Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Jan. 3rd, 2013 19:50![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyWreck-It Ralph. Dir. Rich Moore, 2012.
My friend M and I saw this movie the Saturday before Christmas, and we loved it! I had heard from everyone how good it was, but it really was exactly that good. I think the last time I was so purely thrilled by and enjoying a movie may have been--well, probably the last time I saw a Pixar movie.
Wreck-It Ralph is the designated bad guy of the Fix-It Felix™ arcade game, and after 30 years of being scorned by his fellow game denizens he decides to prove that he could be a good guy if he tried. Through a series of misadventures he winds up in the racing game Sugar Rush trying to help the glitch Vanellope von Schweetz fulfill her dream of racing in the tournament while his old acquaintance Felix, and the most kick-ass female video game character since Metroid, Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun, are in hot pursuit to fix what he's wrecked.
This movie was so good! The design was great, the characters were great, the graphics were amazing, the voice acting was stellar, the music was really good, and particularly after all the crap that's gone down this year about misogyny in the video game industry, it was really great to see the way that the movie subtly but definitely subverted some of the more invidious gaming gender stereotypes. The gamer in the arcade, for instance, is a girl, and while Sugar Rush has the color scheme of a game marketed to girls, boys are shown playing it in the arcade, and the actual gameplay is straight out of the podraces of The Phantom Menace (except, you know, without being deathly boring). The girl gamer is shown playing Hero's Duty, which is basically the most obvious Halo clone you could ever think of, but its badass tough lead character with the super angsty back story is…a woman. Between that and all the cameos and shoutouts to the last thirty years of games, it was so great. And, the plot and its resolution were both believable and heartfelt. Basically, it was wonderful from start to finish.
My friend M and I saw this movie the Saturday before Christmas, and we loved it! I had heard from everyone how good it was, but it really was exactly that good. I think the last time I was so purely thrilled by and enjoying a movie may have been--well, probably the last time I saw a Pixar movie.
Wreck-It Ralph is the designated bad guy of the Fix-It Felix™ arcade game, and after 30 years of being scorned by his fellow game denizens he decides to prove that he could be a good guy if he tried. Through a series of misadventures he winds up in the racing game Sugar Rush trying to help the glitch Vanellope von Schweetz fulfill her dream of racing in the tournament while his old acquaintance Felix, and the most kick-ass female video game character since Metroid, Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun, are in hot pursuit to fix what he's wrecked.
This movie was so good! The design was great, the characters were great, the graphics were amazing, the voice acting was stellar, the music was really good, and particularly after all the crap that's gone down this year about misogyny in the video game industry, it was really great to see the way that the movie subtly but definitely subverted some of the more invidious gaming gender stereotypes. The gamer in the arcade, for instance, is a girl, and while Sugar Rush has the color scheme of a game marketed to girls, boys are shown playing it in the arcade, and the actual gameplay is straight out of the podraces of The Phantom Menace (except, you know, without being deathly boring). The girl gamer is shown playing Hero's Duty, which is basically the most obvious Halo clone you could ever think of, but its badass tough lead character with the super angsty back story is…a woman. Between that and all the cameos and shoutouts to the last thirty years of games, it was so great. And, the plot and its resolution were both believable and heartfelt. Basically, it was wonderful from start to finish.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 00:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 01:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 02:26 (UTC)I went to see this after a really spectacularly crappy day (in which I very nearly collapsed in tears in the office), and it was such a blissful way to spend a couple of hours and re-center myself. The world is not a horrible place if we can get movies like that. It was marvelous.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 02:40 (UTC)I saw it the weekend after Sandy, and it was definitely a good cheering-up thing to do!
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-07 04:46 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 03:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 05:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 08:38 (UTC)