The two movies’ Tuesday opening nights set box office records for Thanksgiving previews. “Ralph Breaks the Internet” earned $3.8 million, with “Creed II” just a hair behind it at $3.7 million. Both are the best preview showings ever for Thanksgiving week.
For Disney, the sequel to “Wreck-It Ralph” outperformed previous Thanksgiving previews by “Coco” ($2.3 million) and “Moana” ($2.6 million). The animated family film is on track to make $67 to $75 million over the extended holiday weekend.
“Creed II” also outdid the original movie, which made $1.5 million in previews the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in 2015. The sequel is expected to earn $50 million through the weekend.
The other movie that opened with Tuesday night previews didn’t fare as well. “Robin Hood” grossed just $800,000 and has a projected five-day total of $13 to $15 million.
In terms of the winter movie cycle, Thanksgiving is a great time to get caught up.
You have a couple of days off, are probably stuffed with, er, stuffing, and want to be prepared for the Christmas movie onslaught that is just around the corner, when both Mary PoppinsandSpider-Man will be vying for your attention (amongst many, many others). So we’ve prepared a handy viewing guide for the Thanksgiving break, for when you want to escape to the theater with your loved ones, or leave them behind while they digest their turkey and watch whatever football game is on. And don’t worry, if you want to watch Netflix instead, we’ve got that covered, too.
‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald‘
Warner Bros/Wizarding World
Remember “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” 2016’s ambitious but somewhat confusing fantasy romp that was supposed to serve as an extension of the lucrative Warner Bros. franchise but instead was kind of just huh? Well, they made another one! And this one is much better.
With Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne, again) dispatched to Paris to track down the powerful Credence (Ezra Miller) and foil the plot of villainous wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), the movie adds some international intrigue, a more admissibly knotty plot and, thanks to an appearance by sexy young Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), some concrete connections between the various strands of this franchise. Just be warned — before you pile the family into the station wagon, it might be a good idea to re-watch the first movie. Consider that your magic spell for understanding “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.”
‘Widows‘
Fox
Given the pedigree, it’s very clear that “Widows” isn’t your run-of-the-mill thriller. Based on a British prime time series from 1983, it concerns a group of women (among them: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki and Cynthia Erivo) who are forced into a sticky situation when their criminal husbands are killed in a heist-gone-wrong.
Directed by Academy Award-winner Steve McQueen and co-written by Gillian Flynn (who wrote “Gone Girl” and “Sharp Objects”), this is a movie that thrills on both an intellectual and visceral level. “Ocean’s 8” it is not.
‘The Favourite‘
Fox
This is the time of year when the studios unleash their stuffy period movies and, yes, there are even a few of those this year. But “The Favourite” is not one of them.
Rambunctious, sexy, and unpredictable, it’s the antithesis of every boring costume drama that they throw Oscars at with willful abandon. This is electrically alive in a way few films, period or otherwise, ever are, anchored by a trio of brilliant female performers (Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz) and some of the finest direction this year (courtesy of Greek genius Yorgos Lanthimos). Set during the reign of Queen Anne (Colman) in the early part of the 18th century, it features palace intrigue, love triangles, and people getting pushed into muddy ditches. What more do you want?
‘Ralph Breaks the Internet‘
Disney
In the sequel to the hit 2012 animated film, Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) head to the Internet, where they fall in with online auctions, meme-creation, and a particularly violent “Grand Theft Auto”-style game called “Slaughter Race” that is lorded over by a bad-ass, leather-clad ringleader named Shank (Gal Gadot). Also, the Disney Princesses show up. As you can imagine, it’s a lot of fun.
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” is one of those rare family sequels that won’t leave you with a toothache from it being so sweet, there’s actual pathos and emotionality but nothing feels syrupy or forced and it’s honestly one of the most visually ravishing animated features you’re ever likely to see.
‘Green Book‘
Universal
Up until this point, Peter Farrelly has directed as one-half of the Farrelly Brothers — serving as the tag-team provocateurs behind gross-out extravaganzas like “Dumb and Dumber,” “There’s Something About Mary,” and the underrated classic “Kingpin.” So it’s interesting to see Farrelly emerge as something of an Oscar frontrunner for his work directing “Green Book,” a based-on-a-true-story racial drama starring Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen.
