Back in July I took a trip to California to attend the red carpet premiere of Christopher Robin and also to promote the launch of Avengers: Infinity War on Blu-Ray. That wasn’t everything we did on the jam-packed all expense paid trip. We did one other thing and that was to spend the day at Disney Animation Studios. We were there to learn a bunch of things behind the scenes of the upcoming movie, Ralph Breaks the Internet. This is the follow up to Wreck-It Ralph, a movie that I know by heart because I watched it at least once a week with Andrew when he was four. I love the movie so much because it did for video games what Toy Story did for toys.

Ralph Breaks The Internet Trailer

That was great but…..

The NEWEST trailer just dropped TODAY!!!!

And a new Poster!

We arrived at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building. Once inside we toured the lobby and I took a bunch of photos with the artwork on the walls. The inside of the building had changed since I was there for a day like this once before. A day one all about Big Hero 6 four years ago. This trip, however, the building had everything to do with Ralph Breaks the Internet. There were a ton of pieces of concept art for Ralph Breaks the Internet. I even got to strike a powerful Ralph pose next to a huge Ralph statue.

We had a full day ahead with five different sessions to learn all about the movie. We started off going to the theater to meet with Director Rich Moore, Director/Writer Phil Johnston and Producer Clark Spencer. There we screened several clips from the movie and during each one Rich and Phil would provide insight into the creative process behind this movie. We were not allowed to take any photos or have our phones out during this but we could record the audio. I can’t rightly say who said what from the audio but it was mostly Rich and Phil talking. I think Clark introduced them. It was back in July so my mind is a bit fuzzy. I knew I should have written this immediately upon my return. But, life does what it does.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is the 57th feature from Disney Animation. We also learned that the studio is 95 years old this year. That is incredible. There is no wonder that it has such longevity especially after seeing the first featurette that we were shown. The featurette was of people who worked on Ralph and their first Disney films. It was also about those Disney films that first inspired them to dream about wanting to work for Disney Animation. It was a featurette on dreams. Seeing Disney films sparked the dreams of so many of the writers, creators and producers of Disney films. One of the main themes that came out of this featurette other than dreams was that everyone has something that they add to the production. Everyone has a different expertise and they do something called ‘plusing’ which is adding their own contribution to the process to make it better. Everyone believes in the movies and characters that they are creating.

Rich, Phil and Clark came up to talk about the decision to do another Ralph movie. The film started forming in 2014. There were more stories to explore. They needed a good reason to make a sequel. They began talking about transporting these misfit characters from their small town of the Litwak’s Arcade to a much larger world of the Internet. They could see the opportunities for comedy and conflict and began to get excited. The whole main voice cast is back. Yesss is a new character. She is an algorithm of BuzzTube, a sort of hybrid of BuzzFeed and YouTube. She discovers the latest trends and shows the world. She’s a very cool character who will be there with Ralph and Vanellope. Lots of hair and clothes changes. Her jacket is made up of fiber optics.

The creators continued, “We started by asking ourselves. How are we going to make our animated version of the Internet feel like the Internet that we all use every day.” They gave their animators free reign. They told them there were no borders and no limits. They told them to shoot the works. The animators kept giving them back cat videos. Funny cat videos. Apparently the Internet is made up of exclusively cat videos. When they got serious they began to explore where the characters going to walk around. They began to create what their Internet would actually look like.

They started with research. They talked about how the teams from Moana went to the South Pacific. For Zootopia they went the the Savannah and the team on Frozen went to Norway. The team for Ralph drove 9 miles down the 5 freeway to One Wilshire Building in downtown Los Angeles. It houses all of the connections for any and all communication on the Internet for North America. Miles and miles of wires and tens of thousands of servers that connects the world. The building is wires and boxes. This trip began to inspire their version of what the Internet will look like. The Internet world can be similar to a major metropolis. Then broken up into several districts.

The world can’t exist without citizens. In their world there are two types of people. There are Net users. Then Netizens. Net Users are internet avatars of real life people. They showed us Mr. Litwak from the Arcade as a Net User. Netizens are there to help the Net Users. Then they showed video of a Net User getting help from a Netizen to find tacos. This was a wireframe and unfininshed video that the animators make to show what they are trying to achieve.

