I’ve been playing video games most of my life so, not only was Wreck-It Ralph a great movie, but it was also a nostalgic walk down a virtual memory lane. I loved Wreck-It Ralph and cannot recommend it highly enough. The movie was funny, entertaining, heart-warming and filled with cameos of different video game characters.
Below are some thoughts I had while watching Wreck-It Ralph. I’ll try to keep things spoiler-free but I was a little shocked to find out that Ralph is the love child of Mario and Zelda.
Labels
Labels are central to Wreck-It Ralph. Ralph is labeled as the bad guy of his video game and everyone else treats him as such. Ralph is forced to live in the dump, he isn’t invited to parties and his only friends are other bad guys. Ralph knows that there is more to him than just being a bad guy; in spite of his label he knows that he could be more than a video game villain. We all live with a number of labels: son, daughter, brother, sister, good student, bad student, success, failure. We can either choose to build our identities on these labels or believe what God says about us, which is that he loves us and he delights in us. Labels can lie and they can reduce us to nothing more than a single facet. God doesn’t lie, though, and he loves us and accepts us as whole people, not just one piece.
Contentment
Another theme central to Wreck-It Ralph is contentment. Ralph isn’t content with his life as the villain in the video game Fix-It Felix, Jr. In Ralph’s defense, his life wasn’t that great and almost anyone would have been discontent with it. However, Paul reminds us that he knew how to find contentment in every situation and we should strive for the same. If our lives our going pretty well and we just think that the grass might be greener then we need strive for contentment. Always looking at what else is out there or what toys our neighbors have keeps us from focusing on where we’re at and what we have. God has given us our lives, not the lives of someone else. We need to appreciate the lives we’ve been given and do as much good with them as we can. If we’re always discontent we’ll never appreciate what we’ve got and we won’t do everything that we can.
Fix-It Felix
Fix-It Felix plays hero to Wreck-It Ralph’s villain. Ralph destroys an apartment building and Felix repairs the building and rescues its inhabitants. Felix has a magic hammer that fixes everything he touches. Felix even laments this fact at one point in the movie by asking, “Why do I fix everything I touch?” I love the idea of a magic hammer with the ability to fix everything. If I had that hammer not only would I take it to squeaky doors and blown transmissions, but I’d also try to use it on relationships, poverty and every other injustice. Unfortunately magic hammers don’t exist and we can’t use them to heal all the brokenness in this world. Fortunately, though, we have Jesus Christ, whose kingdom-bearing work, death and resurrection have already started putting the broken pieces back together. And even if our names aren’t Felix, we can partner with Jesus and help him in his work of eliminating injustice and restoring brokenness.
I really did enjoy Wreck-It Ralph. I thought it was an entertaining movie with a great message of being true to yourself and finding people who will accept you for that. It was also very funny and made me want to play video games, both the 8-bit and modern variety.
What did you think of Wreck-It Ralph?
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