Wreck-It Ralph (Sony version)

Wreck-It Ralph is a 2012 American animated comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation released by Sony Pictures Releasing. It was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by Michelle Murdocca, from a screenplay written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, and a story by Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman. Featuring the voices of Jack Black (who also served as the film’s executive producer), Ginnifer Goodwin, Andy Samberg, and Angelina Jolie, the film tells the story of the eponymous arcade game villain who rebels against his "bad guy" role and dreams of becoming a hero.

Wreck-It Ralph premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2012, and was theatrically released in the United States on September 28. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing $496 million worldwide against a $165 million budget and winning the Critics' Choice Movie Awards for Best Animated Feature, as well as receiving nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Plot
Whenever Litwak's Arcade closes, the video game characters leave their in-game roles and socialize via a power strip called Game Central Station. One evening, Wreck-It Ralph, the villain of platform game Fix-it Felix, Jr., visits a villain support group called Bad-Anon, expressing frustration with his assigned role. When Ralph is excluded from his game's 30th-anniversary party, he decides to win a medal, believing he will be respected for doing so. Upon overhearing that the first-person shooter Hero's Dutyawards medals, Ralph sneaks into Hero's Duty and steals a medal after making it past insectoid monsters known as Cy-Bugs.

Ralph accidentally launches himself in an escape shuttle with a Cy-Bug inside and crash-lands in the confectionery-themed kart racing game Sugar Rush. With Ralph gone, his game is labeled "out of order" and put in danger of being unplugged. Fix-It Felix, Jr. himself leaves the game to find Ralph, allying with Sergeant Calhoun, the heroine of Hero's Duty. Calhoun tracks the Cy-Bug, as Cy-Bugs behave as a virus once outside their game. Felix worries Ralph will meet the same fate as Turbo, the protagonist of the racing game TurboTime, who became jealous of a newly-installed RoadBlasters cabinet's success and tried to take it over, resulting in both games being unplugged.

In Sugar Rush, racer Vanellope von Schweetz steals Ralph's medal and uses it to buy her way into the nightly race that determines which characters will be playable the next day. King Candy, the ruler of Sugar Rush 's world, forbids her to race, as she is a glitch that teleports erratically. Vanellope promises to get the medal back if Ralph helps her win; he helps her build a new kart and teaches her to drive inside Diet Cola Mountain. Meanwhile, Calhoun and Felix arrive in Sugar Rush, where they fall into "Nesquik-sand", work together to escape, and begin to fall in love.

King Candy hacks into Sugar Rush 's source code and retrieves the medal, giving it back to Ralph. He claims that if Vanellope becomes a playable character, her glitching will lead to Sugar Rush being labeled out of order and unplugged. Ralph decides he cannot allow Vanellope to race, and destroys her kart. Meanwhile, Calhoun abandons Felix when he unintentionally reminds her of her late fiancé, who was killed by a Cy-Bug during their wedding. Felix is imprisoned by King Candy's assistant, Sour Bill, while Calhoun discovers that the Cy-Bug has multiplied exponentially.

A despondent Ralph returns to Fix-it Felix, Jr., but the game has been evacuated. Ralph notices that the Sugar Rush cabinet displays Vanellope as an actual playable character. Realizing King Candy lied, Ralph returns to Sugar Rush and interrogates Sour Bill, learning that King Candy damaged Vanellope's code. King Candy's edits to the code also have ensured no one but himself knows Vanellope's true role. However, if Vanellope completes a race, all of King Candy's changes will be deleted, as the game will reset itself. Ralph frees Vanellope and Felix from prison. Felix fixes Vanellope's kart. Vanellope belatedly enters the race, but the Cy-Bugs emerge and start destroying the game. Calhoun, Felix, and Ralph help evacuate the characters.

Unaware of the Cy-Bugs, King Candy attempts to ram Vanellope off the track, causing them both to glitch. King Candy inadvertently reveals himself as Turbo, who secretly took over Sugar Rush after surviving the unplugging of TurboTime. Vanellope flees as Turbo is devoured by a Cy-Bug, which fuses with him into an insectoid monster. As glitches cannot leave their games, Vanellope is unable to evacuate. Remembering from Hero's Duty that a beacon will draw and destroy the Cy-Bugs, Ralph battles Turbo and collapses the Mentos roof of Diet Cola Mountain, creating a glowing eruption that lures and destroys Turbo and the Cy-Bugs. Vanellope rescues Ralph and crosses the finish line. The game resets, revealing her as the true ruler of Sugar Rush, though she keeps her glitching ability, considering it an advantage.

Ralph returns to his game, content with his role as a villain and finally respected by his fellow characters. Felix and Calhoun marry, and Ralph watches Vanellope become Sugar Rush 's favorite character.

