Wreck It Ralph looks like a fun mix of new school animation with old school gaming where you see obvious references to Super Mario Brothers and Q*Bert.
Plus, you also see Wreck It Ralph stumbling around in the Halo Masterchief costume. In today’s era of Pixar inspired computer animation, it’s a great idea to make this kind of movie in the world of gaming.
With Wreck It Ralph due for release on November 2, it also has the good fortune of hitting theaters as the new gaming season begins. Gamers everywhere will be looking forward to the release of Halo 4 and the next Call of Duty. But gamer or not, Wreck It Ralph looks like fun for the whole family that’s clearly Pixar inspired, and it should hopefully be its own movie that sets itself apart from the geniuses who gave us Finding Nemo and Toy Story.
John C. Reilly, one of the best character actors we have, is the voice of Wreck It Ralph, a video game villain who wants to turn his image around and be a gaming hero. Other actors providing their vocal talents for Ralph include Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch, Adam Carolla, Ed O’Neill, and more.
Rich Moore, the director of Ralph, also directed episodes of the Simpsons and Futurama, and he told the L.A. Times he’d started working on an animated video game movie four years ago. The idea came about when Moore realized being a video game character would have to be very boring and frustrating, having to do the same things over and over again.
Like Roger Rabbit, which included great cartoon characters from Disney and other animated worlds, Moore also wanted real video game characters in Ralph, which obviously could have been an enormous legal headache. But Moore told the Times he worked on developing relationships with companies like Namco and Sega, and Sega will actually be adding Wreck It Ralph onto a Sonic the Hedgehog game. Life imitating art?
As far as his own gaming credentials, Moore told Hitfix, “I think I was probably part of the first generation of little kids that had video games available to them. I can remember playing Pong in a pizza place and from there it came like Space Wars…Asteroids and Pac-Man. I spent a lot of time in arcades as a teenager and then if I there was a home system I had it. So, it’s definitely been a part of my life for a long time.”
