Film is a stunning medium capable of capturing the
imagination and making the implausible seem possible. To engage an audience, films must prioritize
story above all else. Thus, story reigns
supreme in film and nowhere is the believability of stories stretched as much
as in animation. Animated films create
an entire world from scratch, where choice is intentional and every element subservient
to the story, including the physics of the world. The physics could be realistic, but then
there would be no point to animating the film over shooting it in live action. The
physics of Wreck-It Ralph
intentionally diverge from real world physics in order to invoke the feel of a
video game and to create a fantastic, engaging, and humorous world.
The first law of physics is Wreck-It Ralph concerns the inconsistence of gravity. Often the gravity is similar to our real
world gravity, but there are many instances of characters either floating
weightlessly or plunging downwards. It
is as if each character has gravity independent of their environment including
other characters. The Nicelanders of
“Fix-it Felix, Jr.”, including their titular hero, often experience a momentary
lack of gravity. For example, during the
Nicelander’s 30th anniversary party, the Nicelanders are dancing in
Felix’s loft. Felix gets on the dance
floor and jumps up in the air, springing up quickly yet experiencing a noticeably
long amount of hang time. His jump until he reaches the apex is believable,
given he has a jump magnification of two (12 inch jump height/6 inch push
height), his push time would be three frames (6 frames jump time/2) if we
ignore his floating once he reaches the apex.
Felix spends eighteen frames near the apex of his jump, floating
weightlessly above the ground. After
almost an entire second of hovering, Felix plunges downwards to the floor,
landing in the splits position within three frames. Since everything except Felix’s
weightlessness as the apex is fairly accurate to real world physics, the
audience knows that the arbitrary gravity was intentional. This choice in having Felix defy gravity is a
throwback to classic 8-bit games and shows the audience that the game and its
denizens are from a different era. Not
only that, it is humorous and shows off the character in all his old school
glory.
Another instance of inconsistent gravity occurs during a
conflict between Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz as they race for the “Hero’s
Duty” gold medal. The two characters
fluctuate between long hang times at the apex and extremely fast drops. When Vanellope grabs the medal, Ralph pulls
the branch down and catapults her upwards.
Once she reaches the apex Vanellope spends an impressive seven whole
frames flailing around, momentarily weightless, trying desperately to grab her
medal. Realistically gravity will not
allow someone to spend that much time in the air, but it is comical so the
audience does not notice. Later in the
same sequence Vanellope jumps from one branch to another, descending about twenty
feet with each jump with around ten frames of time for each fall. We can calculate the realistic distance she
could descend in that time with 10 x 10 x 1/3 inch = 33 inches, or about 2.75
feet. Vanellope falls extremely
fast. The arbitrary gravity of Wreck-it Ralph is arbitrary, but it is
okay because it allows this sequence to alternate between fun, fast paced
action and slow moments that give the audience much needed clarity.
The second law of physics in Wreck-it Ralph is exaggerated action and reaction. Characters in the film often utilize
exaggerated action/reaction to display magnificent and superhuman feats, such
as super-speed and super-strength. The
first instance that will be discussed is the sequence in which the Nicelanders
discover Ralph is missing, and Felix rushes to the dump to find the titular
anti-hero. Felix is standing still and
in less than a second, is sprinting across the field, covering about 50 yards
in a mere 31 seconds. Felix’s sprint is
an incredible 79 miles per hour, compared to the top human running speed of
about 27 miles per hour. A large
component of running speed is the force a human can apply to the ground. Elite runners can apply up 800 to 1,000 pounds
to a single leg during a sprinting step, therefore Felix must be exerting well
over that to achieve his ridiculously fast speed. Felix must be exerting a much greater force
to the ground than is possible for a normal human as he runs to achieve his
speed. This moment heightens Felix’s
panic and helps the audience understand his mood.
Later in the film, King Candy sentences Ralph to be
imprisoned in Candy’s “fungeon”. Ralph
attempts to flee, but he is trapped in a castle and encased in a gigantic
cupcake covered in gooey icing, hobbling his movement. All hope appears to be lost, when the hero
launches himself through the exterior wall, plunging downwards to safety. This feat would be impossible in our world. Granted, the castle, like everything else in
Sugar Rush, is made of candy, so it might not seem like it should be
strong. However, seeing as how the candy
can be used for building structures ranging from vehicles to racing tracks to
even castles, we can assume the candy’s strength is similar to the materials
they are substituting for. Therefore, we
can assume the walls of King Candy’s castle have strength similar to masonry
materials such as bricks and stones.
There is no way for a normal human to create the force necessary to
break through. Ralph is capable of
producing extremely strong action forces that can overcome the reaction force
of the wall, breaking through to make his escape. Even if a human body could produce the
necessary force, they would need steel bones to not have their body broken on
impact. Exaggerated action and reaction
gives Ralph superhuman strength, reminding the audience that he is a video game
character, not an actual person, and creating a hilarious scene.
