Wreck-it Ralph: TRON meets Toy Story

Written by Emmanuel Gundran

While some movie-goers may think that nothing else can be done with video games other than soulless adaptations to make quick, easy cash, Wreck-it Ralph (Moore, 2012) ​proves that using tropes within video games themselves and the concept of living programs from TRON (Lisberger, 1982) can carry a solid story for a video game movie. Wreck-it Ralph is the story of Ralph, a video game antagonist who is infamous for being the villain of the arcade game "Fix-it Felix Jr.". However, Ralph, feeling disrespected and unrecognized for his talents, wants to be more than just a typical  "bad guy."

Ralph, in his game, plays a Donkey Kong-like villain against Fix-it Felix.

Already, it's clear that the video game characters featured in Wreck-it Ralph are self-aware of their role in the world and have a consciousness separate from the influence of the players and programmers. This relationship that the video game characters have with their world is similar to how the programs from TRON do not have to strictly obey the programming of the Users. However, unlike TRON, the portal between human and video game character is closed. Although humans witness some of the oddities caused by the video game characters' consciousness, they pass them off as glitches in the system that can either be fixed easily or could corrupt the game beyond repair.

A comedic example of some of the "oddities" of the video game world of Wreck-it Ralph is "Bad-Anon," a video game villain support group. When Ralph is struggling with his villain identity, he meets with several, sometimes recognizable, video game villains. This sequence is not only a clever marketing strategy to pull in gamers, as iconic villains such as Bowser from Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo) and Dr. Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega) make cameo appearances, but also an indicator of what kind of story the audience can expect: one that is completely aware of and pokes fun at its subject matter.

Video game antagonists gather together in support group to talk about their villainous struggles.

The most dangerous breaching of the boundaries of video games that the characters can commit is escaping their game, or what they call "going Turbo." A character going Turbo from their game would cause Mr. Litwak, the owner of the game arcade, to shut it down since the game will longer work. This plays around with the question of what glitches really are. Are they bugs in the game's programming or are the characters in the game really acting on their own will and despite being limited by the game's programming? TRON asks through showing the programs breaking through the barriers of the light-cycle arena. Meanwhile, Wreck-it Ralph contains a more comedic example in the form of Ralph struggling to survive in a first-person shooter arcade game while the player watched the screen, confused that another arcade character is making a surprise cameo appearance.

Ralph going Turbo and trying to survive the arcade's first-person shooter: Hero's Duty.

Wreck-it Ralph is a film about video games that possesses not only some of the technological commentary of TRON but also the light-hearted, comedic wit of Toy Story, a film that contains similar characteristics to this film but using toys, and a great lesson about being able to play against enforced roles about who one wants to be. Though the film does not, by any means, try to be a complex, analytical look at video games, it makes quirky jokes revolving around some of the tropes tied to video games such as the recurring villain and the player having control of the characters' actions. So, Wreck-it Ralph is fun enough for the whole family to watch while clever enough for movie-goers and gamers to also appreciate it.