Ah mah goodness… if you’re this obsessed over it, then that is definitely a good sign.
Should be seeing it on Sunday. Woot! Woot! Yeah, I’m on a big gushy obsessive streak as of late… 
Just got back from seeing Wreck-It Ralph… and must I say, it was amazing. Easily Pixar-quality, both in animation and story. The plot is actually interesting and it’s not one of those movies where you learn the whole thing from the trailers.
But perhaps the best part… video game references galore. Sonic, Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Mario, Street Fighter, Dance Dance Revolution, Frogger, Pong, Halo, Tomb Raider, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, Rampage, Metal Gear Solid, Tapper, The Legend of Zelda, Contra, the list goes on and on. If you have even the slightest interest in video games, I’d recommend it to you. Even if you don’t, it’s still pretty great.
YES THE REFERENCES. What really got me though is how the movie did more than just name dropped/cameo’d popular characters. It also referenced the different genres and eras of games through the art, animation style/etc as well as lampshading common tropes such as speed panels in kart racing. It made it feel more timeless to me than a lot of other movies that rely heavily on references. (E.G. early Dreamworks films.) [spoil]In Sugar Rush, I got the sense that it was a Japanese game just from the art, and my suspicions were confirmed when they played actual J-Pop. It’s little touches like that.[/spoil] I NEED the art of book for this like, yesterday.
Also… [spoil]I was actually kinda shipping Ralph/Calhoun before I saw the film because I didn’t get the memo that Felix was going to crush on her like woah, but I’ve come to terms with my ship sinking and find Felix/Calhoun really adorable now. <3[/spoil]
I do think that people who only know a bit about games will enjoy the movie, but I must admit there were quite a few in-jokes that got to me as a hardcore gamer. I laughed REALLY hard at [spoil]the lost and found box, and Ralph finding Solid Snake’s exclamation point. I’m kinda surprised he didn’t find a Pokeball in there though. No Pokemon refs at all, actually.[/spoil]
But anyways, I plan to write a full review once my feelings cool off a bit, so I’ll stop babbling. %D;
^Yeah, I loved the [spoil]lost and found scene too. A Pokéball would’ve been great, I was also kind of hoping there would be a Pokémon reference or two. But the references that were in there were fantastic. If you read some of the graffiti in Game Central Station, there were some that said “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” and “Jenkins” (a World of Warcraft nod to Leeroy Jenkins). Also when the Candy King was entering in the passcode to the Sugar Rush data base on the NES controller, me and my friends, as well as several other people in the theater, all said the Konami code in unison as he pressed it in. “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.”[/spoil]
[spoil]Haha that is awesome. There wasn’t much of an audience at mine (I went at 11:30am) to chant, but I laughed at that part.[/spoil]
This movie was just… AUGH. So great. It’s very much on my mind still. I will do a full writeup tomorrow when I’m less sleepy, but in short, it was really terrific and anyone who just likes witty imaginative movies with lots of big laughs will like it. I was smiling throughout the whole thing!
I also don’t think you necessarily need to be a gamer to enjoy it. I think Disney kind of brought the best of both worlds and made something for everyone. But gamers might get more of a kick out of it. 
Did anyone else stay after the credits for the [spoil]Disney logo kill screen[/spoil]?
YES. I got such a laugh out of that. I don’t think the other person in the audience (seriously, it was still kinda early in the day for crowds) got it though.
We’re always the last people in our theater who wait till the end! It’s kind of a dainty feeling, being the only ones left in the theater during the credits to the outro, haha.
I got to see today just as I had hoped to, and I just adore this film. I mean, WIR had me laughing, crying, and “Aww”-ing to the extent only Pixar movies do usually. It’s so wonderful… the story, the heart, the characters, the video game references that I actually picked up (I’m a gamer for the most part, but not 100% so that I could recognize everything for certain), how the 3D let me feel a part of the story, and um… just everything!!! I normally try to avoid getting too obsessed with movies before they come out (except with Pixar films), but I fell pretty hard for this 'un from the first trailer, and I love it more than I could’ve imagined. So I was the nutty girl who had her draw dropped open half the film, laughed loud, whimpered when I feared for a character’s life, cried at the deeply touching parts, and hung around for the credits, singing that Owl City number like no one was there! Overall, WIR has snuck its way right into my heart (and my list of #1 favorite movies)!
Wreck-It Ralph, dare I say, is a better Pixar film than Brave was. Don’t get me wrong, Brave was great, but at the same time it is a bit of a left-field effort from Pixar. Meanwhile, Disney has been taking notes from Pixar’s glory and Wreck-It Ralph as a result is everything that Disney has learned from their subsidiary studio.
Before I get into the plot, I’d like to say part of what makes Wreck-It Ralph so wonderful (And they did not even have to do this to make the experience worthwhile), is all the video game references. There is a hefty hodgepodge of game references that gamers will die for. Think of Wreck-It Ralph as almost the video game equivalent to Who Framed Roger Rabbit… Oh yeah, there is also a ton of food references once narrative drives to the “Sugar Rush” game world.
