Ralph breaks the Internet

In the run-up to the release of the first Wreck-It Ralph in 2012, a sequel was announced before the first was even in theatres (big surprise). However, while the idea for a second film was around from the beginning, production of it had to be put on hold for a while so director Rich Moore could complete his work on Zootopia (2016) first, as he was called onto that project in March of 2015 to support directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush. From 2016 onwards, updates on the developing sequel were released regularly, with much of the speculation revolving around which characters would be cameoing in the new film (Moore was keen to involve Mario this time around, but once again that proved impossible to arrange).

Like many other recent Disney films (such as Frozen), Ralph Breaks the Internet went through numerous re-writes during its production phase, with the results being – at least in my opinion – similarly haphazard and awkward. I mean really, this has to be one of the most confusing, messy and nonsensical plots in the canon, raising question after question without offering many satisfactory answers… the film may not be all bad, but it’s certainly badly written.

There has already been some fan speculation over whether this film marks the end of Disney’s so-called “New Revival” era that we’re currently in, but it’s a little too soon to tell. Ralph Breaks the Internet is the first fully computer-animated sequel in the canon, but it’s the fourth sequel overall following The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Fantasia 2000 (1999) and Winnie the Pooh (2011) and will soon be followed by the fifth, Frozen 2. Given the way these latter two have been rushed into production within the same decade of the releases of the original films, it was certainly great to hear recently that Pixar, at least, has no plans for any more sequels in the immediate future. Let’s just hope Disney’s Feature Animation branch follows suit.

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I must admit, I’m cautiously optimistic about Frozen 2 based on the one teaser trailer we’ve had so far; then again, my expectations were lower anyway, since I’m one of those oddballs who wasn’t blown away by the first one. Toy Story 4 is another matter entirely, as I’m much more invested in that franchise and the trailers aren’t nearly so promising, but I still won’t judge it until I’ve actually seen it next month. It’s just that when I look at films like Ralph Breaks the Internet, I’m filled with a sense of panic at the thought of how badly wrong these sequels could go…

Characters and Vocal Performances

I’ve talked before about Disney films being overcrowded, but nowhere has that problem been anywhere near as noticeable as it is here – as you can see above, there are an astonishing seventy-seven named speaking roles in this film, many of whom get only a line or two of dialogue. The army of characters is mostly down to the film being a massive crossover project, intended to showcase the many, many, MANY properties which now fall under the Disney umbrella after their buyouts of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox. Some of the cameos work better than others, but for the sake of space I’m not going to talk about every last one of them or we’ll be here for weeks; this discussion will be focused on the characters who actually play some role in the plot.

Also, on the point of character cameos, it’s worth mentioning that the filmmakers originally planned to include another one from current Star Wars bad boy Kylo Ren, who would be the butt of a “spoiled child” joke – this wound up being cut after Lucasfilm asked them not to undermine their villain like that. Similarly, C-3PO’s cameo was first going to involve him being mistaken for other robots from his franchise like R2-D2 and BB-8 by Cinderella and Aurora, but was then re-worked to have him simply serve as the princesses’ prompter before their shows. The film was even going to feature cameos by The Golden Girls characters (1985-1992), but that was later dropped because… it made no sense.

Ralph says we're arguing

Oh, Ralph… what have they done to you?

The original Wreck-It Ralph was a compelling and relatable character, because he started out as a victim of discrimination and went through a great deal of personal growth – by the end of his story, he learned to accept himself for who he was and outgrew his selfish insecurities to become a true friend to Vanellope. I’ll leave you to read my review of the first film for a fuller account of Ralph, but for now, all I can do is lament the horrific butchering of his character that this sequel commits.

This is a textbook example of a process known as “Flanderization,” whereby the writers zero in on a particular trait of a character and exaggerate it until it consumes their entire personality, leaving them as a shallow shell of their former selves. In this case, Ralph’s earlier naïveté has been ramped up to eleven and he is now utterly stupid, a clumsy, blundering fool who seems to mess up everything he gets involved in. He was always heavy-handed (no pun intended) and rather tactless, but he was not this needy and pathetic, especially not by the end of the first film – where’s the strong, secure and self-sacrificing Ralph of yesteryear?

