“Wreck-It Ralph” could bring home the Oscar for Best Animated. Photo via Flickr user JeepersMedia
The line-up for this year’s Best Animated is formidable: Pixar’s ”Brave,” Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph,” Tim Burton’s black and white stop-motion “Frankenweenie,” Universal’s stop-motion “ParaNorman,” and Sony’s clay-mation “The Pirates! Band of Misfits.”
While “Frankenweenie” and “Paranorman” might win some technical awards for their work with stop-motion animation, there isn’t the same Oscar buzz around the two films as there is around “Brave” and “Wreck-It Ralph.” And it’s probably safe to say that “Pirates!” doesn’t have a chance.
With “Brave” winning the Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Animated recently with its gorgeously animated Scottish landscapes, the tempation to put all the money on Pixar’s latest and greatest Disney collaboration is great; after all, six of 11 Best Animated winners have been Pixar-made. It’s a “safe” bet.
But “Wreck-It Ralph” is going to take the Oscar gold this year.
The film follows arcade game villain and outcast Wreck-It Ralph as he tries to prove to the world that not all bad guys are bad guys, and ultimately accepts himself for who he is with the help of outsider and glitch, Vanellope von Schweetz. Their journey, sweet as the candy land they meet in, is memorable, filled with video game favorites, and worth every quarter. As IGN says, “Wreck-It Ralph” is “not only the best animated film of the year, it’s the best video game movie ever made.”
On Feb. 4, the Disney-animated film won the prestigious Annie Award for Best Animated, which has also been given to Oscar-winners “Ratatouille,” “Up,” and “Rango.” The film had the biggest opening weekend for a Walt Disney Animation Studios production, its gross of $49 million topping “Tangled”‘s $48 million.
Some might call the plot of “Wreck-It Ralph” predictable, but it’s a necessary parable in today’s world that we can’t always change how people see us, but we can change how we see ourselves.
Now, onto the animation: what makes “Wreck-It Ralph” truly special and different from previous video game films (“Prince of Persia,” “Super Mario Bros.” aka films we never mention because they were so BAD) is its fully embracing its medium – the spontaneous, nerdy, electronic, zany world of gaming. The way that the film mimics the 8-bit animation of old-time arcade games in the way that characters in Ralph’s world dance but can switch to the realism of “Hero’s Duty” (part Halo, part Call of Duty) to bring a first-person shooter to life is mind-blowing. Everything is super stylized, bringing each facet of the video game world to life, paying homage to everything we love about video games.
Add the nostalgia of seeing video game characters such as Sonic, Bowser, Pacman and the cast of Street Fighter and more into the equation and you have a movie that’s sure to last, in the minds of both audiences and critics.
Could “Wreck-It Ralph” beat awards-favorite “Brave” and bring home the Oscar gold? This writer sure thinks so.
After all, if Ralph could win a medal, why not an Academy Award?
Who do you think is going to win the Best Animated? Let us know in the comments.