Wreck-It Ralph

The second of two films I watched on a long outward bound 12 hour flight from London to Bangkok, I want to choose something I could fall asleep to. That means something light-hearted, and Wreck-It Ralph seemed to fit the bill. I was a little wary of it though as the trailers I had seen confidently announced that it was better that Toy Story 1, 2 and 3. Really? Well… it had good reviews so it couldn’t be all that bad, right?

Very much like Toy Story, the films characters all come to life once the kids are all packed off for the day/night. However, swap toys in a home setting with video game characters in an arcade. Wreck-It Ralph (a video game which is  suspiciously very similar to the original Donkey Kong) is celebrating its 30th anniversary. However while the games’ hero Fix-It Felix Jr is celebrating with the games inhabitants, its villain Wreck-It Ralph is ostracised. Depressed, Wreck-It Ralph just wants to be a good guy. He confronts his neighbours but lives up to his name and destroys the party. Angry, his neighbours tell him  he’ll never be accepted unless he wins a medal like Fix-It Felix Jr.

Taking them quite literally, he jumps games in order to try to win that coveted medal and be accepted. His first stop his a first-person shooter called Hero’s Duty where he has to battle aliens. Having fought his way to the medal, Ralph accidentally steps on an alien egg and stars triggers a fresh alien attack. Ralph jumps into an escape pod which flies through the portal and into a kart-racing game called Sugar Rush. After crash landing Ralph’s medal is stolen by Vanellope von Schweetz, who uses the medal to meet the entry fee to race in Sugar Rush despite being banned for being a computer glitch. Ralph eventually forgives Vanellope and determines to help her in her efforts.

Meanwhile Fix-It Felix Jr has been following Ralph’s steps in order to fix the damage he’s done. In Hero’s Duty he meets the lead character Sergeant Calhoun who has a tragic past and instantly falls in love. Discovering that Ralph may have inadvertently taken one of the aliens with him when he left, Sergeant Calhoun and Felix head to Sugar Rush before the aliens destroy the world.

So… Is Wreck-It Ralph as good as the Toy Story films… well that is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. My initial reaction is no. Toy Story was genre-defining in both animation and storytelling. There is nothing ‘new’ about Wreck-It Ralph and so on the face of it there is hardly a comparison to be made.

That is not to say that Wreck-It Ralph is a bad movie. In fact quite the opposite, it’s actually rather good. Sure it has just taken the Toy Story idea and run with it into the video game genre rather like a some sort of spin-off cousin. But a spin-off cousin that very much lives up to the standard of a more illustrious title. That got me thinking as to whether Wreck-It Ralph would be as good as Toy Story had Toy Story not started a new movement in animated films, i.e. if you stripped away a bit of history from the argument. The answer is yes, I think Wreck-It Ralph does stand up against these films, and I was rather surprised by this answer. Furthermore, I would probably suspect that if you were a gaming nerd you may have preferred it, especially due to all those wonderful gaming references (probably far more that I spotted) that are littered throughout the film.

In conclusion, this is a cracking film that really is up there with the best of the animated films.

The Little Norse Prince

The Little Norse Prince is a 1968 anime film directed by Isao Takahata and partly animated by Hayao Miyazaki. This pair would go on to form Studio Ghibli. The Little Norse Prince follows a boy (Horus) who lives alone with his father. Attacked by Silver wolves Horus disturbs a stone giant. Horus aids the giant by removing a thorn from his side which turns out to be a decayed magical sword. The giant gives the sword to Horus and tells him to get it re-forged. On his death bed Horus’ father tells him that their village was destroyed by a demon named Grunwald and tells Horus to find his people and on a quest of revenge.

Horus follows his fathers’ orders and finds a village populated by his people. Horus helps defend the village from Grunwald and on one such adventure finds Hilda a young girl with an enchanting voice. Horus brings her back to the village where the people fall under her spell. However, it turns out that Hilda is Grunwald’s sister and works with the chief’s deputy to betray the village. Horus realises that he must now re-forge the sword and defeat Grunwald once and for all.

Being the first film directed by Takahata, this could be considered to be part of the history of Studio Ghibli. You are certainly immediately drawn to the main characters in the story like all good Studio Ghibli films. They are so richly created that you can’t help but get taken for whatever ride has been written.

Unfortunately I felt that The Little Norse Prince ride was a little disjointed. Although each element to the story was wonderfully put together I felt that the story didn’t really flow together. The ending also seemed a bit hashed together and didn’t really draw the threads of the story together well.

Although the film obviously shows it age, you can still tell that it was masterfully drawn. The only disappointing element was that the battle scenes were not live action, but rather a set of large pictures that the camera the focuses in on certain elements. I’m not sure if this was due to a lack of technical advancement at the time or to save on time/cost of the film, but it lets the film down somewhat.

The Little Norse Prince is certainly worth watching in its own right, but if you were looking to dip into what is increasingly becoming an expanded Studio Ghibli collection I would probably recommend you start elsewhere.