Granted, it’s somewhat plausible that he would be a bit clingy given his lonely past, but the sheer stupidity he exhibits has nothing to do with that. It’s just a cheap and lazy way to try and draw some laughs from the crowd, even though the audience for the original film have all matured and will thus be looking for more nuanced comedy, if anything. Ralph in this incarnation is little more than a child, incapable of understanding anyone else’s feelings and selfishly trying to force everything to go his way like a spoilt brat. The tender-hearted “bad guy” of the original has been replaced by a possessive doofus, and while he does go through some development over the course of this film, his portrayal still doesn’t feel true to the character – especially surprising given that most of the same writers were involved with both films.

Ralph concocts plan with Spamley

Ralph Breaks the Internet is set six years after the last film and he and Vanellope’s lives have settled into a comfortable pattern, with each performing their duties in their respective games before hanging out together all night in other ones around the arcade. The conflict of the story is that Vanellope is growing bored of this routine and longs for a new challenge, whereas Ralph is perfectly content with things the way they are and is frightened of change (perhaps a nod to his age, as he must now be well over thirty years old).

While it’s clear he does care for Vanellope and does his best to make her happy early on, for instance by creating a new track in “Sugar Rush,” he also tends not to listen to her properly and comes uncomfortably close to viewing her as his property. In one early scene just after Vanellope’s game has been damaged, she opens up to Ralph about feeling a new lack of purpose when she’s not able to race and questions her identity without it; Ralph’s response is to try to define her as his “best friend” and she (quite rightly) points out that this is not enough, but he’s offended by this and whines to Tapper about it later that night. Since he now views Vanellope as the centre of his whole life, he expects her to feel the same way about him and is genuinely shocked at the idea that she might have higher aspirations than simply being his sidekick.

Ralph complains to Tapper

Are we supposed to feel sorry for him here? I get that he has spent a lot of his life with no friends, but the previous version of Ralph was still not this emotionally dependent; these early scenes simply make him appear selfish and unlikable, suggesting a failure of execution on the part of the writers. I think I get the angle they were going for, but he just doesn’t come across sympathetically here. Still, I will give the film credit for calling Ralph out on his insecurities; it might not follow on properly from his earlier arc, but at least he does eventually get the message and makes a change. In that sense, at least, Ralph’s portrayal is more successful than Vanellope’s… but we’ll get to her shortly.

After Vanellope’s game is broken, Ralph does set out on the trip to the internet with her to find the required part to fix it, which felt more like something the old Ralph would do. While he doesn’t understand her desire to keep “working” in her game when he’d much rather laze around all day, he accepts that fixing “Sugar Rush” will make her happy and so works hard throughout the film to help her get the part – that’s admirable.

Ralph says I'm going to miss youRalph in elevator with Spamley

What’s less admirable is his jealousy after Vanellope takes a shine to a cool racer character, Shank, who they meet in a modern online videogame. I understand him being afraid of losing Vanellope to someone else, but the lengths he goes to trying to keep her and Shank apart are ludicrous; in fact, him sending Vanellope to OhMyDisney.com to keep her out of the gaming district is what prompts her realisation that she’d rather stay in “Slaughter Race”. Now, granted, Vanellope doesn’t handle this well, neglecting to tell Ralph her intentions and simply leaving him in the dark until he begins to panic, but even this is because she’s afraid he’ll overreact to the news – and he does, proving her right.

You see my problem with the writing here: Ralph’s insecurities are so bad in this film that they make Vanellope reluctant to trust him with important information, but what’s worse is that her reluctance is justified because his later actions do indeed prove disastrous. Once he does find out that she plans to leave the arcade, he concocts a hasty plan to infect “Slaughter Race” with a virus to “make the cars go slow” and turn Vanellope off the game, but this winds up endangering her life when the virus copies Vanellope’s glitch and triggers a server reboot of the game while she’s still inside it.

