Wreck-it Ralph

I saw this when it first came out in the theater, but we just watched it again at home. I was struck by how different it was at home. So many of the scenes are large and full of tiny detail that was hard to make out on the small screen. It was really a movie made to immerse. I really liked all the classic videogame jokes, that was certainly fun, but what I liked most of all was the depth of the story rules. I always enjoy fantasy worlds that are based on deep rules, and this movie has so many, so interestingly intertwined. Let me see if I can enumerate them...

1. Game characters should abide by their programming.
2. Game characters are free to move about after the arcade is closed.
3. If a character dies outside their game, they die permanently. 
4. Some characters can suffer from "glitches."
5. Characters with glitches cannot ever leave their game.
6. Bugs in Hero's Duty are drawn to the beacon.
7. It is possible to access and manipulate game code.

...and on and on. I think if I worked at it, I would probably find about 25 or so of these. It makes sense that a story about game characters would be rife with rules. 

What I didn't like: so many characters were mean, angry, and rude. Ironically, the least angry character was Q*Bert. I don't think it was necessary to have absolutely every character be so angry and mean so much of the time... it was kind of off-putting. 

Anyway -- it certainly made me pine for the old arcade days, and I really was pleased to see such a solid and surprising rule-based storyline. I very much believe that if you want your story to seem real, it must be real to you. It certainly was real to the writers!