In the film. Ali plays Don Shirley, a classical pianist, who hires New York tough guy Tony Vallelonga (Mortensen) to escort him on a tour of the South. This could be the feel-good movie of the fall, which makes it a perfect after-Thanksgiving family outing.
‘Creed II‘
MGM
Finally. The follow-up to 2015’s brilliant “Rocky” refresh “Creed” is now upon us. Let us give thanks.
In “Creed II,” Michael B. Jordan returns as Adonis Creed, the son of Apollo Creed, who this time turns to going toe-to-doe with Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), the son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), who famously killed Apollo in the ring (in 1985’s Cold War classic “Rocky IV“). Oh, and Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is still around! So there’s that. Hopefully the sequel builds on the intensity and excitement of the first film, while supplying some new wrinkles as well. We can already feel ourselves getting inspired.
‘Roma‘
Netflix
Yes, “Roma” is a Netflix movie. But in a rare move, the streaming service is debuting the movie in theaters first, before it hits the platform in mid-December. And, really, you should do everything in your power to see it on the big screen. In fact, try and see it on the biggest screen possible. Because this movie is absolutely jaw dropping.
An epic on a miniature scale, the highly autobiographical film from “Gravity” filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron follows a middle-class family in Mexico City in the early 1970s dealing with heartache, political upheaval, and the day-to-day domestic drama that every family deals with. What makes this story even more captivating is that it’s told through the eyes of the family’s housekeeper Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, giving one of the year’s best performances even though she’s not a professional actor). You have to see this with an audience in a theater. It just won’t be the same on your iPad.
‘Overlord‘
Paramount
If your family is really annoying you over Thanksgiving, it might be time to watch a little more muscular movie at the multiplex. Perhaps something like “Overlord,” a high-concept World War II romp that features thrills, chills, and the cathartic experience of watching sweaty hunks brutally murder Nazis.
Conceived by mystery box magnate J.J. Abrams, “Overlord” is a hard-core horror movie mixed with an equally hardcore war movie, wherein a group of Allied soldiers (among them Jovan Adepo and Wyatt Russell) parachute into France to take down a radio tower on the eve of D-Day and wind up finding a gnarly zombie conspiracy. You know, that old story. But there are some definite grindhouse pleasures to be had as Nazis get shot, blown-up, and lit on fire and then come back from the dead to do it all again.
After years of gameplay in the 8-bit world of “Fix-It Felix Jr.,” the character’s first foray into the weird, wild world of the Web is as cacophonous and overwhelming as you might expect. But of the many goods and services provided at the click of a button, the most dangerous for Ralph — and the most needed — is a mirror for his own behavior. John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman return as the anchors of this delightful digital journey, but for such a vivid and energetic look inside the internet, directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston offer a shrewd and surprisingly unsentimental look at the dangers of focusing on just one thing in a world full of endless opportunities to connect.
Six years after the events of the first film, Ralph (Reilly) and Vanellope (Silverman) have settled into a familiar routine — “working” in their games by day, boozing it up at Tapper’s at night. But when the Sugar Rush game breaks in the real world, Mr. Litwak (Ed O’Neill) shuts it down, forcing Vanellope and her fellow drivers to seek shelter elsewhere in the arcade. Ralph, determined to help his best friend, infiltrates Litwak’s newly acquired internet connection and the two venture into its new and overwhelming landscape in search of replacement parts. What they soon learn, however, is that even digital characters need money, and after inadvertently driving up the price of the part, they need lots of it.
Crossing paths with J.P. Spamly (Bill Hader), who promises opportunities to score quick cash playing video games, Ralph and Vanellope start doing what they do best in other worlds — including Slaughter Race, a brutal Mad Max-like racing game where Vanellope meets her match, and possible new BFF, in Shank (Gal Gadot), its head driver. But when Ralph becomes threatened by Vanellope’s burgeoning curiosity about a world outside not just their respective games but the friendship he holds most dear, he begins to discover just how fickle the internet can be. Soon, he is forced to consider whether his insulated life of routine is protecting him from the rest of the world, or keeping him from exploring it.