Admittedly, as an older arcade game character with no knowledge of the internet and limited experience with viruses (he’s obviously thinking of the more benign one from Tron), Ralph could perhaps not be blamed for failing to understand the consequences of his actions. Still, though, he bought this thing from a dodgy slug in the “Dark Net”; anyone with any sense would have been more cautious about unleashing a virus they didn’t fully understand into a game full of innocent, unsuspecting characters, but Ralph’s so desperate to force Vanellope to stay with him that he’s willing to try anything. He does try to clarify with Double Dan that nobody will get hurt, but given the slug’s evasive response, I don’t think I would have trusted the virus if I were him.

Ralph looks down on his own insecurities

The best that can be said of Ralph in this film is that he does go through some growth (again) by the end of the story, having apparently forgotten everything he learned about putting others first in the earlier film. Throughout the journey to restore “Sugar Rush,” Ralph is warned again and again by various characters like Tapper, Yesss and even Spamley that his actions are toxic and overbearing, but it’s not until he’s finally faced with literal embodiments of his insecurities that he recognises how selfish he’s been. At this point, the film starts to hammer the message in with an anvil, cramming all of Ralph’s development into the last few minutes as he suddenly comes to terms with Vanellope’s decision to leave the arcade – it may be a visually stunning moment, but thematically it just feels forced and unnecessary.

Ralphzilla close-up

It’s a shame, because the disturbing “Ralphzilla” that is formed by the virus’s copies of Ralph’s insecurities is a truly inspired piece of animation. One of the highlights of the film is its climax, where we see Vanellope and Ralph frantically trying to escape the army of drooling Ralph “clones”, all of them chasing mindlessly after Vanellope before finally forming into a towering, unholy behemoth of Ralphs. It’s a nice change of pace in an era known for its tired old “twist” villains; for the first time in a while, the story’s conflict is driven by the protagonist himself, forcing him to battle his own demons (physically and metaphorically) in order to save the day. (Mind you, I’m not going to try and fathom how he and Vanellope manage to reason with a giant insecurity).

Unfortunately, a strong finish is not enough to make up for Ralph’s catastrophic actions throughout the rest of the film. I don’t mean to go on, but I really liked the original version of Ralph and I can’t stand what they’ve done to him here – it’s a pet peeve of mine, seeing mildly ditzy characters devolve into brainless morons who can barely breathe without being reminded to. I also didn’t care for his unhealthy, possessive attitude towards Vanellope or his extreme jealousy of Shank, although he does at least recover from those.

Ralph videochats with Vanellope

By the end of the film, Ralph has once again found a sense of equilibrium; he has made peace with Vanellope being absent and has restored his position as her “hero” by letting her go. His story, after meandering about all over the place, turns out to be a message about long-distance relationships and the importance of allowing your loved ones to lead their own lives. It’s a nice message, but it’s not at all well-delivered.

But if you think my only problem with the characters is with Ralph, I’m afraid you’re mistaken…

Vanellope talks to Shank on car

Look, let’s just get this out of the way – Vanellope goes Turbo in this film. She just does.

I know some have argued that it doesn’t count because her intentions aren’t malicious like Turbo’s were, or that going Turbo no longer holds the same stigma it once did because of Ralph’s whole adventure in the first film, but I’m sorry, there’s no way to dress it up – this film breaks the rules of its own universe, and that’s a major problem.

Things start out well enough. Vanellope in the first half of the film is essentially the same spunky kid she always was, so I enjoyed her scenes to begin with. The situation is that Vanellope is growing bored after six years of trouncing the other racers in “Sugar Rush,” but it’s also kind of implied that she might be growing a little bored of Ralph, too – not in a personal way, of course, just in the sense that she’s tired of doing the same stuff with him all the time and would like somewhere new to hang out. Essentially, she’s having a bit of an existential crisis, which is actually pretty interesting for a videogame character. Fine – that’s all totally understandable and makes for a great starting point for some dramatic conflict… so far, so good.