A third law of
physics in Wreck-it Ralph appears to
be the lack of conservation of matter.
In this world, matter can be both created and destroyed, with no indication
of where the energy necessary to accomplish either feat is coming from. First, objects tend to spontaneously appear
simply for the convenience of the characters.
One noticeable instance is during the registration for the following
day’s race. King Candy as well as the
rest of the racers are empty handed, and within less than a second, they have
all pulled large, thick coins from behind their backs. These coins obviously would be too awkward
for the characters to comfortably carry in their clothing, so one can assume
that the coins magically appeared.
Another example is when Felix is trying to escape imprisonment in the
Fungeon. When Felix discovers the bars
on the window are a little loose, he hits them with his hammer in an attempt to
knock them out, forgetting that his hammer magically fixes things. As his name would suggest, Felix not only
fixes the bars, but hilariously causes them to increase in size and
strength. It is feasible that the bars
mass simply expanded, giving them their size, but since they were
proportionally much narrower before Felix hit them, they would have to be paper
thin to reach their new size. Felix
could definitely destroy the bars in that case, so in order to gain strength in
proportion to their growth the bars would have to gain mass. Felix did not have any materials to add to
the bars, so they must have gained newly created mass. At the end of the movie, Vanellope is finally
able to cross the finish line and restores her code. Soon she finds herself ascending into the
air, surrounded by magic pixel dust, clothed in a newly created frilly dress,
tiara, and scepter. This is the most
clear instance of matter creation, since the audience actually sees the plucky
heroin magically clothed in her nee garments. While these events are impossible in our
world, they are quite common within the world of video games, which is the
world the Wreck-It Ralph is trying to
invoke.
Next we have matter being destroyed. In our world, matter cannot be destroyed, but
in Wreck-It Ralph it’s quite
common. The most hilarious example of
such an occurrence is the “double stripe” branches on trees in Sugar Rush. When Ralph finds himself launched into this
new Candyland-themed world, he is surrounded by whimsical striped trees. He spots his coveted gold medal atop a tree,
and races to fetch it before the mischievous Vanellope can steal it from him. On his way up the tree, Ralph repeatedly
encounters the double-stripe branches, which magically disappear when touched, presumably
destroyed on contact. Later on King
Candy paints a horrific nightmare of the future for Ralph should Vanellope win
the race and become a racer: the players will assume that Vanellope’s glitch
makes the whole game broken and “Sugar Rush” will be unplugged. Being unplugged will destroy the world of
Sugar Rush, dooming everyone in the game to homelessness, except for Vanellope, who will be destroyed due to her glitchiness. Sugar Rush appears to be vast world full of
sugary goodness, yet in King Candy’s prediction of the future, it all
disappears in a whirling vortex until there is nothing left. In this terrible view of the future the world
is literally being destroyed, therefore the matter must be destroyed,
also. In the real world, matter cannot
be created or destroyed, but the difference here is that the worlds depicted in
Wreck-It Ralph are not real. The worlds are within video games, and the
fact that matter is created and destroyed with no explanation is very
reminiscent of how objects will randomly appear and disappear in video games. The entirety of each world is a video game,
so matter can freely appear and disappear.
Alternatively, it is possible that matter is not created
or destroyed in Wreck-It Ralph, and
there is true conservation of matter.
When Vanellope’s princess dress appears, she is surrounded by magical pixel
dust. It is possible that these particles
are used to create her dress. The same
ethereal particles appear when Cy-bugs die and double-stripe branches
disappear, suggesting perhaps they are changing their physical state rather
than matter being destroyed. King
Candy’s prediction of Vanellope’s fate should she win a race shows the world
breaking up into pixels as it is destroyed.
Perhaps instead of being created and destroyed, matter in the form of
pixels freely organizes itself, appearing and disappearing as objects are
created and destroyed. However, the
number of pixels shown surrounding Vanellope as well as shown when the many
objects are being destroyed does not seem to accurately represent the mass of
the objects being created and destroyed. Additionally, there are no freely floating pixels to support this theory for the prison bars and gold coins.
The physics of Wreck-It
Ralph are obviously not realistic. However,
by bending and even breaking the rules of physics, the animators effectively
create a unique set of laws for Wreck-It
Ralph. They are arguably arbitrary, except for
the fact that in all cases, the physics are serving the story, whether it is a
plot point, character development, or even just to make a sequence funnier or
more exciting. Wreck-It Ralph may have its own set of unrealistic physics, but
never do they take the audience out of the movie, and never are the changes
pointless when related to the story the film is trying to tell. The physics of Wreck-It Ralph may not be realistic, but they are believable within
the context of the world.
I did deviate from my outline a bit. I included too many scenes in my original outline so I took a lot of them out, and picked completely different examples for the action/reaction paragraphs. I don't think I really had a good grasp on action/reaction and jumping until the lectures from last week, so I was able to find examples that better supported what I was trying to say.