If you’ve seen a single pixel of footage from the movie in advertisements, then you know that the Disney princesses make an appearance — a sly and hilarious display of corporate synergy that sends up not only the internet’s bottomless reservoir of time-wasting crossovers, but also many of the bygone conventions applied to the studio’s animated heroines. Moore and Johnston don’t quite always fall on the right side of when to include a “real world” company like Google or Ebay and when to make one up, but the movie is most successful when it’s skewering not just the companies and properties that comprise our great electronic unifier but the method and rhythms of our interactions with it. Ralph’s efforts to generate “hearts” in exchange for cash is hysterical and sort of wonderfully depressing in its pandering desperation — he will literally do anything, no matter how shameless — but it connects the movie to some real and unflattering truths about the web, and via the title character, some of the folks who spend the most time on it.
Specifically, Ralph has built himself a comfortable existence as Vanellope’s best friend, and just as he feels complete satisfaction from that dynamic, he expects her to feel the same way — and when she doesn’t is when the whole internet comes crashing down. The movie explicitly articulates some simple, important truths — “never read the comments” — but the more oblique ones are probably the most essential to heed, especially as Ralph’s determination to “protect” and “help” Vanellope manifests itself in increasingly unhealthy ways. Such lessons are of course relevant in electronic space where cruelty and kindness can be dished out carelessly and be dismissed (especially by the perpetrator) as intangible. They feel particularly necessary, however, and astute, in a real world where “finding one’s tribe” can lead easily to a sense of isolation — and marginalization.
That this culminates in a literal 800-foot Ralph, constructed from a swirling mass of smaller Ralphs, chasing Vanellope unfortunately threatens to overshadow such messages. Few animated movies in recent memory, much less from the likes of Disney, seem to wholeheartedly embrace the outlandish and fully bizarre visual opportunities that premises like this one introduce, but indulging them also makes for a wild and unpredictable ride. But then again, that’s sort of the point of the whole film, certainly for Vanellope — if you knew what you were getting into, or you’d already gotten into it, why take the ride again? And of course, per Ralph, there’s also something to be said about the security, and the reassuring familiarity, of experiencing something that’s at least somewhat like something you’ve done before.
But ultimately, that’s why as discordant and unconventional as it sometimes is, “Ralph Breaks the Internet” resonates powerfully — because in addition to having a healthy perspective about both the pluses and minuses of the web, it takes some significant virtual epiphanies and applies them to characters who feel truly human.
The D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, is the kind of place designed to make Disney fans squeal with delight. After all, the Expo, which happens every two years, is like an exclusive Disney version of Comic Con. At D23, there are panels devoted to your favorite Disney TV shows, movies, and parks; plus signings and memorabilia and all of the other things you expect from a glossily produced extravaganza put on by a global media titan.
At all of the panels, the fans are primed to go nuts. But I have never heard applause like that which greeted a “Ralph Breaks the Internet” sequence that was shown at 2017’s D23 Expo. It was insane.
The sequence involved Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) visiting the Oh My Disney website, which is devoted to all things Disney. (So, essentially, a digital version of the D23 Expo.) It’s there that she runs into the canonical Disney Princesses — including Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Rapunzel, Merida, Anna, Elsa, and Moana. All of whom are voiced by the original actresses, who, true to show-stopping Disney dazzle, walked out on stage, arm in arm, at the D23 Expo right after the footage was shown.
The Disney Princess sequence is laugh-out-loud funny, to the point that it was hard to hear some of the jokes, but also genuinely subversive and something of a technical achievement, since many of these characters were traditional, hand-drawn characters being rendered in CGI for the very first time. (There had been prototypical 3D models built for Mickey’s PhilharMagic, an attraction that opened at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, and subsequently at Hong Kong Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland. It just debuted at Disneyland Paris in early Oct. 2018.) I remember my jaw dropped when I noticed that Pocahontas’ hair is continually blowing in the wind.
And, it turns out, it took a lot to bring all this to the big screen.
At a recent long-lead press day for “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” there was a presentation on the sequence, with co-writer Pamela Ribon, art director Ami Thompson, and head of animation Kira Lehtomaki breaking down the particulars of a sequence that, pretty soon, everyone will be talking about.
In 2014, Ribon started working on the film’s story treatment and she returned to it a couple of years later (after the production’s entire team was pulled into the production of “Zootopia,” an all-hands-on-deck type situation that worked out quite nicely). Ribon admitted to being nervous about “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” considering how sacred the characters are. She was instructed by director Rich Moore: “I think we just board it and see what happens.” (Sequences are storyboarded before being animated.)
Once they began storyboarding the sequence, it was clear that it was working. They somehow managed to squeeze in a joke about how Merida is from Pixar and not Walt Disney Animation Studios; she’s the only outsider Princess.