Vanellope looks at Sugar Rush turned off


After Ralph tries to help out by building a new track for her, Vanellope gets a bit carried away enjoying it during a race and literally starts wrestling with the human player for control, resulting in the player accidentally wrenching the steering wheel off the game. Mr. Litwak then breaks it while trying to fix it back on and decides it’s too expensive to bother fixing; thus, in an instant, Vanellope is faced with the prospect of losing her game. It’s a fear we can understand because it was addressed in the first film as well, when “Sugar Rush” was nearly consumed by a virus – Vanellope may have been growing bored of the game’s cliched content, but as she tells Ralph, “that doesn’t mean I didn’t love it!” Being “gameless” in this world is similar to being homeless and as the leader of the game, Vanellope clearly feels helpless and responsible for her subjects.

Vanellope travelling to internet

This set-up had a lot of potential, so I was disappointed to see where the story takes Vanellope from here. She sets out to find the part she needs to get her game working again with Ralph, displaying all the determination we loved her for in the first film, but once they reach the internet she soon has her head turned by the exciting new possibilities it offers. The crux comes when she and Ralph wind up in “Slaughter Race,” a much more thrilling and mature racing game which immediately captures her heart, leading to the most awkward plot point in the film as she decides to move there permanently.

Now, I get what the writers were going for with this development – really, I do. There’s nothing wrong with a character wanting more out of life. It’s just that in this particular context, given the rules of the universe that the filmmakers have already established in the last film, Vanellope’s decision to abandon “Sugar Rush” isn’t very sympathetic and feels deeply selfish. It’s stated that “Sugar Rush” makes less than $200 a year so the game clearly isn’t as popular as it once was, and in fact the juxtaposition of the rather emptier arcade with the bustling internet hints at the real-life decline in popularity of arcades in general. On top of this, Vanellope is shown both in this film and the last to be one of the game’s most popular racers, and she’s also its leader – princess or president, she’s still in charge and thus has a responsibility to the other members of the game.

Vanellope looks conflicted before song

With all this in mind, it’s difficult to understand how she can so callously toss her old game aside, even when she risks dooming her hundreds of “Sugar Rush” colleagues to homelessness or worse, should the game’s popularity falter in her absence. It just feels out of character. Yes, the other racers were mean to her for most of the first film, but that was established to be mostly down to King Candy / Turbo’s manipulation of their code; they’re more civil to her now, even the snooty Taffyta, and if Vanellope only stuck around a little longer she would’ve seen how much progress Felix and Calhoun made with the little monsters. And yes, the game functioned without her during Candy’s reign, but again, this wasn’t natural – it was another result of his manipulations, with the players not missing Vanellope only because they didn’t realise she was a part of the game.

The writers do half-heartedly attempt to address this with a hand wave, when Ralph reminds Vanellope of her responsibilities. Her response is, “Oh please, I’m one of sixteen racers, they’d never miss me!” The predominant fan theory seems to be that since she is not as integral to her game’s operation as Ralph was to his, she might be able to get away with leaving without “Sugar Rush” closing down; players will simply assume the “random roster” didn’t happen to generate Vanellope for their particular gaming session. However, this still feels like a heck of a risk for her to take, especially without even consulting any of the other denizens of “Sugar Rush.” Her game’s fate already hangs in the balance as Litwak is reluctant even to replace a part on it given its age, so her impulsive decision to leave it just doesn’t hold up, especially given how anxious she was to get it repaired in the beginning.

Vanellope crying after server reboot

Vanellope then makes things worse by putting off telling the increasingly unstable Ralph about her plans, leading to the whole virus mess. Interestingly, this is as close as the film ever comes to having Vanellope display any guilt over her decision, but she’s quickly absolved of any responsibility when the plot turns things back on Ralph (who is also, admittedly, at fault for setting a freaking virus loose).

By the end of the climax, Ralph has been forced to own up to his mistakes and address his toxic behaviour, but Vanellope is allowed to simply gallivant off to “Slaughter Race” without consequence, the only trial she faces before doing so being to say goodbye to Ralph. The “Sugar Rush” characters, rather implausibly, seem to carry on as normal, despite the fact that their most popular character and leader is now absent and their game was already down to being played maybe twice a day at best before she left, judging from what Litwak said about its profits.

