Wreck-It Ralph

Wreck-It Ralph

As soon as I found out about this movie I wanted to watch it. It was a video game geek's gold mine of nostalgia. Add to that a compelling story about a man wanting to be a hero, loads of humor, and an awesome voice cast, and you get the superb movie that is Wreck-It Ralph.

I can't even wait, let's get right into the movie.





We meet Ralph, a 9 feet tall man who is a character in an arcade game called Fix-It Felix, Jr. For 30 years he's been the bad guy, always wrecking the apartment building Niceland and trying to stop Felix from fixing it with his magic hammer. When the player wins the game by getting Felix to the top of the building all of the apartment residents come to the roof and give Felix a medal and throw Ralph off the roof to land in the mud. After the game is over Felix gets congratulations from the Nicelanders, but Ralph has to go live in the dump where the broken pieces of the building get sent. Ralph wishes he could be a good guy and get the adoration that Felix gets. Then we see that the voice-over that Ralph was giving was him speaking at a group therapy called Bad Anon, full of video game villains. Their slogan is "One game at a time." The others tell Ralph that it is important that games had bad guys and it is not a reflection of their true selves. Ralph still wishes he could stop being a bad guy. The other villains are afraid he's "going Turbo" which is a reference that is explained later in the movie.
The reason all of these villains can gather together is that characters can take transportation through their power cables to the central power box called Game Central Station and travel to other game environments at night when the arcade is closed. While traveling back to his game from the Bad Anon meeting we hear a PSA from Sonic the Hedgehog that warns characters to be safe when traveling outside their games because if they die while not in their own games they don't respawn.
Ralph sees Qbert and other characters from his game with a sign saying that their game was unplugged. They get to live on because they had made it to Game Central Station before it was unplugged, but they have no home now. Ralph game them one of the cherries he picked up in Pac-Man which is where the Bad Anon meeting was held.






When Ralph gets back to Fix-It Felix, Jr. he finds that everyone is having a party for the game's 30th anniversary in the penthouse of Niceland, including Pac-Man who is not even a part of their game. He is upset that they didn't invite him. He goes up and talks to Felix who is too nice to turn him away and goes inside to have cake. The cake was designed to look like the apartment building with all of the Nicelanders and Felix at the top and Ralph in the mud at the bottom. Ralph wants to be included with the group but can't really bring himself to ask them so he instead says that the figure of Ralph on the cake should be at the top of the building too. One Nicelander, Gene, says that there is no room so Ralph suggests that the Ralph figure and the Felix figure can take turns being in the mud so there's more room at the top. Gene dismisses this idea since Felix has to be on the roof to get his medal. Ralph says that maybe the Ralph figure should get the medal instead. Gene says that if Ralph ever got a medal they would invite him to live in the penthouse, but bad guys don't get medals. Ralph insists that he is not a bad guy and Gene points out that he is because all he does is wreck the building. Ralph is upset at this and slams his fists down which destroys the cake, proving that he wrecks the apartment building.
Ralph leaves the party vowing that he'll return with a medal so awesome all of Felix's medals will wet their pants.