And what’s more, Ribon, who is a Disney Princess diehard, provided the Snow White voice during the scratch sessions and wound up voicing her in the movie. Talk about magical!
Designing the sequence proved just as tricky. For one, the sequence features 14 (!) classic Disney Princesses, many of them having to be redesigned for the format and all of them interacting for the first time. (The Disney Princess product line has strict guidelines for how the Princesses acknowledge one another. If you look at any box art, none of them are making eye contact, but seem to be sharing physical space.) Thankfully, they had an all-star team on the Princesses’ design team, including designers Cory Loftis, Brittney Lee, and Lorelay Bove.
And always willing to lend a hand was Mark Henn, the original Disney animator behind most of the modern Disney Princesses (Jeffrey Katzenberg once referred to him, somewhat strangely, as “The Julia Roberts of Animation”). Thompson trained with Henn and said that he was always there to help. Henn also created the animated Sorcerer Mickey that sits atop the virtual animation building at the top of the scene. And, if you’ll recall earlier this fall, Anika Noni Rose had a meeting at Walt Disney Animation Studios about how her character was being modeled in “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” and one of the people she met with was Henn, who animated Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog.”
The fact that Henn created the original characters and advised on their new incarnations is just part of what makes Walt Disney Animation Studios (and the Princess sequence in “Ralph Breaks the Internet”) so special.
Additionally, the Princesses were all given what are being referred to now as their “comfy clothes;” dressed-down versions of their iconic royal looks. Thompson said that they had to adapt each Princess’ signature style to “internet language” (perfect for a movie all about the Internet), hence why Moana is wearing a shirt that reads, simply, “#Shiny.” (If you want to know how lucrative just the new looks for the Princesses will be for the company, stop into your local Disney Store the next time you’re at the mall.)
Animating the Disney Princess sequence was also challenging, for obvious reasons. Lehtomaki, a self-described “Disney hoarder” (she was wearing Toms emblazoned with original Cinderella concept art), worked with Henn on the sequence, learning how he “performed” the characters in the earlier masterpieces and bringing her own flair to the characters. Henn was an invaluable resource, having “acted” many of these parts before, for their classic films. The weight of the sequence was immense, since, as Lehtomaki said, it was required that “every moment feels true to who they are.” And it’s true — one false note would have made the entire, painstakingly produced sequence crumble. Talk about pressure.
And maybe most tantalizingly of all, Lehtomaki teased that the sequence that they showed at the 2017 Expo — and has been featured in much of the marketing materials thus far — isn’t the only one to feature the Princesses.
“You’ll see more of them,” she said. Can you imagine what the response to that would have been at the D23 Expo?
Walt Disney Animation has consistently broken boundaries and pushed the envelope, both in terms of technology and storytelling. They were responsible for the first animated short with synced sound (“Steamboat Willie“), the first feature-length animated film (“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs“), and the first animated feature completely inked by computer (“The Rescuers Down Under“).
But as technology advances and storytelling becomes even more immersive and innovative, Disney Animation Studios has taken the unprecedented step of moving into an entirely new dimension — virtual reality. Their first animated VR short, “Cycles,” premiered at SIGGRAPH earlier in 2018 and recently screened as part of the New York Film Festival. (It will play at Unity’s developer conference next week, and the Infinity Film Fest in Beverly Hills on November 1 and 2.)
And we were lucky enough to be one of only a handful of people to have experienced it first hard.
First, a bit of background, as provided to me from “Cycles” director Jeff Gipson (who works at Disney Animation primarily as a lighting artist on films like “Zootopia,” “Moana,” and next month’s “Ralph Breaks the Internet“): Gipson admits that they didn’t really have a pipeline set up for how to make a VR short since, you know, nobody had done it yet.
“We all jumped in and figured it out along the way,” he said. The story was inspired by several aspects of Gipson’s life, including his previous career as an architect (“Where you’re taught that every home has a story”), his off-time hobby of riding BMX bikes through empty swimming pools (he’d take photos of the abandoned houses where he rode), and his relationships with his grandparents (“I loved looking at them when they were young and in love, and she’d write ‘Hubba Hubba’ on the photo”). In fact, the main characters of the short, Bert and Rae, are named after his grandparents.