I get what the story is trying to say about “following your dreams” and such, but there are other ways that this conflict could have been resolved without having to spit in the face of the original film. They were going in the right direction by having Ralph try to “redesign” Vanellope’s game with a new track; since there are clear reasons why she shouldn’t just up and leave “Sugar Rush,” why couldn’t she use her experiences in “Slaughter Race” as inspiration and simply redesign her home game to make it more interesting? Or perhaps Vanellope could just take the occasional “vacation” to “Slaughter Race” every now and then? Heck, even having Shank visit her in “Sugar Rush” on occasion, perhaps instructing the other racers in modern techniques to make their races more exciting, would have made more sense. But no – Vanellope instead chooses to go Turbo, abandon the rest of “Sugar Rush” to its fate and seek self-gratification at the expense of a whole community of other characters.

Vanellope hologram

At the end of the film, she and Ralph are chatting long-distance like old college roomies as if she’s just moved to another town, but this relatable human issue just doesn’t fit into the context of this videogame world. You find yourself thinking back to the last film, where game-jumping was a terrible social sin and Ralph had to learn to accept his role as a “bad guy,” because it was necessary to keep his game functioning. Now, Vanellope is able to disregard all of that because… I don’t know, she’s a girl and Hollywood girls can’t be wrong? (That’s one reading of it, anyway).

I’m not exactly hoping for a third film, but perhaps one way of making Vanellope’s choice seem less selfish would be to take it as an example of foresight; as a younger character, she’s shown to have a better grasp of the internet’s potential than Ralph does, so perhaps seeing it in person made her realise that the arcade’s days are numbered and that her best chance of continuing to exist is to find a new life online. If this is the case, maybe we can expect to see a third installment in a few years exploring Ralph’s emigration after the arcade closes for good – it would at least help to rectify some of the issues I have with Vanellope’s arc in this film. Of course, if your argument for a sequel to make sense is that it needs another sequel to justify itself, then you’re already in pretty deep doo-doo.

Felix and Calhoun in the kitchen

If you’re going into this expecting to see more hijinks from Fix-It Felix Jr. and his new wife, Sergeant Tamora Calhoun, then you might be somewhat disappointed. They’re here alright, but they’re given almost nothing to do beyond the film’s opening and closing acts.

The two of them seem very happy together, but it’s a shame to see how… “domesticated” Calhoun is now, at least in comparison to the badass military leader we saw in the first film. Why are strong women always stripped of their power after getting married? I mean, I know it’s just a Disney film and I’m nit-picking, but Calhoun just doesn’t quite feel like herself here. Still, I suppose it is nice to see a softer side of her and she shares genuine chemistry with Felix – they’re a pair of total goofballs, but they make a good team.

Felix drinking rootbeer

At least Felix hasn’t changed! He’s still the same bubbly little optimist he always was and really makes the most of his limited screen time. His main subplot involves him and Calhoun taking in the “Sugar Rush” racers after the game gets broken; there are some good jokes about “spicing up” their relationship and becoming a “father of fifteen,” but it doesn’t really go anywhere because it isn’t addressed again until the very end of the film.

We get a glimpse of the initial stress Felix is under when he turns up at Tappers to get “drunk” on root beer, but that’s about it. There was a lot of potential with this subplot involving two of the original film’s most beloved characters, as they could have cut back and forth between Felix and Calhoun struggling to raise the little ne’er-do-wells and Ralph and Vanellope’s steering wheel quest. As it is, though, they simply reappear at the end to explain their miraculous parenting secrets to the Surge Protector, who is amazed at how angelic the little brats have become.

Actually, there is one other element of Felix’s arc in this film that doesn’t make sense. It might seem like a trivial point, but when Ralph heads out to the internet with Vanellope, Felix promises to “cover” for him while he’s gone. Now, keeping in mind that the entire plot of the first film revolved around “Fix-It Felix Jr.” being shut down precisely because of Ralph’s absence, this rings rather false – how in the world is Felix supposed to cover for him!? Ralph’s role is a specialist one which none of the other Nicelanders can fill; is Felix simply banking on the game not being played for more than a day? Or do they have a homeless character from another game who could perhaps do the wrecking? Nobody knows, because the writers didn’t bother to explain it properly.