The main plot has the trademark Pixar finesse for warming and touching the hearts of audiences. I am not going to get into the plot (I lied about the plot thing in the last paragraph), but I will say the moral will affect those who have been victimized by acceptance in social crowds, low self-esteem and insecurity issues; and to those that wouldn’t relate, will at least build sympathy for these characters. The story handles these issues in a beautiful way. There’s a couple subplots that intertwine with the main plot as it progresses, a twist that most people will not see coming, which then concludes into a fantastical climax and a heartwarming closure. Wreck-It Ralph is a fresh and original story under the Disney belt that’s told in a video game setting that has never been embraced so successfully in film before.
I know it’s blasphemy to speak this way on a Pixar fan site, but Brave has fierce competition this year in animation, and I can safely say Brave won’t stand a chance against Wreck-It Ralph, Frankenweenie, The Secret World of Arrietty, and the likes. Go see it.
9.5/10
Yeah uh if it’s blasphemy count me in too WIR >Brave. 
I was pleasantly surprised as well regarding Paperman & Wreck-it-Ralph.
They delivered the 1-2 punch of emotion that I was hoping La Luna & Brave would (La Luna was good, Brave didn’t get me ‘right here’).
There was a great amount of layering and detail going into this, that made it more than just another ‘pop-culture’ film (I’m looking at YOU, Chicken Little, you sunuva-). I did like that they didn’t just turn this into grouping every single video game character into a big Smash Brothers Melee like some expected. Most are just there to show the culture of the video game world in Litwik’s Arcade.
I do love that there are numerous connective threads in the story, and it’s not so obvious where some of them connect. Though I do believe that Vanellope stole the show for me. She looked like she was a character I was going to hate from the previews, but they played the ‘aww’ card on me, and she had some of the most emotional moments I’d seen in an animated film this year.
I also loved the voicework and animation on King Candy. Alan Tudyk nailed the part, largely playing it off like Ed Wynn, which was quite mesmerizing.
All that and NOT EVEN ONE Tron reference witch should be the first option on the list seeing how it was made by disney.
I disagree about the inclusion of TRON in this film. When I saw it for the first time and being aware of the fact that there will be a lot of cameos and references, I was half expecting Mickey Mouse or TRON to just show up randomly somewhere, because it would have been the easy thing to get away with when the audience is already accepting other cameos. But the truth is, I am glad Disney kept it strictly to actual video game characters, and then food in its respective location in the film. TRON really has no part in video game history other than the fact that Disney created this trademark back in the '80s; but even then, TRON has no part in video game history; or at least, no part in what was depicted in this film. Sure, he could have worked, other than the fact that there were never games that he was woven around. I think that was beyond the point of what Disney was trying to do with this film. Disney wanted to create a rich palette of the progressions of the video game industry. TRON just does not have any part in it. Yes in the context of the TRON fiction, he could have easily gotten away with having a cameo in the movie, but then at that point it would have just been Disney tooting their horns for self-interested advertisement of other films. I found it highly respectable that Disney kept any and all Disney references out of the film (Although, I would not be surprised if there is a Hidden Mickey somewhere, but that’s cause Hidden Mickey’s are universal easter eggs in most things Disney).
TBH there are games I would have liked to see included, but that’s exactly it - the movie DIDN’T try to shoehorn things in. As nice as it would have felt at the moment to point at the screen all “omigosh it’s Kirby!” I think the movie is better for being a bit conservative with the name dropping.
(Besides that’s what crossover fanfiction is for.)
…The original Tron was not only about videogames, but the videogame adaptation for the arcade was the one of the most succesfull games from it’s time, so much that it had a sequel ( Discs of Tron ) and eventually gave disney more money than the actual film.
Im not asking Tron to appear on the center of the screen, but a couple of programs battling with their discs in the background or Tron walking around in the game station would have been nice, specially seeing how Disney ignored Tron for 28 years
Disney hasn’t ignored TRON though. It received a quality sequel and there’s even an animated series currently running.
All I’m saying is, there are a LOT of great games that couldn’t be represented. There just wasn’t the time for everything about making the film feel overloaded. Even too many recognizable background characters can become distracting and ruin the intimate feel of a scene where the protagonist is meant to be the focus.
I agree with this. The focus of the movie is not on cameos. They boosted the enjoyment level, but I feel like entirely too many people are dwelling on the cameos. The movie had great plot!
Plus, (and this is coming from a MAJOR Kirby fan) characters like Kirby, Pikachu etc haven’t really had any arcade appearances, or at least as far as I know, so their inclusion wouldn’t really make sense. The hub world wasn’t just a general hub for video games, it was the hub of the arcade. This particular arcade and the games it had.
You bring a great point, Leirin; before the movie came out, I read a gushy paragraph on DisneyCreate from one artist who was thrilled to see that Sonic would be in there. But anyone who went to see the movie strictly for the cameos wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much for that reason; I hope whoever had that reason for seeing it would be pleasantly surprised by how awesome the film as it is! And while a TRON bit would’ve been cool, it’s not a big deal… besides, gamejumping to Classic TRON would be deadly…