Disney
To experience the short, you put on the fairly sophisticated helmet rig — which includes headphones that cover your ears — and once the short starts, you’re in a midcentury home on a sunny day. “Look towards the door when you want to start,” Gipson instructed me. So I did. What follows is a truly emotional journey, as Rae prepares to leave her home after Bert’s passing.
Then, through the magic of VR, we do a reverse time lapse, traveling backwards more than 50 years and pausing at important moments in the family’s life. It’s really beautiful and breathtaking; the VR element adds a level of immersive interaction and emotional connection that would have been impossible to capture if told in a traditional, “flat” style. (At one point, the couple dances by you and you want to join in.)
It’s also breathtakingly deep, not just in the dimensionality of the physical space (since you really do feel like you’re in the house) but in the level and detail of storytelling. After I took my helmet off (and, it should be noted, was holding back tears — didn’t know if they would short-circuit the device), Gipson told me there’s a moment where you can see the couple’s daughter climbing over a backyard fence. I didn’t even notice that, mostly because there’s just so much to take in. Most VR experiences that I’ve tried out, to date, have been interested in the visceral physical sensation of a place (you can smell the sulfur outside Darth Vader’s castle, or whatever), but this is the first VR thing that is mostly interested in making you feel something emotionally.
And that, beyond all of the cutting-edge technology, made it feel like an evolutionary leap forward for the medium.
Afterwards, I asked Gipson why he needed to tell the story in VR. “I think the biggest piece of it was being in those homes I showed you and just thinking, ‘Wow, what happened here?’ I was imagining, in my head, going from the present moment, back to when the family first got there, and just seeing it happen around you. I thought it was a cool feeling and wondered, ‘How do you share that?’”
The answer was VR. And it turned out to be the perfect medium, running smoothly at an astonishing 90 frames-per-second (as opposed to the 24-frames-per-second of something like “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” which is animated at that speed) and making you caught up in the storytelling at the same time.
It’s unclear how, exactly, people are going to get to see “Cycles,” but there are a couple of different versions of the short being developed (another great plus about the technique is being able to quickly retrofit content for multiple platforms), including an AR version and an app-based version. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, somehow, you’re given the option to view the short before the new “Ralph Breaks the Internet”-inspired VR experience coming to The Void this fall. (Disney owns a controlling interest in The Void and has Void stations at Downtown Disney in California and Disney Springs in Florida.)
Somehow, very soon, more and more people will get to see “Cycles.” And they need to. It’s just so beautiful.
To prove Kylo Ren is not a spoiled child, Disney protected him from the gentle mockery of “Ralph Breaks the Internet.”
That’ll show ’em!
The “Wreck-It Ralph” sequel, “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” has several in-house jokes about favorites in the Disney/Lucasfilm/Marvel family. We’ve seen a lot about the Disney princesses, and there will be some “Star Wars” references. But there will not be a shot at Adam Driver‘s character, Kylo Ren.
Directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston, and head of story Josie Trinidad, told IGN about the joke Disney nixed:
“At one point we had a joke about Kylo Ren being kind of a spoiled child,” Moore said. “We went to Lucasfilm and said, here’s what we’re doing. And they said, well, we’d prefer that you don’t show him as a spoiled child. You know, he is our villain, and we’d prefer you don’t do that. So we were respectful of that.”
The filmmakers did get to take some “playful jabs” at other characters, though, including showing C-3PO as the Disney princesses’ butler. Johnson said that “felt like that’s of his character. It’s really loving satire that we’re doing.”
Disney has the Force to stop one of its own films from mocking Kylo Ren, but it had no such power over “Saturday Night Live.” Based on this reaction, they must’ve LOVED Adam Driver’s “Star Wars Undercover Boss: Starkiller Base” sketch. That video has more than 35 million views, and includes Kylo insults like this:
“Kylo Ren is a punk bitch. That guy looks like he weighs 30 pounds soaking wet under that little black dress.”
Yeah, “SNL” is comedy aimed at adults, but it’s still kind of surprising that Disney was so thin-skinned about calling Kylo a spoiled child. Because Kylo Ren is in fact a spoiled brat who killed his own dad and pouts all the time like a kid in constant tantrum mode over not getting to play Xbox.
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” opens in theaters November 21st, 2018. Kylo Ren will probably be just as much of a spoiled baby in “Star Wars: Episode IX,” which opens December 20, 2019.
