When did video games become so violent and scary?

Wreck-It-Ralph

(2012)

Is there any way to tell the difference between a Disney brand movie and a Pixar one these days? Both are adorned with John Lasseter’s name and, when one releases shameless cash-ins such as Cars 2 while the other comes up with a high concept riff on ‘80s computer games, the lines are blurred further.

That said, Brave was a welcome return to original storytelling for Pixar. And, inspired as its premise is, Ralph quickly succumbs to tried-and-tested characterisation and plotting. Rich Moore makes his movie debut (he also gets a story credit, one of seven contributors), but he’s a veteran director of TV fare such as of The Simpsons and Futurama. He brings a suitably irreverent, offbeat sensibility to the material. Although he succumbs to traditional Disney/Pixar sentimentality in the final reel, there’s always the feeling that Ralph might shoot off in an unexpected direction at any given moment.

Ralph is the villain of an 8-Bit 1980s arcade game, Fix-It-Felix, Jr (not a million miles from Donkey Kong, with Ralph as Kong); he’s tired of being the bad guy, and seeing the luxurious conditions his fellow characters bask in while he’s consigned to spend the night on a pile of bricks. So he sets out to become a hero, seizing a medal from a first-person-shooter (Hero’s Duty) before arriving in the Super Mario Kart-esque Sugar Rush. There, he meets a computer glitch, Vanellope, who has dreams of racing. Unfortunately, Ralph has brought along a Cy-Bug from Hero’s Duty, which could spell doom for Sugar Rush.

Moore crams the film with references to past gaming characters, from Pacman to Sonic the Hedgehog. Q*Bert is easily the most indulged of these, and the most likeable. To be honest, I’ve never been a great gamer so many of the characters passed me by without recognition. They’re just the icing on the cake, however; as it should be.

The movie’s set up is superior to its pay-off, such is usually the case where curmudgeonly or miserable characters find redemption; the ending takes the edge off and all you are left with is, well something akin to Sugar Rush. So Ralph (an impeccably cast John C. Reilly) visiting a villain’s support group, incurring the wrath of his fellow characters at a 30^th anniversary bash for Fix-It-Felix, Jr, and causing enormous disruption in Hero’s Duty, is carried off with a degree of anarchic aplomb. The sketching out of the gaming micro-universe has the same kind of diligence that was brought to bear on Toy Story, with clear rules for what happens when humans are no longer playing (as such, characters acting up and causing games to malfunction makes for an amusing and instantly recognisable reference point).

Once Ralph meets the (as he puts it) annoying brat Vanellope, the story settles on a much more predictable path. I’d hoped there would be a wider variety of game settings for Ralph to traverse (something akin to Looney Tunes – Back in Action’s Louvre sequence), but Moore opts to play it safe. Vanellope echoes the cutesy kid in Monsters, Inc. but with added Sarah Silverman smart-mouthiness. Clearly, we’re supposed to find her adorable but she quickly becomes a strain on my nerves. It’s the point in the film where the lessons that need to be learned come into focus, and Ralph slowly starts to lose his edge. In parallel, Felix (30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, who is perhaps a little too recognisable; at times I felt I was listening to Kenneth) and sexy Hero’s Duty chick Tamora (Jane Lynch, also instantly identifiable) are on a romantic course as they attempt to track down Ralph and the Cy-Bug. There’s even a villainous reveal that I wasn’t expecting (as in, it didn’t make a huge amount of difference and so leaves one suspecting it was the result of one story conference too many) but comes from the Pixar’s The Incredibles.

But this is still one for Disney to be proud of, if only because it diverges from the safe territory of restaged fairy tales (don’t worry, they’ve another of those coming up). The gags are sometimes a bit on the crude side (you can tell Silverman’s involved when there’s an extended poo-themed discourse), but more often quite inspired (“You hit a guy, with glasses” is especially witty). 2012 gave offered a string of good-but-not-quite-great animated features, and Ralph can be added to that pile.

***1/2

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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