The story picks up where the first movie left off. Ralph and Vanellope are living their lives and things are going well. Then one night there is a plug in alert. Mr. Litwak has plugged in a router to the Game Central Station Power strip. It is a strange new game called WiFi. This is deemed off limits and no one is allowed to enter it. Then a kid accidentally breaks the steering wheel on Sugar Rush. The game’s manufacturer went out of business years ago. Mr. Litwak figures that maybe it is time to let this old game go. However, the kids in the Arcade love the game and they search of a replacement steering wheel on the Internet and they find one on eBay. However, the cost is more than Sugar Rush makes in an entire year. Mr. Litwak feels that he must unplug the game and sell it for parts. Vanellope has lost her game and she is now homeless.

We then see a sequence with Vanellope and Ralph. Ralph tries to console Vanellope. Vanellope asks, “if I’m not a racer, what am I?” Ralph is sad for his friend but also likes that they can spend more time together. However, this is not what Vanellope needs. Ralph gets an idea. They will sneak into the WiFi Router, enter the Internet and find eBay and get that steering wheel. Then Vanellope’s game will be saved and everything will be back to normal.

We then see another clip where Ralph and Vanellope go into the router and figure it is the Internet and it is empty they are underwhelmed. Then Mr. Litwak’s Net User shows up to use the router to go online. Ralph and Vanellope follow him. They then find the actual Internet and it is massive. Ralph finds the trip to be terrifying and uncomfortable. Vanellope is so excited and loves the thrill of the ride. Both are incredibly impressed when they see the actual Internet. They go off to explore.

Watching that sequence was incredible , seeing how the animators took what they had learned from One Wilshire Building and then all of their knowledge of the Internet to create a sprawling metropolis with levels upon levels of buildings and inhabitants.

Then Ralph and Vanellope go to a Search Bar. There they meet Knowsmore played by Alan Tudyk. Knowsmore immediately annoys Ralph. Vanellope gives a query for the steering wheel. Then they head to eBay to get the steering wheel. This scene had slightly more content than what you see in the trailer.

We were told more about what the creators thought that eBay looked like. They met Brian Curless from Pittsfield, IL. He is the reining U.S. champion auctioneer. We saw a clip of Brian doing his thing. Then they told us how they flew Brian in for a recording session. Rich and Phil played as auction bidders while Brian did his thing. We saw a fun clip of that recording session. He’s amazing!

We then saw a clip of Ralph and Vanellope entering eBay and we hear Brian’s recording from the session early but see his Netizen character doing the auction of a velvet painting of a sorrowful kitten. The eBay building is filled with many stalls where there are auctioneers auctioning off the different items. Ralph and Vanellope think it is a game and all they have to do is shout out higher numbers. They do not even understand what they are doing so they end up bidding up the item to an astronomical number. They win the steering wheel and when they go to the checkout counter they find out that they have to pay for the item.

Now they need money and the issue is, how can they raise the money to actually get the item in time to save Vanellope’s game. How can they get that money in the Internet. Then Yesss steps in and tells them that they can create viral videos. She explains that with the videos they can earn real world money just like YouTube stars today can. Not me of course, but others who make videos people want to watch. Yesss sees something in Ralph and Vanellope and has them make videos. They immediate start trending. At this point we learned that the creators did not just want to show what was great about the Internet but they had a responsibility to show the not so great aspects.

We then see a clip where Ralph is celebrating his BuzzTube success with his videos and he makes a discovery of a room where all of the negative comments on his videos are housed. He starts reading them and, at first, he finds it positive. Then he sees all the terrible things that people are saying about him. They are devastating. Then Yesss finds him and tells him, “First rule of the Internet, do not read the comments.” She explains that the Internet can bring out the worst in people but he’s got to ignore it. She explains that the comments are not about him, they are about the people leaving the comments.