When images of all of the Disney princesses getting together in “Wreck-It Ralph 2” first surfaced earlier this summer, most fans were thrilled. But some noticed that Princess Tiana — the protagonist in 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog” — looked quite a bit different. Now, the actress who voiced her is speaking out about the controversy, and revealing what Disney and Pixar have done to make things right.
In a lengthy Instagram post, Anika Noni Rose discussed a recent report from The Wall Street Journal that said that Disney had reanimated portions of “Wreck-It Ralph 2” to correct the depiction of Princess Tiana. Many social media users pointed out the character’s divergence from her original inspiration, including having lighter skin and a smaller nose.
Rose noticed these differences, too, and after seeing so many fans reacting negatively to the change, she decided to call Disney herself to find out what happened.
Three weeks ago, the actress visited the studio to meet with her original “Princess and the Frog” animator, Mark Henn (who Rose said based Tiana’s appearance on her own), as well as representatives from the Pixar team that worked on “Wreck-It Ralph 2.”
“They explained how CGI animation did different things to the characters’ color tones in different light compared to hand-drawn original characters, and I was able to express how important it is to the little girls (and let’s face it, grown women) who felt represented by her that her skin tone stay as rich as it had been, and that her nose continue to be the little round nose that Mark so beautifully rendered in the movie,” Rose wrote.
Disney agreed, and decided to go back and reanimate the sequences featuring Tiana. Rose said that animators personally walked her through “the steps they were taking to bring those things back that got lost in the move from hand-drawn to CGI.”
“It was important to me to hear what Disney had to say, and to have an open dialogue about legacy and representation,” Rose said on Instagram. “They did not have to make time to give me a presentation on the process, but I’m very glad that they did. I also appreciate that this far into the process Disney had enough care and respect for all who love Princess Tiana and her legacy to spend the time and money to make the adjustments necessary.”
We’re glad that Rose, and all of Princess Tiana’s fans, were able to have their voices heard. You can see Tiana, and the rest of Disney royalty, in all their glory when “Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet” hits theaters on November 21.
A few weeks ago, at the beautifully redesigned Walt Disney Animation Studios campus in Burbank, we were treated to a special screening of select footage from “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” the sequel to 2012’s hit videogame-themed comedy “Wreck-It Ralph.” And let me tell you, it looks stunning.
The basic gist of the sequel is this: There’s trouble at Litwak’s Arcade. Sugar Rush, the kart racing game that counts Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) as one of its racers, has a broken steering wheel. This leads Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly), the videogame ogre with a hart of gold, to launch a mission to get a new steering wheel; otherwise, the game will be unplugged and Vanellope, his best friend, will go poof.
And where do they head to find that steering wheel? That’s right: the Internet.
Far from the way that the internet has normally been visualized (in something like “Hackers“); this isn’t dense columns of ones and zeroes. Instead, it’s a living, vibrant city, and you can tell that much of the art department carried over the lessons they learned on “Zootopia,” in terms of bringing an entire metropolis to life. One of the scenes we saw had Vanellope bidding on a velvet cat painting on eBay, which, in the movie, looks like a typical auction house.
Another scene, which serves as something of the emotional fulcrum for the movie, saw Ralph — after rising in popularity as an instantly meme-able personality — reading negative comments about himself, his large heart breaking. (Co-director Rich Moore said the Internet was the perfect dramatic place to put Ralph, a person whose entire sense of self is based off what other people think of him.)
Disney
And, of course, there was the princess sequence, which has been screened at D23 and teased in recent promotional materials, wherein Vanellope comes face-to-face with all of the classic Disney princesses (everyone from Snow White to Moana). It’s still a hoot and as the production works to complete the sequence, has become even more visually stunning and comically precise.
We were also lucky enough to sit down with Moore, co-director and co-writer Phil Johnston, and producer Clark Spencer, but, alas, there was some kind of malfunction in the recording and only a few minutes were saved. Lucky for me, I’ve got a great memory, and can recount some of the awesome anecdotes that the team shared with me.
First and foremost, in the princess sequence, they approach a glowing version of the Walt Disney Animation Studios campus, sorcerer’s hat and all. At the top of that building, there’s an animated sorcerer Mickey, posed like he was in Walt Disney’s experimental classic “Fantasia.” It turns out that none other than Mark Henn, the legendary Disney animator who worked on Belle, Princess Jasmine, and Mulan (Jeffrey Katzenberg once called him “the Julia Roberts of animation”), was responsible for that little snippet of classic 2D animation. And that is very, very awesome.
