Wreck-It Ralph 2 Observations That No One Will Like (SPOILERS!)
I've read a lot of reviews of this movie, and after seeing it for myself, I can't help but disagree with the popular opinion that Wreck-It Ralph reverts to his villainous roots in this film.
I wouldn't even say Ralph plays the role of the villain in this film, although he serves as something of an accidental surrogate villain in the absence of a legitimate antagonist.
His actions do set the conflict in motion, but if you consider his motivations, you realize that Vanellope is the true culprit of what ultimately unfolds. Her being fed up with her own game causes Ralph to alter the race track to suit her desire for change. This results in her Sugar Rush game breaking (no one bothered to ask why she had to hijack control from the player, you'd think she'd know better being a frequently-used favorite racer among gamers for her unique "glitch" ability).
Again, Ralph's desire to help his friend inspires him to travel to the internet to obtain the necessary replacement part for the Sugar Rush cabinet. This leads to Vanellope's discovery of Slaughter Race, an open-world racing game that offers the freshness and variety that she's been longing for.
She is immediately taken in by the game and her attraction is only encouraged by some "advice" she receives from a cavalcade of Disney Princesses. Vanellope makes the decision to stay in Slaughter Race, but despite feeling guilty about not telling Ralph, she ultimately gets angry at Ralph for "eavesdropping" on her conversation and never owns up to her deception.
This is a game character who, for the majority of her existence, was ostracized and abused by her peers. All she wanted was to be a racer like them, and yet after a mere six years of having her way, she decides it isn't good enough anymore. And being a Disney Princess, she "wants more" and wallows in self-pity until a big, strong man (since no animal sidekicks were available at the time) takes action to make her new desire a reality. A trope the film itself pokes deliberate fun at in a renouncing way.
And even though we find Ralph once again sabotaging Vanellope's desire, which felt somewhat repetitive, this time he's not doing it for her own sake (as he was duped into believing he was in the first film) but really for his own. Ralph is something of an oafish character, but this decision comes off as something the modern-day Homer Simpson would do and considering Ralph's past altercations with viruses and the knowledge of the potential harm they can do, he'd have to be a supreme idiot to do what he did.
Ralph is all but selfless up until he makes the one selfish decision which nearly destroys the internet. A lesson well-learned, if not for the fact that Vanellope is consistently selfish throughout the film and is encouraged, applauded and rewarded for being so. In the end Ralph has to make the hard choice and let his friend pursue her desire. Again, the film puts the burden of sacrifice on Ralph and never tasks Vanellope with giving up anything but her paper-thin attachment to her own game and her friend Ralph, which she seems to come to terms with a bit too hastily.
The film recycles plot elements and themes from the first film, depicts the male characters as bumbling and unintelligent and the female characters as highly skilled, savvy, unapologetic and deserving of everything they desire. After six years, we should have gotten a stronger follow-up to the original film but this has all the brain-washing subtext and product placement I've come to expect from Disney's marketing department when they're committed to pushing tie-in merchandise. It sprinkles a bit of that signature Pixar warmth and tenderness, but it feels superficial and something of an afterthought on the screenwriter's part.
It's definitely more of a little kids' film than the original, but I'm not so sure I'd expose my hypothetical children to it considering the subliminal messages it exudes.
Again, he's made that mistake before and given the consequences it nearly had, you'd think he'd know better.
He admitted it's actually one of the best films he's ever seen and far superior to any of Disney's old crappy 2d stuff. In fact he actually said the CGI did the old Disney princesses far better justice then 2d ever did.
I wonder who did SS had to go down on in order to keep her lame career alive. Her bs and antics even in the recent election is no longer needed. Only reason I watch Sally Silverman show is to watch Rob Scharob. That is it.
I think it is not a film or anything I want to support just robbing people blind. They just bang together a bunch of bs and that is about it.
Aside from how "flawless" some of their female characters are, consider how ludicrous their reasoning for firing James Gunn was. And how even though they admit it wasn't the right thing to do, they still refuse to hire Gunn back.
They've even gone so far to sanitize their public image that there are rumors that Gunn will be replaced as director of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 by Paul Feig, the man who took a colossal shit on the Ghostbusters franchise just to make a feminist statement.
There actually isn't much of a male presence in Wreck-It Ralph 2. Felix's role is minimized and he's a bit more magoo than he was in the original, save for one nugget of wisdom about parenting that gets drowned out by race car engines. Sonic the Hedgehog and a new character named "Knowsmore" are depicted as know-it-alls, but they come off as really annoying to the other characters.
I think Hollywood's big failing in the feminist movement is that they keep appropriating these famous films with iconic male protagonists and remaking them with female protagonists.
It isn't as though there aren't great female leads in the coveted "blockbuster" genres that they can capitalize, though by rights there should be a lot more by now. We don't want or need to see James Bond, Danny Ocean & his crew or the Ghostbusters recast as women. Not when we've had Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor and Princess Leia for years. It's the studios' fault for mismanaging those franchises and not maintaining and expanding the popularity of those characters.
Just recently they made a new Halloween movie that transformed Jamie Lee Curtis, Hollywood's most famous living scream queen, into an arsenal-toting bad ass with enough homemade booby traps to make Macaulay Culkin piss his pants.
I think they're better off either resurrecting neglected female protagonists or creating all-new ones and fashioning them into long-lasting film icons.
All they can do from this point on is shovel manure on the franchise.
So rather than cast some statuesque starlets, they opted for the antithesis of Hollywood's self-imposed standard of beauty and spat out the cheapest, laziest alteration of the original Ghostbusters script they could muster and substituted the original's brilliant humor and wit with excessive dancing, loudness and queef jokes.
They didn't know how to make it the right way and they didn't really care enough to try.
And yes, from what I understand there are actually queef jokes in the 2016 Ghostbusters movie. That should give you an idea of how far the standard of comedy has fallen since the original was made.
The new one has promise, but I'm sensing the urge to sell all new dragon toys as the driving motivation behind this film as well.