Ralph goes to the local Root Beer bar game, Tapper, where a lot of characters hang out at night and asks the bartender if he knows where he can get a medal. The bartender suggests the lost and found and while looking through it he runs into a soldier from the game Hero's Duty, a 1st person shooter where you destroy creatures called Cy-Bugs on an alien world. The solider is a little shell-shocked. He tells Ralph all they've been doing for the week they've been plugged in is climb the building and fight Cy-Bugs. And for what he asks, a stupid medal. Ralph asks about the medal, the Medal of Heroes, it's shiny and it says Hero on it, perfect for Ralph. The soldier sees a cockroach and freaks out and runs into the wall and knocks himself out. Ralph takes his outfit and heads on over to Hero's Duty before the arcade opens, hoping to get the Medal of Heroes for himself. He runs into Qbert along the way to the game.
Ralph joins the game Heroes Duty, led by Calhoun, a no nonsense female soldier who guides the player in the game. Ralph is unprepared for the Cy-Bugs, thinking they were little things, but no, they are as big as Ralph himself and they can become whatever they eat, as evidenced when one ate Ralph's gun and then grew guns itself. They also lay eggs at an alarming rate. Ralph messes up the game and gets the player killed trying to save himself from a Cy-Bug. After the game ends a huge bright beacon goes up and all the Cy-Bugs go towards it where it fries them like a bug like. Ralph decides that instead of playing the game as normal, he will instead climb the outside of the research tower and bust his way in to the chamber where they give out medals.
Back in Fix-It Felix, Jr. a player starts a game but is confused that Ralph is not there. When Felix shows up to fix the broken building he finds that it is not broken at all. He sneaks off the side of the screen and tries to find Ralph in his dump, but Ralph is not there. The player goes to tell the arcade manager and he puts a sign on the machine saying it is out of order. The characters know what this means, if the game isn't working soon they will be unplugged. They need Ralph to save them.
Qbert shows up to tell them that he saw Ralph headed to Hero's Duty so Felix goes there after the arcade closes to find Ralph. He is shot at by Calhoun when she thinks he's a Cy-Bug, but he is quick enough to stay safe until she realizes he is not a bug. He starts to tell her what he is doing there but finds himself entranced by her beauty. She doesn't respond to flattery, though. Felix asks her if she's seen Ralph but she didn't know that she had and says that nothing gets past her. Just then they hear the sound of broken glass coming from the top of the tower where Ralph has finally broken in to the chamber with the medal. The floor is covered with Cy-Bug eggs but Ralph is able to move around them. He walks up the stairs to the platform with the medal and the game is on autopilot and awards him the medal. Ralph fantasizes about how much better his life will be in the penthouse of Niceland when he inadvertently steps on a Cy-bug egg, activating it. The bug latches onto his face and he trips over most of the other eggs. He then lands in an escape pod which launches itself. The pod goes towards the exit of the game to Game Central Station, right past Felix and Calhoun. Ralph bounces around Game Central Station before heading down the tunnel to another game where everything is made of candy and cotton candy clouds get stuck in the intake for the escape pod and it crashes. Ralph and the now fully grown Cy-bug are launched by the ejector seat and Ralph grabs the trunk of a candy cane tree while the Cy-bug hits another tree and sinks to the bottom of a taffy pond.
Ralph is glad to be rid of the bug, but then notices his medal is no longer around his neck.






Ralph sees the medal hanging off the branch of another tree and starts to climb it. On the way up he meets a little girl with candy in her hair who also sees the medal but thinks it's a gold coin. She is quicker than Ralph and gets it first. He begs her for the medal back because it will change his life. She says it will change her life too, as she pixelates and gets blurry for a moment. She then runs off while he falls into the taffy.
Felix and Calhoun find out that Ralph went into Sugar Rush, a candy-themed racing game. Calhoun tells Felix that they have to track down the Cy-bug that was with Ralph and stop it before it multiplies. Cy-bugs, she explains, do not know they are characters in a game and will only kill, eat, and multiply unless they see a beacon that will attract and destroy them. Felix remarks that she's very intense and her second-in-command says that it's not her fault, her backstory is that the one day she didn't do a full perimeter check was her wedding day and her groom was eaten by a Cy-bug in the middle of the ceremony.
Felix insists that she take him with her since it is his job to fix whatever Ralph breaks.
Back in Sugar Rush the regular characters are getting ready for their nightly event. Everyday 9 racers are available for players to choose from, but everyday the 9 that are available are different. All of the racers race every night and the top 9 are the ones playable for the next day. The cost of entry into the qualifying race is one gold coin. King Candy, the ruler of Sugar Rush, is a jolly man who's catchphrase is "Have some candy." He officiates the races as well as races himself. All of the usual racers throw a coin into the pot for their spot in the night's race. Then the little girl who got Ralph's medal throws it in and the game accepts it as a coin and she gets onto the roster as well, Vanellope von Schweetz. Everyone is upset when they find out that she is in the race, they call her a Glitch (referring to the moments when she pixelates). Her go cart doesn't even have an engine, it is pedal powered, she made it herself. Just then Ralph comes on the scene, but he is covered in taffy and looks like a green monster. He wrecks the stands trying to get to Vanellope, not knowing that she already used his medal to get into the race. When she did that the medal disappeared like all the coins do when a racer puts it in the pot, so he can't get it until after the race.
Ralph end up stuck in a cupcake as well and the cops (a donut and an eclair) beat him instead of the thief he is chasing.

