Oh boy, this is going to be a long post, much like my The Last Jedi post on my previous and now defunct blog. I took my kids to see Ralph Breaks the Internet today. I found the first Wreck-it-Ralph to be a good, not great movie. The sequel is a bad, almost terrible movie. Disney decided to use the Ralph sequel as a vehicle to bash men, much like they did with The Last Jedi a year ago this time.

The first two acts are OK, but there are problems from almost the beginning. The first act is Disney’s version of Sony’s The Emoji Movie, which is among the worst movies ever made. Whereas The Emoji Movie was just one big extended commercial for various products, Disney holds back, but not by that much.

Whoever paid to have their logo displayed prominently and discussed as Ralph and Vanellope first travel the internet is obvious. YouTube is used extensively in the plot, but it’s not called YouTube, but BuzzTube. It’s not clear to me why this is because Google (who owns YouTube) was displayed prominently and discussed not once, but twice. Twitter’s advertisement was bizarre too and featured its blue birds tweeting a picture of a cat and dog (or something like that) to each other – hardly what Twitter is used for.

There were signs in its first and second acts that the movie may go completely off the rails and the second act’s sign that this was the case is the red flag seen in the trailer, which is Vanellope visiting the Disney princesses and being accepted as one because “people assume all of [her] problems got solved because a big strong man showed up.”

None of this is worthy of declaring it a bad, almost terrible movie, but the third act is where it all becomes clear this is simply a male-bashing movie and a bad one at that.

SPOILERS

The plot of the movie goes like this – Vanellope is bored with doing the same thing at the arcade day in and day out, whereas Ralph is perfectly content with working all day in his game and going back to the hub in the arcade in the evening. Being Vanellope’s best friend, Ralph makes a new track in her game Sugar Rush that Vanellope sees while playing a game for a human at the arcade. Vanellope sees the track and goes off-road causing the human player to ultimately break the steering wheel when Vanellope fights the steering of the human player. The game has to be shut down because a new steering wheel costs $200.00, which is more than the game makes in a year.

The way I see it, both Ralph and Vanellope are to blame for the broken steering wheel, but the movie has Ralph taking all the blame. They then go to the internet to buy that steering wheel and send it to the arcade. Not understanding money, they ultimately bid $27,001.00 on eBay for the steering wheel and then are rejected and given 24 hours to come up with the money.

Their first attempt at getting their money to buy the steering wheel comes from trying to steal a car in a game called Slaughter Race that would net them $40.000.00. Slaughter Race is a real-world grimy racing game similar to GTA, and if Ralph and/or Vanellope were to die in it, which is a real risk, they would be dead because they are not being played by human characters and don’t belong in the game, anyway. In addition to all of the seedy stuff like what GTA has, it even has Great White sharks at random that come out of the pavement to eat people.

When stealing the car fails, they decide to have Ralph repeatedly embarrass himself in YouTube, I mean BuzzTube videos to earn money through clicks and favorites. This is the part in the second act where Vanellope visits the Disney princesses and serves as both the beginning of the real man-bashing and as an extended Disney commercial until the third act begins.

Ralph embarrasses himself enough in numerous videos just in time to make enough money to buy the steering wheel, which he does. But, Vanellope has decided to live life now in the Slaughter Race game with her new found friend, the leader of the gang who owns the car they were trying to steal, who is, of course, a sexy, smart and strong independent woman who don’t need no man. Her name is Shank and is played by Gal Gadot.

Ralph has a problem with this, and the movie immediately portrays it as Ralph being a very bad man for not wanting his best friend to die in Slaughter Race. It portrays it as Ralph not wanting to let go of a friend, all the while discussing it’s because of how insecure of a man he is. There’s even an immediate quip from an internet program to Ralph that he “can’t go white knight” on the situation.

So, Ralph gets a virus to release into the Slaughter Race game in an attempt to interfere with it enough to get Vanellope to leave. The virus escapes into the open internet and then copies Ralph’s insecurities into a million Ralph’s that are all portrayed as big mindless oafs, just like every man in a mainstream television show or movie has been for the past 25 years. All of the Ralphs then rampage across the internet looking for Vanellope.

Ralph only realizes that he is “a very bad friend” (the movie’s words, not mine) after Vanellope states to him that he is “a very bad friend” the second time. At this point, Ralph realizes that he is indeed a very bad friend (again, this is the movie stating that, not me) and becomes “secure,” at which point the million viri Ralph’s back off and disappear. At this point, the million Ralph’s had formed a giant Ralph and the real Ralph is saved from falling down off of the million disappearing Ralph’s by the Disney princesses. Ralph goes back to the arcade while Vanellope stays in Slaughter Race to race around all day and presumably carpetmunch Gal Gadot in between races.

In addition to directly stating or heavily implying that men are insecure, the movie also states or heavily implies throughout the movie that those who go to work all day and do the same thing are bad people (go back and read the first plot point in the spoilers section). It’s brought up multiple times in the third act as a reason for Ralph and Vanellope’s split and for the life of me, I don’t understand why. It became clear during the third act they’re targeting the dads out there with this social commentary.

I guess you’ll just have to trust me on this one but playing a racing game while 69’ing someone who looks like Gal Gadot in between sets sounds very appealing to me when compared to going to work and doing the same job all day, and I’m genuinely happy for someone who has the opportunity to live that life – male, female, or otherwise. But I live in the real world where having a job is necessary to provide a roof over the heads of my kids and me as well as food on the table. Being a man and not being independently wealthy is an awful thing, I guess.

Disney poking me for going to work is a front in the current culture wars I haven’t seen in a mainstream movie yet. I’m stupefied by this because my working allows for me to also pay for my kids to go watch Disney movies on the weekend, buy their shit, or go to their amusement parks on my vacation days. And Disney confirms they’re targeting me with this attitude when the Shank character quips to Ralph at the very end that he made a stupid dad joke. Fuck you too, Disney. Why in the world does Disney not want my money?

A similar plot and movie with minor adjustments and without the male bashing would warrant a grade of B-, but I can’t go higher than a D on this one. Given the total horseshit Disney has produced recently, I do believe it’s time to significantly cut back on purchasing from them.