Cast

 * Jack Black as Ralph, a gigantic but soft-hearted man who is the villain of the fictional arcade game Fix-It Felix Jr.
 * Ginnifer Goodwin as Vanellope von Schweetz, a racer/glitch in Sugar Rush.
 * Andy Samberg as Felix, a repairman who is the hero of Fix-It Felix Jr.
 * Angelina Jolie as Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun, the lead character of Hero's Duty.
 * Will Forte as King Candy, the competitive and stubborn ruler of Sugar Rush. He is later revealed to be Turbo, an infamous racer from TurboTime who invaded and crashed Roadblasters out of jealousy. King Candy's vocal stylings are based on comedian Ed Wynn, and his physical mannerisms are modeled from Wynn's Mad Hatter character in Disney's Alice in Wonderland.
 * Mindy Kaling as Taffyta Muttonfudge, a racer in Sugar Rush who thinks that Vanellope is a threat.
 * Rob Riggle as Markowski, a soldier from Hero's Duty that Ralph meets in Tapper.
 * Ed O'Neill as Mr. Stan Litwak, owner of Litwak's Family Fun Center & Arcade.
 * Dennis Haysbert as General Hologram, a holographic general in Hero's Duty.
 * Adam Carolla as Wynnchel, a Long John who is a member of the Sugar Rush police department.
 * Horatio Sanz as Duncan, a doughnut who is a member of the Sugar Rush police department.
 * Genndy Tartakovsky as Sour Bill, a sour ball and King Candy's assistant.

The cast also includes the Fix-It Felix Jr. Nicelanders, Edie McClurg as Mary, Raymond S. Persi as Mayor Gene, Jess Harnell as Don, Rachael Harris as Deanna, and Skylar Astin as Roy; Katie Lowes as Candlehead, Jamie Elman as Rancis Fluggerbutter, Melissa Sturm as Jubileena Bing-Bing, and Cymbre Walk as Crumbelina DiCaramello, racers in Sugar Rush; Chris Parnell as Surge Protector, Game Central Station security; Stefanie Scott as Moppet Girl, a young arcade-game player; John DiMaggio as Beard Papa, the security guard at the Sugar Rush candy-kart factory; Raymond Persi as a Zombie, Brian Kesinger as a Cyborg (based on Kano from Mortal Kombat) and Martin Jarvis as Saitine, a devil-like villain, who attends the Bad-Anon support group; Tucker Gilmore as the Sugar Rush Announcer; Brandon Scott as Kohut, a soldier in Hero's Duty; and Tim Mertens as Dr. Brad Scott, a scientist who is Sgt. Calhoun's deceased fiancé in Hero's Duty(voiced by Nick Grimshaw in the UK version but not in the UK home release).

The film features several cameos from real-world video game characters including: Tapper (Maurice LaMarche), the bartender from Tapper; Sonic the Hedgehog (Roger Craig Smith); Ryu (Kyle Hebert), Ken Masters(Reuben Langdon), M. Bison (Gerald C. Rivers), and Zangief (Rich Moore) from Street Fighter II; Clyde (Kevin Deters) from Pac-Man; and Yuni Verse (Jamie Sparer Roberts) from Dance Dance Revolution(specifically X2).

A character modeled after dubstep musician Skrillex makes an appearance in the fictional Fix-It Felix Jr. as the DJ at the anniversary party of the game.

Video games cameos and references
In addition to the spoken roles, Wreck-It Ralph contains a number of other video game references, including characters and visual gags. The video game villains at the support meeting, in addition to those mentioned above, include Bowser from the Mario franchise, Doctor Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog, and Neff from Altered Beast. Additionally, the game cabinet of the fictional Fix It Felix, Jr.arcade game is stylized to strongly resemble the cabinet of Nintendo's original 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game, with Ralph and Felix taking similar poses as Donkey Kong and Mario, respectively. The Hero's Duty game is a reference to the hugely successful first-person shooter games Halo and Call of Duty. Characters from Q*bert are shown as "homeless" characters and later taken in by Ralph and Felix into their game (Q*bert also speaks to Felix at one point using the signature synthesized gibberish and word-balloon symbols from his game, called Q*bert-ese). Scenes in Game Central Station and Tapper's bar include Chun-Li, Cammy and Blanka from Street Fighter, Pac-Man, Blinky, Pinky, and Inky from Pac-Man, the Paperboy from Paperboy, the two paddles and the ball from Pong, Dig Dug, a Pooka, and a Fygar from Dig Dug, The Qix from Qix, Frogger from Frogger, and Peter Pepper from BurgerTime. Lara Croft and Mario are also mentioned.

Additional references are based on sight gags. The residents of Niceland and the bartender from Tapper are animated using a jerky motion that spoofs the limited animation cycles of the sprites of many eight- and sixteen-bit arcade games. King Candy uses the Konami Code on an NES controller to access the programming of Sugar Rush. Throughout Game Central Station is graffiti that includes "Aerith lives" (referencing the character of Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII), "All your base are belong to us" (an Engrish phrase popularized from the game Zero Wing), "Sheng Long Was Here" (referencing an April Fool's joke around a made-up character Sheng Long from Street Fighter), and "Jenkins" (a nod to the popular Leeroy Jenkins meme from World of Warcraft). There is also a reference to the Metal Gear series when Ralph is searching for a medal in Tapper's Lost and found, finding first a Super Mushroom from the Mariofranchise,[citation needed] and then Metal Gear Solid 's "Exclamation point" (with the corresponding sound effect from the game). Mr. Litwak wears a black and white striped referee's shirt, a nod to the iconic outfit of Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day. One of the songs in the credits is an original work from Buckner and Garcia, previously famous for writing video game-themed songs in the 1980s.