Ralph gets away from the police and out of the taffy and finds Vanellope being taunted and bullied by the other racers. He stops hating her for stealing from him when he sees her being treated like a glitch the same way he was treated as a bad guy in his own game. The other racers had destroyed her cart, but she figures Ralph can help her get a new one so she makes a deal with him that if he does she will give him back his medal when she wins.
Calhoun and Felix and on Ralph's trail when Felix remarks that he never thought Ralph would go Turbo. Calhoun doesn't know what that means since her game is new to the arcade so Felix explains it for her. When the arcade first opened there was a racing game called Turbotime. Turbo was the star racer of the game and loved the attention. When a newer racing game showed up and got all the attention from the players Turbo was jealous and left his game and tried to race in the new one and ended up getting both games shut down for good.





Vanellope needed Ralph to get a new card because the bakery where the real carts are made was locked. He was strong enough to break through and help her make a real cart. When they finish the cart the police and King Candy show up, determined not to let Vanellope race. They chase Ralph and Vanellope (who doesn't actually know how to drive) around until Vanellope tells Ralph to go through the rock on Diet Cola Mountain. It was a secret entrance and Vanellope lives in the mountain next to the diet cola hot springs. The ceiling of the mountain is covered in Mentos so when they fall they cause a reaction that shoots up streams of the boiling hot cola. Ralph helps Vanellope learn how to drive and she is a natural.
King Candy decides to take matters into his own hands and goes into the code of the game. He is able to get the medal out of the code for the racing winnings and give it to himself. As he leaves the code we see Vanellope's code separated from the rest of the game and looking broken, kind of like someone did that to it intentionally.
Felix and Calhoun have a moment in the escape pod he fixed and he calls her a dynamite gal. That reminds her of her lost fiance, he called her the same thing, so she kicks out Felix who then goes to the castle and gets put in the dungeon for being associated with Ralph.
King Candy talks to Ralph while he's alone and explains why Vanellope can't race in exchange for Ralph's medal. If Vanellope wins she gets to be one of the 9 racers for the day. If she is and she glitches while being played the players will think the game itself is broken and it would get shut down. All the citizens of Sugar Crush would then leave to Game Central Station except Vanellope can't because glitches can't leave their games. The game would be powered down and she would go with it.
When Vanellope comes back she gives Ralph a cookie medal she made where she wrote that he is her hero. He destroys her cart for her own good, doing the one thing he is good at, wrecking things. She can't understand why he's doing it until she sees he has his medal back and realizes King Candy got to him.
Ralph then leaves to go home, sad about breaking Vanellope's heart, but at least he has his medal.