We also watch one last scene and it is probably going to be the most favorite scene of everyone who sees this movie. Yesss sends Vanellope to a fan site to market Ralph’s videos. She goes to Oh My Disney. There she gets chased by Stormtroopers. She ends up in the dressing room for the Disney Princesses. You can see part of this in the trailer but we saw almost the full scene and it was amazing. It got so many laughs from everyone in the audience. I do not want to give anything away about this scene because it is tremendous and there is such a great guest appearance I don’t want to spoil. You’ve probably seen all the cool clothes from the scene and will probably be able to buy them.

The great thing about the scene is that they were able to get all of the original voices of the princesses that are still alive. Later we met the new voice of Snow White and her story will be in another post.

We then had a Q & A session with everyone. Phil and Rich started talking about this movie almost immediately after the first one wrapped up. They thought that the story from the first movie wrapped up nicely and it was Ralph’s story but not a full arc of Vanellope’s story. They think of the first movie as a Chapter One: Ralph Meets Vanellope. In the second one they explore the evolution of the friendship between Ralph and Vanellope and how they would put that friendship to the test. Once they settled on those ideas and themes they said, let’s do this.

The ending sentiment of the first Wreck-It Ralph was “If this kid likes me, how bad can I be?” While that is sweet and a nice end to that story it is really dysfunctional in that having happiness based upon what another person thinks of you. Ralph did not have a friend for many years and he makes a friend in the first movie. This second movie is all about him holding on to that friendship. He’s also battling 30 years of insecurity over being a bad guy and being ostracized. The story is very much on how he reconciles that within himself.

A question was asked about all the sites within the Internet. We learned that if a companies name is used respectfully in a film it can be shown without permission. However, the team went around and got permission from many of their worldwide partners so as to make the Internet of the movie feel even bigger. They used many real names in order to make the Internet of the film feel real.

I got to ask a question and I asked if the creators felt that including the scene where Ralph reads the negative comments was put in as a warning for kids about the dangers of the Internet. Did they feel an obligation to tell kids about these negative aspects of the Internet? They made a decision early on to show the good and bad, the duality of the Internet. It was important to show that Ralph was susceptible of the negative aspects of the Internet. To portray that it is not you, there are other people out there who feel it is their job to attack and say mean things to people. It was important to them to put that in and they felt an obligation to include that.

My pal, Mitch asked them how they came up with the idea of the princess scene in the movie. They explained that what if Ralph took an Oh My Disney quiz as to which princess he was. Was he an Anna or an Elsa. They got full support to push the limits but stay respectful and true to each of the princess characters.

A question was asked about the new character of Yesss. They always knew that they wanted Ralph to end up at a site like BuzzTube and they felt that they needed a character like Yesss who embodied the Internet. A character who was constantly changing with all of the latest trends. Always moving, always in tune with what is next. This type of character plays off of the Ralph character who is averse to change. He likes how his life is right now and doesn’t want it to change. They needed to have a character who would be opposite of Ralph.

They also talked about meeting someone who is in the movie and how starstruck they were when meeting him. I just don’t want to spoil who that character and actor is. They did say that he was wonderful to work with.

We learned that to make money to buy the steering wheel Ralph makes viral videos. A question was asked as to what the content of the videos were. They told us that the team made about 300 different videos and were so pumped that these videos would be a whole new genre of viral. However, they fell flat. So instead they thought, “What would Ralph do?” Ralph would just copy what is popular. So we will see Ralph in many genre’s of videos that we all know from YouTube.

When working with the princesses they met with each of the actresses and asked them about their insights into the characters. Some people have been portraying the character for decades. So much of what comes across in the movie comes from the actress. They found that it was very emotional for several of them to come back and meet the animators of today who were inspired by the movies that these actresses were in. It was a very special encounter for each one.

It was an insightful morning and we had so much fun learning about the movie. I cannot wait for it to arrive on November 21st. It is right on time for us to watch it with Andrew on his seventh birthday the next day.

Like WRECK-IT RALPH on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WreckItRalph/

Follow WRECK-IT RALPH on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wreckitralph

Follow WRECK-IT RALPH on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wreckitralph/

Visit the official RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET website here: http://movies.disney.com/ralph-breaks-the-internet-wreck-it-ralph-2

RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET arrives in theatres everywhere on November 21st!