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[thevisualtwins]

10th Wreck it Ralph anniversary: an animated film who wrecks fences between the video game universe and cinema 

In 2022, Disney's Wreck it Ralph turns 10 years old! As for the arcade game Fix it Felix Jr! (imagined for the Disney animated film) which celebrates its 30th anniversary, this article celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Wreck it Ralph release. How did the director, Rich Moore (Zootopia, Ralph 2 .0), manage to link the video game universe to the cinema one? 

Wreck it Ralph is a Disney animated film with an original screenplay : it is not a video game adapted into a movie. It tells the story of the main character, Ralph. However, Ralph is one of the Fix it Felix Jr! arcade game character and, unfortunately for him, he is not the hero of this game but the villain. Ralph suffers of his status: he is always alone, forgotten by everyone. He also hates that other characters from the Fix it Felix Jr! arcade game ignore him. Even other video games or arcade games characters such as Bowser from the Mario saga, Clyde from the Pacman saga, Robotnik from the Sonic saga or Zangief from the Street Fighter saga don't understand how he feels. These characters were not invented by the director but they make the Wreck it Ralph storyline more realistic (Ralph is a villain like any other villain). As for Felix, he is the hero from Fix it Felix Jr!, and Ralph’s nemesis. Everyday he fixes the building that Ralph breaks several times a day. For Ralph, things have to change! He wants to win medals to prove to everybody and to himself that he is a good guy. He will win all these by crossing many other arcade games and he will meet the young Vanellope, who is actually a rider and the princess from the Sugar Rush, an arcade game which looks like to a Mario Kart video game, where the player has to create his/her own candy car (including a pilot) and win the race.     

When we observe the Wreck it Ralph dramaturgy, we discover the inspiration of video games and arcade games, including those of the Donkey Kong saga (like in the Donkey Kong video games, Ralph has to break everything).  Moreover, the world of video games appears as an interesting way to tell a story. The arcade game is a place where each character lives and works. At the end of the day, all the arcade games stop being video game characters and become alive, as real human beings. The hall of each arcade game looks like a train station and connects each arcade game to one another. After all, the imaginary world looks like our human world. The video game world is, in the end, ordinary. Another point leads us to believe the Wreck it Ralph video game world looks similar to ours. Indeed, in each book or movie story, the main character has difficulty fitting into the society he or she lives in: this is because the main character is different from others that he or she succeeds in overcoming obstacles. The path that the main character decides to follow will make it evolve but will also let the audience think about its actions. When the audience feels empathy for Ralph, this is because they feel close to Ralph. The audience shares common points with Ralph who is not only an arcade game character anymore. The director manages to highlight human feeling : this is this lack of love that Ralph feels that will set him in motion (and not the levers of the arcade game machine). 

What is more, the vocabulary used in Wreck it Ralph is specific to video games. The video game lexicon highlights some characters’ personality, such as for young Vanellope. In the middle of the animated film, the audience learns that Vanellope is a glitch, which means that she possesses many IT problems in her system. Vanellope becomes as rejected by the society of her arcade game as Ralph in Fix it Felix Jr!. In this way, the audience also feels empathy for her and appreciates her. The video game vocabulary is here a pretext to make the character of Vanellope more sympathetic. Moreover, the unique personality of each character from the Wreck it Ralph movie are complementaries. Ralph can destroy anything and Felix can fix anything. They will learn to work together to solve their problems. In the end, Ralph also understands his strength is not only to destroy everything he sees but he also to use his physical strength and his internal force to help his friends. Sometimes, we need to break walls to open people's minds.     

In conclusion, each extract and sequence of Disney's Wreck it Ralph movie shows that there is no real barrier between video games as a topic and cinema as a means of expression. Video games can become new subjects for screenplays and allow, as any other subject, to tell a story to the worldwide young and adult audience.