Shank talks to Vanellope on car

Alright, enough bellyaching about the original characters – how are the new ones? Thankfully, most of them are enjoyable additions, somewhat making up for the lack of time spent with our favourites from the first film. One of the most important newbies is Shank, the lead character in a modern online racing game called “Slaughter Race” who comes to symbolise an exciting new dream for Vanellope.

Shank is first introduced as an obstacle to be overcome; having accidentally bid thousands for the steering wheel at eBay, Ralph and Vanellope are in need of some cash quick and are directed to “Slaughter Race” by Spamley to try and hijack her car, which will net them an obscene amount of money from some nutcase in Des Moines. However, Shank is far too good of a driver to let them escape, so that plan soon falls apart.

Shank and Felony filming Ralph

Shank is surprisingly cool about the whole thing, though, once she understands what Ralph and Vanellope were trying to do. She and her whole crew, despite looking as tough as nails, are really quite mellow and friendly. So, even though they tried to rob her, Shank is good enough to help Ralph and Vanellope out by proffering a suggestion; rather than stealing cars, why don’t they try to make their money the same way everybody else on the internet does – by becoming a viral video star? She even sets up an account for Ralph on BuzzzTube and helps him create his first video, then directs them to BuzzzTube itself where they can talk to its head algorithm, Yesss.

The plot progresses, but Vanellope has been well and truly bitten by the racing bug. She has fallen in love with “Slaughter Race,” and Shank epitomises everything she wants to be – a cool older girl in a “real” racing game with no tracks or limitations, free to try all the crazy stunts she likes. Despite Ralph’s obvious jealousy, Vanellope eventually finds her way back to “Slaughter Race” and has a heart-to-heart with Shank about her predicament. The two of them share a sisterly dynamic, with Shank even pointing out that Vanellope needs to talk to Ralph when the girl drags her feet.

In some ways, Vanellope’s friendship with Shank could be seen as the natural “graduation” of maturity; while Vanellope does enjoy her time with Ralph, Shank serves as a more serious companion who she can actually talk to and who understands her on a deeper level, due to their shared love of racing. (Compare with Ralph earlier in the film, who is thoroughly perplexed by Vanellope’s wanderlust and stubbornly resists all change).

Shank follow me to the exit

Later, Shank’s patience continues to hold even as Ralph and Vanellope’s dysfunctional relationship forces her entire server to reboot mid-game (although I’m sure she was secretly wishing she’d never gotten involved with these two). Her main concern is to get Vanellope out before the reboot begins or the girl will be deleted – luckily, Ralph gets to them in time, after which we don’t see Shank again until the end. Even there, she’s very forgiving towards the guy who set a virus loose in her game, simply telling Ralph, “Don’t be a stranger!”

In the end, it’s easy to see why Vanellope took such a shine to Shank, even if that still doesn’t excuse her abandoning “Sugar Rush”. Relaxed, playful and easy-going, Shank is exactly the kind of role model that Vanellope has always wanted, and it is her very coolness that makes her such a threat to Ralph.

Shank’s crew aren’t given a lot of development and are all rather one-note, but as a group, they are Disney’s usual token “don’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover” characters. Many modern Disney films carry this message with characters like Nick Wilde or Honey Lemon, and while it’s certainly commendable, it works better when done with central characters who have enough screen time to be utilised beyond this role.

The four members of the crew all look like your typical neighbourhood hooligans but are shown to be reasonable and polite underneath, respecting the players who challenge them and even questioning the morality of their villainous role in the game (rather like Ralph did). Butcher Boy is the most notable one, a towering brawny bloke who watches TED talks and “honours other people’s journeys”; he’s played like a stereotypically oversensitive American millennial, although he can still put the pedal to the mettle with the best of them and is genuinely intimidating when pushed. The others in the group include Pyro, a smaller, wackier guy with a flamethrower who helps Ralph make his first video, Felony, the girl who offers up her phone to make said video with, and Little Debbie, who doesn’t really do much beyond offering a cameo for YouTube star GloZell.

