Walt Disney Animation Studios is back at it again, pulling out all the stops for their highly anticipated film, “Wreck-it-Ralph.” Directed by Rich Moore, the film transports audiences to the 1980s arcade game scene, where our protagonist Ralph begins his adventure.
After 30 years of playing the typical bad guy and being overshadowed by good guy ‘Fix-it Felix Jr.,’ Ralph decides to prove that the role assigned to him is not who he really is and sets off on an inter-game journey to prove that he can be the hero.
Walt Disney Animation Studios invited the Graphic to listen in on a conference call with Moore as he discussed “Wreck-it-Ralph,” the animation process and how future storytellers can begin their own journey.
“Working in animation is something that I’ve always dreamed of since I was a kid,” Moore said. “The first movie I ever saw as a child was ‘The Jungle Book’ and after having that experience … I knew I wanted to be involved in animation.”
Moore graduated from Cal Arts, received his degree in character animation and shortly after began work as a storyboard artist on the first season of “The Simpsons.” It wasn’t long after he started working there when Moore was promoted to director, and he hasn’t looked back since.
“My favorite part of the job, of being a director, is being with the people who work in animation. I love the people who work in this medium … It’s probably the biggest group of weirdoes that you’re ever going to meet and they’re so collaborative and so creative … Working side by side with these people is such a pleasure and its fun to go to work,” Moore said.
When asked how “Wreck-it Ralph” came about, Moore commented, “I love video games; I grew up with them … when I started with Disney in 2008, I was developing a movie which I was going to direct, when someone brought up the fact that they had been trying to crack an idea for a video game movie with very little success … and I thought well that’s something I know.”
The video arcade game worlds present in this film are rich with detail and highly distinct from one another. Ralph’s world ‘Fix-it Felix Jr.’, stars him as villain, breaking everything in site to be cleaned up by hero Fix-it Felix.
The next stop on Ralph’s Journey is “Hero’s Duty,” which is an advanced, modern, intense, first person shooter game. Run by Sergeant Calhoun, who leads a platoon of soldiers fighting off Cy-Bugs, this world captures Ralph’s attention when he learns about a Medal of Heroes, which he believes can help him prove his worth to those back home.
Moore described the next world, Sugar Rush as, “Mario Kart mixed with Candy Land.”
There are no sharp edges or scary monsters in this cart-racing game. This is a very important world for Ralph as it is here where he meets Vanellope von Schweetz, a little girl who was shunned to the outskirts of Sugar Rush because of a programming error. While at first the two are at odds with one another, they find solace in the fact they are both misfits.
“Sugar Rush probably provided the most problems because it’s made out of cookies and cake and food and it was a challenge for our design, especially our look and lighting department…programing had to be written to make a Jolly Rancher look like a Jolly Rancher… I didn’t know that we hadn’t cracked the Jolly Rancher code [yet] in CG animation.”
And the glue that’s holding all these worlds together: Game Central Station, a vortex where the characters can travel from game to game, and home for those characters whose games have been unplugged. Filled with characters like Surge Protector, a hall-monitor type, and favorites like Sonic the Hedgehog, this world is constantly bustling.
Although these are the only worlds audiences will see on screen, there was a fourth world in the making that was taken out during production. “The name of it was ‘Extreme Easy Living 2,’ and it was kind of a mix between the ‘Sims’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto’ — very lawless,” Moore said. “It was too much information for the movie … It kind of represented Ralph’s low-point, but it was just too much … unfortunately we had to kill one of our darlings. John Lasseter, our executive producer, loved that world, and I had to deliver the bad news.”
Moore hopes that if the film does well, the “lost” world can be brought back to life in a sequel.
One fun fact about “Wreck-it Ralph” is that this film has the most characters that a Disney film has ever had. “It has 190 individual characters … I guess we’ve broken a record, which I’m kind of proud of, but we needed those characters. It’s a big movie,” Moore said.
The voices to portray these intricate characters include John C. Reilly, Jack McBrayer, Sarah Silverman and Rachael Harris. Another first in this film included how the actors recorded their lines.
“I had the actors record with one another. Usually with animation they are scheduled to record one at a time, with a reader or director reading against them and its kind of a one-sided performances… [people] want to feel the actors’ energy and what happens when they play against one another… so myself and Clark Spencer, who is our producer, took it upon ourselves to reimagine these recording processes in animation.”
When asked what advice would he give to aspiring filmmakers, Moore said, “We used to hear a lot, even by some of the instructors in our school ‘oh, you’re not going to make it.’ By all indications this shouldn’t have happened, the medium was nothing at that point. And within a year, [upon graduating], we started to see changes … and we all just kept at it. No one starts at the top; it was 20 years in the making [for me] … Realize an opportunity when you see it … whatever you want to do, it is totally possible and you can do it, you just have to jump in and you have to stick with it.”
Be sure to check out the arcade game sensation “Wreck-it Ralph,” coming to theaters Nov. 2.