They also told me that major videogame elements would be woven into the narrative, taking up much of the third act. (All the footage we saw was from the first and second acts.) This was, of course, before Disney announced that Gal Gadot would voice a character named Shank from a hardcore racing game called “Slaughter Race.”
Overall, the footage that we saw and the conversation that I had with Moore, Johnston, and Spencer, let my jaw on the floor. This is some seriously next-level stuff. And like “Zootopia,” it’s not just a visual feast. There were moments we saw, like the one with Ralph reading all of the mean comments, that were genuinely affecting. We can’t wait until November, when we can see the whole movie. On pins and needles over here.
Disney
Moviefone: You started working on this sequel back in 2014 and it got sidelined by the production of “Zootoptia.” When you came back to it, did you start over or pick up where you left off? [Clark nods yes to the “starting over” comment.]
Spencer: We had to take a big step back.
Johnston: I had written a screenplay before “Zootopia” and we really liked it and started working on it. We then went off to do “Zootopia” for a year-and-a-half, came back, read that script, and went — “meh.” There are parts of that script that are good, one huge part we completely threw away and now we put it back in like three years later. But we can’t tell you what that part is. So nothing fully ever goes anywhere. It’s the circle of life, man.
Moore: All the parts of the buffalo!
What was the biggest change from those earlier versions of the movie?
Moore: There was definitely a part where, we knew we wanted to explore social media as an aspect to the story. So there was a back-and-forth about who was going to be roped into it — was it going to be Ralph or was it going to be Vanellope? Initially, we said: “It’s got to be Ralph. He’s got the total personality of, ‘Please tell me you like me, I will define myself by the way you feel about me.’” That seemed obvious. But we thought, are we doing ourselves a disservice? Because Vanellope, who you think wouldn’t be susceptible to that, is actually the one who gets swept up in social media. We pursued that idea for a while and it seemed pretty good, but at the end of the day, it didn’t feel genuine. It didn’t feel like her character, like she would make those decisions. It didn’t feel like her character anymore.
Johnston: That was the very first draft, actually, where she became susceptible and started buying into that. But that comment scene we showed you guys, [it] happened to Vanellope. That idea was in there and there was a later version where they got captured and they became a meme. But we found as they were chasing fleeting fame, it felt like the audience was ahead of them. Like, We know this is a bad idea. It felt like schmuck bait. Like lazy storytelling.
Moore: And it seemed like would you just get to the point.
Check out the new trailer below!
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” is everywhere on November 21. We’ll have more from the long lead day before then.
We just saw the epic new photo of the Disney princesses lounging around drinking frappuccinos. But that’s not quite what Gal Gadot’s character will be up to.
Here’s a tease from the star:
I’m so excited to finally announce that I am playing a character named Shank in Disney’s #RalphBreaksTheInternet hitting theaters this November! Such an amazing experience to be apart of this project with such great creators and cast! Welcome to Slaughter Race! 🏎🏁😉 pic.twitter.com/MxLuWFPJ0L
Shank is described as “a tough and talented driver in an intense and gritty online racing game called Slaughter Race.”
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” will be released November 21st, 2018. Gal Gadot is currently filming the “Wonder Woman 1984,” for release November 1st, 2019.
Crossing paths with J.P. Spamly (Bill Hader), who promises opportunities to score quick cash playing video games, Ralph and Vanellope start doing what they do best in other worlds — including Slaughter Race, a brutal Mad Max-like racing game where Vanellope meets her match, and possible new BFF, in Shank (
Specifically, Ralph has built himself a comfortable existence as Vanellope’s best friend, and just as he feels complete satisfaction from that dynamic, he expects her to feel the same way — and when she doesn’t is when the whole internet comes crashing down. The movie explicitly articulates some simple, important truths — “never read the comments” — but the more oblique ones are probably the most essential to heed, especially as Ralph’s determination to “protect” and “help” Vanellope manifests itself in increasingly unhealthy ways. Such lessons are of course relevant in electronic space where cruelty and kindness can be dished out carelessly and be dismissed (especially by the perpetrator) as intangible. They feel particularly necessary, however, and astute, in a real world where “finding one’s tribe” can lead easily to a sense of isolation — and marginalization.
