Outside 2 - Stephen Mason

         I finally got around to seeing Wreck-it-Ralph after seeing the commercials for it on TV and hearing good reviews from friends who had seen it. So the story centers on Wreck-it Ralph who is a villain in an arcade videogame that wants to turn good. Because of his habit of destroying things however, the town’s people in his game, Fix-it Felix, don’t like really like him and force him to live on the outskirts of the town in a dump. Thinking that if he returns to the town with a hero’s medal that he will accepted by the town’s people of his game, Ralph ventures into other games in order to acquire a medal. After locating one in a first person shooter game in the arcade, he ends up losing it in a candy themed racing game. After meeting up with a new character and eventually saving the racing game from an invasion of creatures from another game, he gains new respect from the towns people of Fix-it Felix and returns a hero.

         Ralph’s journey can be seen as a representation of a liminal state in which he reflects on his own place in the world and comes to a revelation in the end of the movie when he is re-integrated back into his place in Fix-it Felix. Through the journey to acquire a medal that takes him through some of the other games in the arcade, he is hoping to gain the respect of others by becoming the hero that he thinks everyone wants him to be. However, as the story progresses Fix-it Felix is almost unplugged because of the fact that Ralph is not there in the game. At the end of the movie he realizes that just because he is a bad guy in the game who has to destroy everything, he is a necessary member of the game in order for it to be successful. In the same way that destruction is required and can be a source of creation, Ralph is needed in the game in order to keep balance.