MovieChat Forums > Wreck-It Ralph (2012) Discussion > To those of you complaining about the Su...

To those of you complaining about the Sugar Rush scenes...

posted 11 years ago by LadyMiraculous
18 replies | jump to latest

...Let me make a few things clear to you. I know you were all looking forward to see your favorite nostalgic video game characters together in this universe (as was I), but you know, this movie isn't suppose to be about them. Sure, it takes place in a video game universe, and some familiar game characters do interact with each other a couple of times, and yet so many people keep complaining that it doesn't spend enough time with those characters. The thing is though, it wasn't suppose to, to begin with.

The movie is called Wreck-It Ralph, not "The Video Game Movie". So why does most of it take place in Sugar Rush? So the plot can thicken! If it just had Ralph hopping from game to game through the entire movie, it would have no plot at all, and that would be boring. I don't hear that many people harp on Who Framed Roger Rabbit for not "spending enough screentime" on their favorite cartoon characters. So why does this one get harped on for having it's own plot?

Let the storm rage on, the cold never bothered me anyway...
[Formerly CosmosX9]

[–] JJdaPK 11 years ago

People aren't mad that the film focused on one setting. THey are mad that the setting they focused on was girly, cutesy, sickly sweet and completely unappealing to the gamer demographic.

[–] StarskyandChinaHutch 11 years ago

Or the so-called "hardcore" gamer demographic, as it were.

[–] LadyMiraculous 11 years ago

So it would seem.

Let the storm rage on, the cold never bothered me anyway...
[Formerly CosmosX9]

[–] tim_the_slipperman 11 years ago

Frankly I'm not bothered by the Sugar Rush scenes. I think they look pretty neat.

Of course, I also happen to be a bit of a Brony too, so...

Tim (aka the Slipperman)
---------
I Rina-chan

Becki Yoakam is EVIL

[–] AntDude 10 years ago

I would have play Sugar Rush game as a guy! :D
--
Ant @ The Ant Farm (http://antfarm.ma.cx) and Ant's Quality Foraged Links (http://aqfl.net).

[–] federicocristina 11 years ago

+1

I enjoyed it a lot anyway

[–] thisnameinuse 8 years ago

Gamer demographic here... playing since my TRS-80 Model 1 back in 1978, when Star Wars TIE Fighters looked like
|-O-| and Darth Vader's looked like <-O->.

Pong, Atari, Magnavox Odyssey, Intellivision, ColecoVision, C64s, Apples, IBMs, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, Playstations, Xboxes, on and on. Combat simulators, FPS shooters, Doom, Quake, lately World of Tanks, GTAs, etc. Blah blah blah.

I thought the Sugar Rush section was awesome. To say that it's "girly" is somewhat disingenuous. What it did was appeal to a WIDER gamer demographic... not just the people who wanted to see it wind up in a Halo/CoD-esque shooter for the rest of the movie. More importantly, the Vanellope character most likely wouldn't have worked anywhere else. Ralph needed a "cutesy" foil to his big, dumb oafish personality.

And King Candy (via Alan Tudyk) nearly stole the movie...

————
Kevin... still not wearing any pants, I see...

[–] olschoolmedia 11 years ago

I agree with the original post.

Hell, just having Sargent Calhoun and the Cybugs inside Sugar Rush is hardcore enough because of the contrasting environment itself.

The things she would say was hardcore. I mean, wanting to smack a dead corpse inside a crashed shuttle? ...that she was supposed to rescue...?

That's not hardcore???

[–] rbrtck 11 years ago

So why does most of it take place in Sugar Rush? So the plot can thicken! If it just had Ralph hopping from game to game through the entire movie, it would have no plot at all, and that would be boring.

As I recall, at one point during story development Ralph and Vanellope were going to hop from game to game to find parts for her to build her own kart, which would have taken the audience through many different game worlds, but I agree with the decision to mostly stay in one to let at least this one world develop to a greater extent.