Development and Story
The concept of Wreck-It Ralph was first developed at Sony Pictures Animation. Allen Covert, executive producer of the film, describes Wreck-It Ralph as "an 8-bit video-game bad guy who travels the length of the arcade to prove that he's a good guy." In a manner similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Toy Story films, Wreck-It Ralph featured cameo appearances by a number of licensed video-game characters. For example, one scene from the film shows Ralph attending a support group for the arcade's various villain characters, including Clyde from Pac-Man, Doctor Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bowser from Super Mario Bros. The development process ultimately went through six directors; in 2006, Anthony Stacchi and David Feiss became the first directors set to helm the film. They were replaced by Jill Culton in 2008, who was followed by Chris Jenkins, with Todd Wilderman in 2010. In February 2011, Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, and Star Wars: Clone Wars, took over as the sixth scheduled director, and made his feature directorial debut with the film, had determined that for a film about a video-game world to feel authentic, "it had to have real characters from real games in it." Tartakovsky aimed to add licensed characters in a similar manner as cultural references in Looney Tunes shorts, but considered "having the right balance so a portion of the audience didn't feel they were being neglected or talked down to." However, Moore avoided creating the movie around existing characters, feeling that "there's so much mythology and baggage attached to pre-existing titles that I feel someone would be disappointed," and considered this to be a reason why movies based on video game franchises typically fail. Instead, for Ralph, the development of new characters representative of the 8-bit video game was "almost like virgin snow," giving them the freedom to take these characters in new directions.

Before production, the existing characters were added to the story either in places they would make sense to appear or as cameos from a list of characters suggested by the film's creative team, without consideration if they would legally be able to use the characters. The company then sought out the copyright holders' permissions to use the characters, as well as working with these companies to assure their characters were being represented authentically. In the case of Nintendo, the writers had early on envisioned the Bad-anon meeting with Bowser as a major character within the scene; according to Tartakovsky, Nintendo was very positive towards this use, stating in Moore's own words, "If there is a group that is dedicated to helping the bad guy characters in video games then Bowser must be in that group!" Nintendo had asked that the producers try to devise a scene that would be similarly appropriate for Mario for his inclusion in the film. Despite knowing they would be able to use the character, the producers could not find an appropriate scene that would let Mario be a significant character without taking away the spotlight from the main story and opted to not include the character. Tartakovsky debunked a rumor that Mario and his brother character Luigi were not included due to Nintendo requesting too high a licensing fee, stating that the rumor grew out of a joke Jack Black made at Comic-Con. Dr. Wily from Mega Man was going to appear but was cut from the final version of the film.Overall, there are about 188 individual character models in the movie as a result of these cameo inclusions.

An earlier draft of the screenplay had Ralph and Vanellope spending time going around the game world to collect the pieces for her kart for Sugar Rush, and at times included Felix traveling with the pair. During these scenes, Ralph would have lied to Felix regarding his budding relationship with Calhoun, leading eventually to Ralph becoming depressed and abandoning his quest to get his medal back. At this point, a fourth game world, Extreme Easy Living 2, would have been introduced and was considered a "hedonistic place" between the social nature of The Sims and the open-world objective-less aspects of Grand Theft Auto, according to Tartakovsky. Ralph would go there too, wallowing in his depression, and would find happiness by gaining "Like It" buttons for doing acceptable actions in the party-like nature of the place. Moore stated that while it was difficult to consider dropping this new game world, they found that its introduction in the second half of Tartakovsky film would be too difficult a concept for the viewer to grasp. They further had trouble working out how a social game would be part of an arcade, and though they considered having the game be running on Litwak's laptop, they ultimately realized that justifying the concept would be too convoluted. Line art sketches and voice-over readings of the scene were included on the home media release of the film.

Animation and Design
The film was animated by Sony Pictures Imageworks in Culver City and Vancouver. To research the Sugar Rush segment of the film, the visual development group traveled to trade fair ISM Cologne, a See's Candy factory, and other manufacturing facilities. The group also brought in food photographers, to demonstrate techniques to make food appear appealing. Special effects, including from "smoke or dust," looks distinct in each of the segments.

Music
The film's score was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh. Three original songs were performed in the film by Owl City, AKB48, and Buckner & Garcia. The soundtrack also features the songs "Celebration", "Bug Hunt" (Skrillex and Noisia remix), and "Shut Up and Drive". Early in the development process, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote an original song for the film; it was later cut out.