Unlike their original film counterparts, the Disney Princesses in the film were rendered in a more cartoony style with bigger eyes and ears. The first twelve characters in the Disney Princess line appear, along with Anna and Elsa from Frozen. Additionally, Rajah (Jasmine’s pet tiger), Meeko (Pocahontas’ pet raccoon), Cinderella’s mice and her bird companions, and Prince Naveen also appear in the film. It’s an ambitious crossover that’s sure to delight once it plays out on the big screen, but surprisingly, the best part of the trailer isn’t from OG princesses like Jasmine or Belle.
Alan Tudyk returns to voice a different character, named KnowsMore. Sarah Silverman as Vanellope von Schweetz, a glitchy racer who is the main character and princess of Sugar Rush and Ralph’s best friend. Citizens as a short-term measure as they figure out how to save the game, with Felix and Calhoun adopting the racers. Remembering eBay, Ralph and Vanellope travel through Litwak’s new Wi-Fi router to the Internet, a place where websites are represented as buildings in a sprawling city, avatars represent users, and programs are people.
If you respect the inclusiveness and empathy of the old cartoons like the 60s/70s Scooby doo or 80s He-man and She-ra, this is not your children’s film. If you take to sexism and marginalising attitudes veiled in sporadic humour, this may be your flick. I’d take the over-the-top “wholesomeness” of old Disney any day over this new malicious propaganda. I am shocked somebody wanted to send this message to such a young audience. A lot of people hated it for obvious reasons, and I kind of hated it too at times, but at other times I was laughing my ass off! There were some really clever jokes in this movie, and I don’t want to undermine any of them.
So after working the whole film getting the money to save Sugar Rush, she still goes off and joins another game. Add to that the useless and quite unnecessary mid-credit scene with an exploding rabbit and this film just dropped to the bottom of what is worth watching. Instead of being original and fun, it’s a wasted opportunity and useless cashgrab that not only is a bore to watch, it kills the fun off the first film. This would have been a great opportunity for a kids movie to bring up the possibility of having unrealistic dreams and expectations about life. Instead, they needed to completely butcher Vanellope as a character, abandon her friends, and seek out a dream that is completely unrealistic for her.
Trinidad said neither of these versions captured what they felt was the centerpiece of the sequel, being how Ralph and Vanellope reacted to the new world of the Internet and realizing they have separate paths going forward. In March 2016, Moore stated that a sequel was still being planned. In June 2016, Walt Disney Animation Studios announced that the sequel would be released on March 9, 2018, with Moore and Phil Johnston attached, and that its story would be one where “Ralph leaves the arcade and wrecks the Internet”. The scene where Ralph reads the comments provides some fodder for reaction memes and quotes. “Just a WORTHLESS BUM alone on a pile of bricks” and “🤡🤡🤡ralph is straight clownin” get circulated the most.
Clearly there was some effort put into it, but the story definitely suffered (I did not like how it ended and both Vanellope and Ralph seemed as though their characters regressed in this film. Definitely NOT a good thing….). It did feel like a big advertisement too, but still better than the Emoji movie. At least the “advertisements” were used kelvin designs for something more in this movie. Overall, for a film trying to cash in on internet culture, it’s not half bad. It doesn’t go for any moralizing statements about screen time or get on a soapbox about the potential dangers of it all. It presents the internet as simply a background for quirky characters to find each other, and to watch cat videos.
