest of the Paranoid American podcast. Anywhere you listen to your podcast, just search for Paranoid American and we’re well over. I think we just got on episode 120. By the time you’re listening to this will probably be beyond 120. So I mean we’re talking like 400 hours worth of content. If you haven’t heard any of it yet, you should go ahead and get started. There’s a lot of different topics that we go over.

Conspiracies, we talk about psychedelics, we talk about cartoons and movies and philosophical debates. Just anything that you could imagine. It’s all on the Paranoid American podcast. Okay, you do the podcast today. I. I guess I’ll just throw out my music link for today, which is a roving Sage media@bandcon bandcamp.com. i don’t know. They have Bandcamp Fridays, whatever that means. They make psychedelic rock under glaze cathexis, electronic music under damaged tape, and a weird algorithm of it all. And says the electric sages, you also find some binaural beats there to reprogram your brain with. So you can do that.

Anyway, this podcast be glitching out. I guess I’m gonna have to put the the sign on the front and try turning it off and on again. Hey, if you try turning it off and on again, the world of Wreck It Ralph. Did you just murder everyone? There are non American stickers. They’ll make you smile and snicker. False threads and secret societies. All of these and more on our sticker sheets. Explore the unique with Paranoid American sticker sheets. Unearth tales of cryptids, cults and mysteries through each sticker. These won’t last long. Get yours now@paranoidamerican.com All American stickers, cryptics, cults and killers.

Killers. We got all your favorite conspiracies. All our sticker sheets. We North American stickers make you smile and snicker your host flags and secret society. All of these and more on our sticker sheets. What the heck are you waiting for? Discover the extraordinary with Paranoid American sticker sheets. From Cryptids in the night to Cults out of sight. Each sticker is a unique find. Get yours now@paranoidamerican.com paranoid I scribbled my life away. Driven to write the page. Will it enlight your brain? Give you the flight? My plane paper? The highs ablaze somewhat of an amazing feel. When it’s real to real, you will engage it.

Your favorite of course, the lord of an arrangement. I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get emotional. Hey, maybe your language a game. How they playing it well without Lakers, Vader. Whatever the cause they are to shapeshift snakes get decapitated Met is the apex execution of flame you out. Nuclear bombs distributed at war Rather gruesome for eyes to see. Max them out that I light my trees blow it off in the face. You’re despising me for what though calculated and rather cutthroat paranoid American must be all the blood smoke for real.

Lord give me your day your way vacate they wait around to hate Whatever they say man it’s not in the least bit we get heavy rotate when a beat hits a thank us you well fucking niggas for real you’re welcome they never had a deal you’re welcome man they lacking appeal, you’re welcome yet they doing it still you’re welcome.
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