Game characters Ralph and Vanellope return to lead the upcoming animated sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet, which will open across China on Nov 23. [Photo provided to China Daily]
On the eve of his latest movie release, Ralph Breaks the Internet, director Rich Moore unveils the meticulous processes involved in crafting a Disney hit, Xu Fan reports.
Most of us sit in front of a computer every day. But have you ever imagined what it would be like if the internet were an actual world and you could step inside it-traveling between websites and applications as if they were cities or countries to be explored?
That's what director Rich Moore has created in Walt Disney Animation Studios' upcoming film, Ralph Breaks the Internet, the sequel to the 2012 animated comedy hit, Wreck-It Ralph.
The film will open across the Chinese mainland on Nov 23, two days later than the North American release.
Moore recently visited Beijing and, in a downtown courtyard, he shared the behind-the-scenes stories from the second Wreck-It Ralph adventure and Zootopia, his previous directorial hit, which earned 1.53 billion yuan ($220.8 million), propelling it to the title of highest-grossing animated film of all time in China.
Moore co-directed Ralph Breaks the Internet with Phil Johnston, one of the scriptwriters of the franchise' first installment. He says the new adventure will see the return of Ralph and his merry band of arcade-game cohorts, Vanellope, Felix and Calhoun, alongside some new characters, including Yesss, the head algorithm of the fictional video-sharing website, BuzzzTube.
Disney's iconic princesses are featured in the new film. [Photo provided to China Daily]
"Yesss has the ability to constantly shift the look of her hair based on the looks that are trending at that moment, just like her clothes, which will constantly change-sometimes within the same scene. Because she lives in a digital world, her jacket is made up of thousands of fiber optics," says Moore, describing the figure as probably "the coolest Disney character ever".
Set six years after the end of the first movie, Ralph Breaks the Internet sees the eponymous hero, alongside the razor-tongued Vanellope von Schweetz, embark on a quest into the internet in search of a way to save the latter's oldschool arcade game from the scrapheap.
"It's a story of two small-town friends, who journey to the big city-and when they get there, one falls in love with it while the other wants things back the way they were. It's a movie about dreams-and how a strong friendship can survive anything even during times of great change," explains Moore.
Ralph Breaks the Internet will be the 57th animated feature to be released by the 95-year-old studio, which employs nearly 800 people from 25 different countries.
However, for the 55-year-old director, it was the Oscar-and Golden Globe-winning Zootopia that fulfilled a dream to inherit Disney's tradition for creating "talking-animal films" like Bambi, Robin Hood, The Lion King, Dumbo and The Jungle Book.
"Research is the cornerstone of how we make our movies, and for Zootopia, we spent 18 months studying animals. Our team of artists even traveled to Africa," Moore explains.
Rich Moore, US director [Photo provided to China Daily]
"To study animals on the savannah, to get a sense of their movements and their natural environments. To find out what a real animal society is like, we needed to go there and be immersed in their world," he added.
The creators even researched various animals' fur at a microscopic level.
"For example, they found that an individual strand of a fox's fur is dark at the root and gets lighter as it goes toward the tip-that's what gives the fur its red color," he explains enthusiastically.
"Also, a polar bear's fur is not white-it is, in fact, clear. This information is essential for our Look team."
One of the most striking and unique things about Zootopia is the titular city's design and architecture alongside its devices and services fit for animals of different sizes and shapes.
"For example, streets need to safely accommodate the largest and smallest animals. Hotel beds must be able to sleep a rhino or a fox or a shrew, and newspaper stands must have magazines for both the elephants and the mice. When the animals need to get around, they often use public transportation, which accommodates animals of all sizes," he observed, highlighting the film's attention to detail.
Just like the meticulous approach the animators employed in the making of Zootopia, as well other previous hits-for instance, researchers traveled to Norway for Frozen (2014) and sailed to the South Pacific for Moana (2016)-the Wreck-it Ralph team also went on a journey of discovery, only this time, it was just 16 kilometers down the road from the Disney studio.
The building on One Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles "houses all of the connections for any internet communication for all of North America".
"On the inside of the building, there are miles and miles of wires and tens of thousands of computer boxes that connect the world," recalls Moore.
The trip inspired the spectacular inner world of the internet as visualized in the film, which looks like a metropolis of high-rises, bustling streets and busy commuters.
"We wanted it to feel like the real internet-a place shared by the world," he says.
Chinese moviegoers will relate to this fantastical world when they spot familiar, homegrown brands like micro-blogging service Sina Weibo, instant-messaging software QQ and online-ticketing site Maoyan, among the myriad references to other, real-world internet giants.
After the fictionally digital world was built, the creators turned to the design of the characters, which are classified into two categories: "net users", the avatars of real-life people; and "netizens", the characters who live within the internet and are created for games or websites.
Audiences will recognize a lot of familiar characters, including the rabbit, Judy Hopps, and fox, Nick Wilde, from Zootopia, as well as some Disney princesses from classics like Snow White, Cinderella and Mulan.
Moore gets emotional when speaking about the sequences that gather some of cinema's most instantly recognizable Disney characters.
"I could have never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that I would get to work with these iconic characters," he says. "This movie, in so many ways, has been a dream come true for all of us working together to make it."