Ralph gets back to Fix-It Felix, Jr. and finds it all but deserted. Only Gene is left, who tells Ralph that everyone left after Felix didn't come back since the game will be unplugged in the morning. Ralph then throws his medal at the screen and the out of order sign falls and he can see Sugar Rush across the way. He then notices on the side of the machine Vanellope's picture. That's weird since everyone said she was a glitch since she wasn't supposed to exist. He goes and finds Sour Bill, a living sour ball who works for the king and is cleaning up the pieces of Vanellope's cart. Sour Bill reveals that King Candy didn't want Vanellope racing because if she crosses the finish line the game resets. He doesn't know why, though since the king had locked away everyone's memories.
Ralph frees Felix who is mad since he has been rejected and treated like a criminal today. Ralph says that he knows how that feels, that is everyday for him, which helps Felix understand why Ralph did what he did. Felix fixes the cart and they both get Vanellope out of the dungeon and get her into the race. Vanellope does really well and gets to second place behind King Candy when Calhoun shows up and says that the game is about to be overrun by Cy-bugs. The Cy-bugs are now candy themed since they've been eating candy in the game, but they are just as deadly as ever. The citizens of the game make a run for the exit to Game Central Station while Vanellope and King Candy still fight it out for first place, literally. King Candy rams Vanvellope's cart and starts to hit her with the stick that he broke off his car. Vanellope grabs the stick and starts to glitch and the glitch spreads to King Candy and he starts to transform into Turbo. Turbo didn't die when his game was unplugged, he got out and got into Sugar Rush when it came online. He reprogrammed the game and himself so no one would know he was Turbo. He is trying to crash Vanellope into a column when she realizes her glitch helps her move a little bit, so she can teleport by intentionally glitching, which she does. She gets out of the tunnel and then Turbo heads straight into the mouth of a waiting Cy-Bug, getting eaten.
Vanellope is ready to cross the finish line but the Cy-bugs eat the finish line so she can't. Ralph and Felix get her to the exit of the game but she reminds Ralph that she can't leave. He tries to take her anyway but a forcefield prevents her from leaving. Calhoun says that they'll have to blow up the exit and that Sugar Rush is lost since it doesn't have a beacon. Ralph then gets an idea. He takes Calhoun's hover board and flies to Diet Cola Mountain, planning on doing what he does best, wreck something. He starts to pound on the Mentos formation from the top of the mountain and it begins to loosen. Just as he's about to give it the final blow he get's intercepted by Turbo who is now part Cy-Bug. When the bug ate him he became part of it and says he is now the most powerful virus in the arcade and can take over any game he wants. He grabs Ralph and flies him high up into the air so Ralph can watch Vanellope get eaten by Cy-bugs at the barrier. Turbo says it's game over for Vanellope and Ralph and Ralph says, "No, just for me." He breaks out of Turbo's grasp and aims himself toward the Mentos below. As he falls re recites the Bad Guy Affirmation, "I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There is no one else I'd rather be than me." I cry every time he does this. Here is a bad guy, giving his life to save a little girl. He can do it because he's about to wreck something, that is his skill. Vanellope sees Ralph falling and starts to teleport in short jumps around the Cy-Bugs to try to get to him. Ralph lands on the Mentos and they all start to fall together. Vanellope had gotten back to her cart and is driving it while glitching to move even faster and around obstacles and goes into the mountain just in time to catch Ralph and glitch through the walls before the Mentos land in the cola and create a boiling hot geyser a couple hundred feet tall. The Cy-bugs are attracted to the geyser like it's a beacon and they all go towards it and are destroyed, even Turbo.
Felix fixes the finish line and Vanellope crosses it and turns into a princess and the whole land is restored. Everyone gets their memories back and realize that Vanellope was their princess the whole time. She'd rather be a racer, though, so becomes president instead of princess.
Ralph goes back to Fix-It Felix, Jr. and is glad to be the bad guy again. With all the characters back the game is not unplugged. They even invite homeless characters in for bonus levels and make the game very popular again. Felix makes a real home for Ralph next to the dump along with apartments for all of the transplants from old games. The best part of Ralph's day is when he is lifted up by the Nicelanders to throw him off the roof at the end of each level, because when he's up there he can see Sugar Rush and can see Vanellope racing. Her Glitch makes her popular since she can teleport at random. She will notice Ralph looking at her and she smiles. Ralph's final line is, "If a little like that can like me, how bad can I really be?"
I tear up again.

Awesome movie, and I can relate to the character well, despite not being a bad guy. All of the geek references make it even better.