Ralph Breaks the Internet, the sequel to 2012’s arcade-themed Wreck-It Ralph, reunites Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) for a trip into cyberspace—imagined as a real place. “Because the internet is layer upon layer, we liked the idea of it being a city like Constantinople or Rome, where the old is buried underneath the new,” says Phil Johnston, who codirected the movie with Rich Moore. The filmmakers got just as creative dreaming up the digital residents.
Taraji P. Henson voices the trend-predicting algorithm Yesss who works for “BuzzTube.” Her fiber-optic outfit changes every few minutes—based on the data she takes in. “She’s not just spouting statistics,” Moore says. “She sets styles within the internet.”
A depiction of a search bar would, of course, be staffed by an academic with the voice of Alan Tudyk (King Candy in the first movie). The digital know-it-all, inspired by early search icons like AskJeeves, admits to suffering from “aggressive autofill.”
eBay is a digitized Sotheby’s, filled with auctioneers pushing holographic unicorn figurines and paintings of kittens. On the backend is eBay Elayne. “We thought it’d be funny to have a dodgy, long-suffering clerk taking that information,” Johnston says.
Welcome to the internet’s underbelly, where dwellers don’t have faces and slimy apothecaries whip up viruses. “We’re not going to paint the internet as a ball of sunshine, roses, and cat videos,” Moore says. “This is a city, with good parts and bad parts.”
This article appears in the November issue. Subscribe now.
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