It's easy to get caught up in the prestigious Oscar season, which is about to approach us and smother us all in affected British accents and stories about dysfunctional family dynamics and the power of hope (conversely we're also getting new franchise entries with big stars like Tom Cruise and Daniel Craig), so it's easy to forget about a relatively low-profile Disney Animation Studios movie like "Wreck-It Ralph." After this new trailer (courtesy of Yahoo Movies), though, it will be hard to ignore.
The two-and-a-half-minute long trailer gives you a better sense of the movie's central conceit – the villain of a "Rampage"/"Donkey Kong"-type game named Wreck-It Ralph (played by John C. Reilly) becomes dissatisfied with his career and "game jumps" to a "Call of Duty"-type shooter and a "Mario Kart"-style racing game – and the kind of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" world that the movie inhabits (complete with cameos from famous game characters including Sonic the Hedgehog and Bowser from "Mario Bros."). By the time the trailer is over, if you aren't jacked up like a kid who has mainlined a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew and stayed up all night playing "Grand Theft Auto," we're not sure what's wrong with you.
Originally conceived as a movie about the videogame's hero, Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer), "Wreck-It Ralph" is noteworthy for its technical and visual complexity (there's something like 70 characters in this, which is unheard of for an animated film) and for its sharply modern, satiric bent, skewing the usual Disney formula of princess stories or updated fables (like "Chicken Little"). The movie was directed by Rich Moore, a longtime veteran of super-genius animated series "Futurama," and the trailer gives off a vibe that the movie could feel like a long "Futurama" episode, in the best possible way (we could have probably done without the poo joke but hey, this is a movie for kids). Oh yeah, and Skrillex helps out on the soundtrack (by "X-Men: First Class" composer Henry Jackman), so expect a lot of woomp-woomp-woomp-woomps to go along with the crazy videogame visuals.
Look for the trailer attached to "Finding Nemo's" 3D presentation this weekend. "Wreck-It Ralph" opens on November 2nd.