Next, we come to one of my favourites of the new additions – Yesss, the sleek and chic head algorithm of a video-sharing site called BuzzzTube. Her character was modelled on Cruella de Vil (only physically, of course) and really livens up every scene she’s in thanks to Taraji P. Henson’s fabulously hammy performance. It’s interesting to see such an abstract concept personified in a character like this, even if it doesn’t always make a lot of sense.

Ralph and Vanellope first encounter Yesss after Shank sends them to see her about becoming BuzzzTube stars. Quick and sharp, she’s obviously a very busy woman (who hasn’t got all day) and initially doesn’t take much interest in Ralph… that is until she realises that he’s trending and could be a potentially lucrative star. She’s hilariously fickle in this first scene, just as you’d expect of a character involved in the ever-changing world of memes; for a few seconds, she has Ralph on top of the world, believing that earning the money they need will be easy. Then, suddenly, he’s no longer trending – Yesss thanks him for dropping by and prepares to move on with her day, but Ralph’s not going to give up that easily. He promises to make her a bunch of other videos, doing anything he has to in order to get the part for Vanellope’s game. His determination wins Yesss over and from then on, she’s fully committed to helping them in their endeavour.

As the hours go by (and it is only hours as the entire plot is crammed into about a day), Yesss seems to develop a sort of affection for the two out-of-place arcade characters, looking out for them, giving them advice and even deploying her “elite pop-up army” to help boost viewership of Ralph’s videos. In the same way that Shank becomes a mentor to Vanellope, Yesss begins to take on a similar role towards Ralph, particularly when she gently explains to him about the meaningless of online comment sections. She also changes outfits in almost every scene she’s in, sporting an impressive array of different looks and hairstyles which adapt to suit the occasion – again alluding to the ever-changing world of the internet by linking it to the similarly changeable world of fashion.

Yesss says life's complicated

Like Shank, though, Yesss undoubtedly comes to regret ever meeting these two trouble-makers when she finds herself flying for her life from an army of virus-created Ralph clones – honestly, the whole film can be made a lot funnier simply by imagining what the denizens of the internet must be thinking to themselves as Ralph and Vanellope get them into crazier and crazier situations.

In the climax, Ralph and Vanellope call Yesss for help when they’re trapped by the insecurity clones, with the idea of using her personal web-browser to lure them all to the antivirus district where they will, hopefully, be destroyed. Unfortunately, they’re not quite quick enough and the clones knock the browser from the sky, although even then Yesss doesn’t lose hope and starts trying to turn it over, determined to carry out the plan until it becomes clear they’re not going to escape the “Ralphzilla” that’s now formed. She sneaks Vanellope out the back of the tower they’re in, but then nearly loses her life when the monster smashes into it, cracking the stairwell and leaving her trapped on a perilous ledge…

And then her part in the film is cut short. That’s right: we never see Yesss again after this moment. Presumably she somehow got down from the tower, but the filmmakers don’t bother to show this as they’re too preoccupied with Ralph overcoming his insecurities and then being rescued by the princesses. I feel like they kind of did her dirty after everything Ralph and Vanellope put her through; surely, they could have shown us a few seconds of Yesss making it to safety before the end of the scene?

Maybe close-up

Yesss’s assistant is called Maybe (ha-ha – I wonder who “No” is in this universe? Her ex-boyfriend, perhaps?). He acts as her adviser on all things trending but is much more reserved and hesitant than his boss, seeming nervous to question her when she tells him to set security on Ralph and Vanellope. Much like Shank’s crew, he’s never given that much to do – too many characters and not enough time to flesh them all out, I guess – but I did appreciate the filmmakers’ choice to make the head of BuzzzTube female and give her a male secretary. It’s a refreshing change of pace, as we have more than enough films offering the reverse dynamic.
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