In this day and age where moviegoers can wait until the home-video release before watching a movie multiple times, how often are we willing to devote extra time and money to encore presentations of a theatrical release? The case agreeing to my second showing of Wreck-It Ralph tonight consisted of two winning bullet points:
1. My son and I really, really liked it the first time we saw it. This is the first year for new Pixar and Disney Animated releases in which we liked the Disney film better.
2. We had free passes.
I had hoped to catch more details and Easter eggs this time around. Regretfully, I am old and the film’s background characters are spry. We managed to see a few items we missed the first time around: the other three Pac-Man ghosts; a mounted ostrich from Joust; the resemblance of the TurboTime cabinet design to that of Rally-X; and graffiti on a wall reading “Aerith Lives”. That list is too short. I’d also hoped to catch additional Easter eggs and overlooked scenes more to my liking, including but not limited to:
* A sign in Tapper’s bar reading, “Now Hiring Waitresses”.
* An autographed photo of Fix-It Felix Sr. bearing a strong resemblance to Alec Baldwin.
* The monsters from Rampage standing on a street corner outside the Niceland apartments, just staring and drooling.
* A traffic jam outside the terminal whose gridlocked commuters include the Moon Patrol rover, the OutRun Ferrari, an Armor Attack polygonal tank, an ExciteBike, and Nathan Drake in a Jeep. All sport the same license plate: “RIP G4”.
* A Grand Theft Auto thug being arrested by Mappy.
* A terminal convenience shop run by a Moogle and selling movies on DVD with titles such as Citizen Liu Kang, Disney’s Knights of the Old Republic, Wolfenstein 3D in 3D, and Galaga vs. Gyruss.
* A sidekick barbershop quartet with Clank, Daxter, Sparx, and Luigi.
* Pac-Man throwing a fit at Felix’s party because all the snacks are fruits, and for decades he’s been dying to have just one lousy steak.
* An inter-game prison populated with Leisure-Suit Larry, PaRappa the Rapper, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
* A political-activist poster advocating a unilateral ban on all Minesweeper mines.
* Alternate end credits with the big-head Journey avatars singing the same thirty-second snippet of “Separate Ways” over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
…but I guess that’s what cutting room floors are for. Those, and the dreams of over-the-hill gamers who can imagine a film with three times the budget and none of the legal hassles.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 
How in the hell do you not get more comments and feedbacks?! You are pretty clever and witty, my friend!
-SB
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Thanks! I have several theories on the quietness here:
* Everyone’s waiting for me to start an official MCC Facebook page, where Likes and comments would really count.
* My personal problems are too petty or boring for anyone to sympathize with.
* Not enough travel photos.
* I don’t “Like” 300 blogs a day and then demand quid-pro-quo from all of them.
* Too many travel photos.
* New Internet rule: anything over 50 words and 2 photos is an automatic thumbs-down.
* A rogue WordPress staffer sent the same email to every user except me: “No one reply to him! You’ll only encourage him!”
* I’m just too real. 😀
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Haha, good answer. I recently found that the fluffiest say-nothing posts with little quotes on a whimsical graphic get the most likes. It annoyed me and I posted a puppy post and wrote something about gays taking an old couple to court a
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at the end of the post. Nobody read it at all. Everybody went and liked the puppies. Figures. Blog friends… Is it worth it then, to blog? 🙂
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I’ve had my frequent moments of self-doubt like that. I’ll craft what I think is an insightful 1000-page essay and get a few likes; and then some other blogger will post a Gandhi quote and a photo of a happy tree and get 300+ Likes. You get the feeling that humanity’s system broke somewhere along the line and your wisdom is wasted on them.
When you’re first starting out in the blogosphere, it’s a total motivation killer. But I’m feeling much better now. 🙂
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My “other” friends who are not on wordpress and thus not produce wordpress likes, really like my blogging! 🙂 Nowadays it’s all about short and quick. That’s entertaining, and then we’re ending up believing Martin Luther was a madman because if we quote him on farting in public without mentioning the whole context, he might just be that. Appreciating thoughtful essays. Christiane
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You have shown me many many things I have missed!
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Live to serve! When the movie comes to DVD, I’m hoping someone else on the Internet goes through it frame-by-frame and gives us the full breakdown of hidden gems. Frankly, I don’t have that kind of time or obsession to do it all myself.
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I really need to reply to your comment regarding the way we’re supposed to acquire readers You are so so so right about feeling like you have to like (lotsa likes there) so many other blogs to demand the likes back. What’s they answer? If I stop liking them, will they stop liking me? It’s a real dilemma.
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I’m still working through that in my head. I get the impression we’re supposed to spend as much time on marketing and promotion as we are on the actual writing, but if all I do with my limited free time is read and Like countless other blogs, then I don’t have any time left over for actual writing myself. It doesn’t seem as though this should be such a tough juggling act…
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“A political-activist poster advocating a unilateral ban on all Minesweeper mines.” Love it.
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It’s about time someone took a stand. LESS FRAGS, MORE FLAGS!
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