As for why Sugar Rush, well clearly it's a colorful place that is full of creative possibilities, for one thing. But what it also does is disguise and provide contrast with the sinister scheming of the villain, who is himself disguised in a sickly-sweet facade. As Ralph so eloquently put it, this is a "candy-coated 'Heart of Darkness'" (obviously in reference to the novel), which is pretty awesome. And it's not just the main antagonist, but the other characters (namely the racers) as well, who aren't as sweet as they look.

This is way better than spending the movie in a dreary place like Hero's Duty, even if it had been developed more. As a setting Sugar Rush fits the story so much better, probably has more potential in terms of visual design and gags, and as others have pointed out it eventually turns into a dark, scary place like Hero's Duty when things go south anyway, while providing visual contrast in this regard that Hero's Duty would not have. We should never lose sight of the fact that ultimately it's about the story and characters, which the setting serves, not the other way around.

[–] thisnameinuse 8 years ago

Well said! I agree that the mixture of the Hero's Duty elements into the Sugar Rush game were probably as hardcore as it needed to get.

And above all, the setting must serve the story.

————
Kevin... still not wearing any pants, I see...

[–] Howlin Wolf 11 years ago

Don't introduce interesting subplots, if you aren't then willing to follow those threads, all because you have to get back to your far less interesting (to me, anyway... ) conventional 'main plot'...

Don't get my hopes up if you're just going to whet my appetite, but then leave me with very little that is satisfying.

Plenty of films have a disposable plot, or narrative where the vast majority of it is just a selection of major characters goofing around ("Clerks" might be considered one, "Be Kind Rewind" might be thought of as another... ) Sure, the execution may vary, and not all of them may work ("Be Kind Rewind" doesn't, really... ) but you'll never know unless you try to build a story around that setup. The issue here for me is that the most interesting line of thought in the movie was given the least exploration and screentime. I would far rather watch an interesting 20 minute short based around popular video game characters, than an anticlimactic full-length movie about original characters who are much less captivating (again, to me... )

Actually, when I was a kid I remember disliking "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" for much the same reason, too...

I would have been happy to go along with the original storyline, if only I had not been shown something better, which was then abandoned to follow a formula that is common to 95% of movies that are already out there.

"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"

[–] Catgurl22 11 years ago

Don't introduce interesting subplots, if you aren't then willing to follow those threads, all because you have to get back to your far less interesting (to me, anyway... ) conventional 'main plot'...

I totally agree with you, Howlin Wolf. The way this movie was advertised and the way it started, I was expecting something completely different (and exciting!).

I though that the movie would be something like "Shrek", which had a lot of fairy tale references and spoofs. This movie had SO much video game material to work with but the makers (suprisingly) chose not to use it. The "Bad-Anon" scene near the beginning was hilarious! I was very disappointed that no such scenarios appeared in the movie again.

Mr McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry!

[–] Howlin Wolf 11 years ago

I though that the movie would be something like "Shrek", which had a lot of fairy tale references and spoofs.

That was more like what I was expecting, too; it was disappointing to experience such a shift... The sad thing is, if they'd have left out the videogame in-jokes, I might have been OK with the Sugar Rush plot... but it was like they teased the audience with something even better, only to snatch it away again.

"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"

[–] chisox999 9 years ago

Obviously the movie worked for the majority of people.

It's possible that the problem lies with you.

[–] Howlin Wolf 9 years ago

Of course. Every movie is an individual, subjective experience...

I never claimed to speak for anyone else but me, and if other people like it, then I'm happy for them... so, yours was a pretty redundant comment.



"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"

[–] rbrtck 11 years ago

I though that the movie would be something like "Shrek", which had a lot of fairy tale references and spoofs. This movie had SO much video game material to work with but the makers (suprisingly) chose not to use it.

Well, they can't please everybody, especially when different people wanted such different things. By the way, I hate Shrek and would have hated Wreck-It Ralph had it gone down a similar path.

[–] 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] 8 years ago

[deleted]