We deviated a little from tradition last year -- we chose Murder on the Orient Express over Coco -- but we're back on track:
And y'all?
It was SO GOOD.
Clarification: if push came to shove, I'd have to say the first one was better -- but in a different way, if that makes any sense. Wreck-It Ralph was so filled with nostalgia for me -- a child of the late 80s/early 90s -- and I loved the newness of it. This, IMHO, was the start of Disney Renaissance II's original stories, those not based on any previous source material (see also: Zootopia). It was also so smart, and clever, and the villain reveal was refreshing, something so different from Disney's long line of obvious, usually offensively stereotyped villains -- as was the way Disney toyed with the idea of villainy and what it means to be bad.
But Ralph Breaks The Internet was just as good, just in a different way. The nostalgia factor wasn't there, nor was the commentary on villainy. But there were other things, equally new and refreshing for a Disney movie -- especially a Disney princess movie. Because I think it's important to remember that Vanellope is, technically, a Disney princess.
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| 📷: Disney |
More, spoilery thoughts beneath the cut!
1. First and foremost -- the Princesses delivered. I know they got a lot of hype, and some criticism that it was all just a marketing ploy -- NPR's Scott Tobias calls it "the icky aftertaste of corporate synergy," and insisting that it's almost as if "the writer's room had been invaded by the marketing department."
But, like I said above, Vanellope is a princess -- something that I noticed -- and praised -- after I saw the first film. It's one of New-Iger-Era-Disney's first attempts at meta-criticizing itself. (Most notably, I think is Elsa's -- and Kristoff's! -- insistence to Anna that she can't marry a man she just met.) Vanellope is technically a princess, but hilariously sloughs off her pink ballgown and says she'll be a president -- for democracy's sake. She's a new type of princess, one that they have been demanding Disney portray for years. (Whoever they are.)
And that idea is continued in the sequel: the idea that princesses are more than the way they're coded or written, that their "role" only dictates so much. They may be written to act a certain way, they may have stories to act out -- just like Vanellope does when she races -- but one of the main points of the film is that you can rewrite your story, you can choose your own path. (Merida is screaming "DUH!" somewhere right now.)
After all -- Spoiler Alert -- Vanellope doesn't go back to Sugar Rush, she chooses to stay in Slaughter Race. (I'm not entirely sure why...it seems like she could race in Sugar Rush during the day and then compete in Slaughter Race at night since, as she points out, the Internet is always on. I'm also not entirely sure how the game goes on without her, but okay.)
Same thing -- or, at least, similar thing -- with the Official Princesses. The scene in the trailer is only part of the story: yes, they hang out in their downtime and there's lots of jokes to be made about their less-than-empowering stories and the tropes they act out. And then, of course, there's the hilarity of the Princesses discovering comfy lounge clothes. But, just like Vanellope, they're not the roles they play -- they may be acting out the roles of damsels-in-distress within the confines of their stories, but outside of them? They're pretty bad-ass. When they save Ralph -- and Spoiler Alert, they do -- they flip the narrative: they save the big strong man, and they do so by actively using the strengths they were written to have. This is a scene I'd have to rewatch to fully analyze and comment on, because I was so in awe while I was watching it, but I remember Rapunzel using her hair, and Elsa using her power to create an ice slide -- but every princess played a part and together they saved him. Which brings me to my next point...
2. Female Friendship.
Of the 11 official Disney princesses only 2 of them -- TWO -- have female friends. Tiana has Charlotte (and that's, overall, a pretty positive relationship) and Pocahontas has Nakoma, which isn't the best example of women being there for each other. Anna and Elsa have each other, of course, but they're not official Princesses (neither is Moana, but let's ignore that nit-picky detail for the sake of this film).
Combine that with the number of Princesses who don't have mothers or who don't have developed relationships with their moms AND the number of princess films that pit women against each other -- it's not good. (And I'm not the only one who's noticed this either.)
And, for good measure, let's throw in the fun fact that, in official Disney Princess merchandise, the Princesses never make eye contact, because they're seen as individuals, not friends or even, for lack of a better term, "coworkers."
That changes now.
For the better.
While we don't get a lot of scenes of explicit friendship/interaction before Vanellope arrives -- they're each kind of doing their own thing -- we see them band together immediately as they think they're being infiltrated and their safe space threatened, and then we see them work together seamlessly. You may say I'm reading too much into an animated film -- and maybe I am; maybe I'm choosing to view my favorite scenes through the best possible lens -- but I genuinely don't think I am. I genuinely believe that we are supposed to see the Princesses not as individuals, as they've been seen for so long, but as a unit. And, yes, I'm going to go here: it's almost like "there was an idea, to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if [they] could become something more."
Yes, that's an Avengers quote. And, yes, on further reflection, I think you could make an argument that the Princesses are functioning quite similarly to the Avengers in this film. (Someone on the internet has had to match up Princesses with Avengers characters, right?) With one crucial difference...
3. There's No Villain.
Okay, so that's kind of a major spoiler, but also not. Because on the one hand, the trailer didn't show you who the antagonist/villain was, but you can't use that as a benchmark, because the trailers for the first film didn't reveal that either. The difference is that identifying who the villain was in Wreck-It Ralph is an epic PLOT TWIST, whereas here, the twist is that there is no villain.
So, yeah. Not quite like the Avengers, because there's no Thanos running around, breaking hearts, and channeling his inner Thomas Malthus. (Yeah, yeah. That was a pretentious name-drop, but this is a Disney blog. I don't really get a chance to do that much.)
Now, I'll be honest: for most of the movie, I was waiting for either Shank (voiced by Gal Godot) or Yesss (voiced by Taraji P. Henson) to turn on our protagonists.
Clearly, this was not something I wanted to happen -- but isn't it interesting that I was more-than-half expecting it to? Thanks, Disney, for playing a part in conditioning me to expect conflict to be women-vs-women. But, yeah. I was waiting for Yesss to steal the money she was helping Ralph earn or to have a sinister ulterior-motive in shaming him. Nope. She was genuinely just trying to help. And I was also waiting for Shank to turn on Vanellope -- because she was threatened by her racing skills or because she didn't take her seriously, or who knows what. Nope. She was genuinely a good friend who had her best interests at heart.
Wait, what?
A Disney movie with no truly villainous, sinister character? How new, how refreshing, how different! Which leads me to...
4. This Is A Movie About Friendship.
When you think about, really think about it, how many Disney movies are about friendship -- truly about friendship? I mean, sure, friendship plays a significant role in movies like Dumbo and Bambi, but those aren't movies about friendship, there's another point to the story. The biggest ones I can think of are Toy Story (and, when it comes down to it, pretty much any Pixar film, but those aren't technically Disney films) and The Fox and the Hound, which is more about why two characters can't be friends.
The fact of the matter is: most Disney movies are about romance, finding your true self, or both.
The Wreck-It Ralph movies are unabashedly about friendship: who to be friends with, how not to judge people to make new friends, accepting differences in others. Wreck-It Ralph shows us the importance of finding friends in unlikely places, but Ralph Breaks The Internet shows us the difficulty of maintaining those friendships -- and also what to do when your friend grows and changes. Because friendships do change! People change! And it's like a marriage: friendships take work to survive.
Do you know how rare it is to see that directly addressed in a mainstream children's film? Yes, TV shows like Sesame Street cover that topic, but only in short segments -- not developed over the course of a 90-minute movie, showing the difficulty -- the reality -- of the way people act when they feel their friendship is threatened.
It seems so simple, on the surface, to say that this is a Disney movie about friendship -- but again, this is something new, something different for Disney to tackle and address and I think it's so important.
Kudos, Disney. Truly.
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