Ratchet and Clank (2016)

Ratchet and Clank (2016)

Release Date: April 29, 2016

This week, we’ll be looking at a new release! Ooh, aren’t we fancy? Anyway, Ratchet and Clank is the film adaptation of the popular Playstation game series, which serves as a loose adaptation of the first game in series, covering how Ratchet and Clank first met and their quest to save the Solana Galaxy from the evil Chairman Drek. Naturally, as a big fan of the games, I was highly anticipating the film, despite the poor track record of films adapted from videogames. Does Ratchet and Clank buck the trend? Well…

It was said you would destroy bad videogame films, not join them! Bring balance to the Tomatometer, not leave it on rotten!

It was supposed to be different this time. It was animated, they remained faithful to the game, the game developers were involved, the characters even kept their voice actors from the games, but the future refused to change. As of this writing, the film is languishing at a poor 19% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s what the professionals think, but what do I think?

Admittedly, bad is a strong word, and I think that low Rotten Tomatoes score is pretty harsh. I fail to see how this film is so much worse than the likes of Tomb Raider or Resident Evil, which somehow managed to score higher. I enjoyed this film more than any of those ones, with the possible exception of the second Resident Evil, which had the Nemesis in it, and the Nemesis is cool. Maybe being an animated film not made by Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks counts against it? Nevertheless, this is by no means a diamond in the rough.

No plot summary this time because the film is new, but as an adaptation of the first game in the series, you should be familiar with the plot if you’ve played that. Having said that, there are a few twists from the original to avoid it being a straight adaptation, which I appreciated for keeping things fresh. If you go back to the first game today, it’s very different from the later games in a few ways in terms of both gameplay mechanics and tone. You can’t play the film for obvious reasons, so the most relevant difference here is the personality of Ratchet, who is the first game is much more of a selfish jerk. Thankfully, the film gives Ratchet his more friendly and cheerful personality from the rest of the series. There is also a bit more character development for Captain Qwark, who gets some exploration of his personality and what drives him to act like he does, which he didn’t in the game. Other changes in the film are ones that draw from what later games added, such as the inclusion of Dr Nefarious, who wasn’t introduced until the third game, but has become a series mainstay since then.

The animation is excellent, very colourful and packed with alien species and little details in the backgrounds, even if the film spends a bit too much time in metal corridors when there could have been a bit more variety in settings. Even more impressive is that this was done on a pretty low budget of $12-20 million, some of which would have gone to marketing and paying the voice actors. The animation isn’t at the level of the big boys, but it’s very impressive that it comes fairly close on a fraction of the budget. The voice actors also go a great job. Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark and Dr Nefarious keep their voice actors from the games, which is a wise choice for several reasons. First, they’ve been voicing the characters for over a decade by now, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Second, it maintains goodwill from game fans. Finally, it saves money on hiring big name stars. Hiring James Arnold Taylor and David Kaye to reprise the roles of Ratchet and Clank respectively was probably a fair bit cheaper than it would have been to cast, let’s say, Michael J Fox and the guy who plays Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory. Of course, the marketing department needs to put someone’s name on the poster, so the supporting characters are voiced by the likes of Paul Giamatti (Sans hilarious Russian accent), John Goodman, Rosario Dawson and Sylvester Stallone. I have no idea how on earth they got Sylvester Stallone in particular, and the phone call offering him the role of Chairman Drek’s robotic henchman Victor Von Ion is one I would pay to hear, but they all fit in well and are able to play the characters without their voices being recognisable and therefore distracting. Finally, it’s quite clear from all the in-jokes and references that there is a real love of the source material here. A lot of films adapted from video games change so much that they feel like adaptations in name only, seemingly ashamed of the source material, but this is definitely not the case here. A lot of these are the kind of things that fans will have extra appreciation for but aren’t critical enough to leave general audiences in the dark. There’s even one bit that may or may not be a subtle hint towards a Playstation cinematic universe (If you want to see how I would go about that, watch this space.)

Now for the bad. Even though I praised some of the changes made to the plot, it still borrows liberally from Star Wars, featuring an orphan on a backwater desert planet finding a robot that gives him a great quest to save the galaxy from a madman with a planet destroying superweapon, but I’m not going to be too harsh on it for this, since the game had the same plot, so the blame lies on the source material, not the adaptation. Besides, it’s still more self-aware that the plot’s been done before than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Ratchet and Clank also spend surprisingly little time together, Clank having more screen time with Elaris, the long-suffering, underappreciated mission control of the Galactic Rangers. More hurtful is the pacing. The film gets off to a bad start, taking a good 20 minutes to get going, which isn’t helped by the overly long sequence of involved studios that seems to segue into the film’s opening more than once, almost exactly like in the Family Guy episode where Peter and Brian attend Alcoholics Anonynomus, except it’s not a joke, and a fourth-wall breaking meta joke that might have been funny if it came later, instead of being the very first joke of the film. Fortunately, the pace picks up later on, so the rough start isn’t as damaging as it could have been. There are also a few details that needed more explaining. For example, why is Chairman Drek blowing up planets to build a new planet from the remains? I know why from the playing the game, but it’s not explained in the film, so newcomers won’t be any the wiser for a motive than “Because he’s the bad guy, duh.”

More seriously, the film isn’t particularly funny. This is terribly disappointing since the games had a lot of hysterical scenes, such as the Nature’s Mysteries TV series, Dr Nefarious’ malfunctioningand love of soap operas, and the running joke of stranding characters on asteroids with no way of escaping, but the film doesn’t compare to any of those. There are some laughs, (I particularly liked the passive-aggressive computer on Clank’s escape pod and Captain Qwark on the poster for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) but the most they can muster is a chuckle. Some jokes would have been funnier if other films hadn’t beaten this one to the punch, such as the funny-looking-character-eating-cereal scene being done better in Deadpool, or the location subtitles being sporadically funny here, compared to the more consistently funny ones in Team America.) At worst, there are some jokes that keep getting dragged out even though they weren’t funny to begin with. Fortunately, the delightful overacting of Captain Qwark and Dr Nefarious means they continue to steal every scene they’re in on the strength of their performances alone.

Ratchet and Clank is decently entertaining for children, but there isn’t a whole lot here for those of a double digit age unless you’re a fan of the games, and even then it’s not a sure thing. Despite the obvious amount of effort and care from everyone involved that went into this, there’s just something missing that I can’t quite put my finger on, and the film feels like less than the sum of its parts because of it. That sentence pained me more to type than being on the receiving end of a RYNO blast ever could.

6/10

No tears, only dreams now.

So, does this mean Warcraft is the new Chosen One since that seems to have decent hype and a lot of money behind it, or is Angry Birds the new Chosen One since it comes out first? Personally, I fancy Warcraft’s chances better, but everything indicated Ratchet and Clank was supposed to be a sure thing, so I’m not optimistic either way.

It could have been worse though. I’m surprised Sony weren’t involved, but I’m also glad, as a quick look at what their film division has been up to recently indicates they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing and are just throwing any old shit at the wall in the hope that something will stick. Have you seen the plans for the Amazing Spider-Man films, before they were cancelled? It’s shocking how bad they are! Praise be to Civil War for putting Spider-Man in and saving us from them. (Which reminds me, Captain America and Iron Man stop fighting because they both have a best friend called James. There’s your Civil War spoiler.) Sausage Party reeks of desperation, a minute long Family Guy cutaway stretched out to feature length. The new Ghostbusters is set to be this year’s Fant4stic, a disaster in the making using progressive values as an excuse for laziness and cynicism. Having an all-female cast means we don’t need to try and make a good film, and if you don’t like it, you’re a misogynist, so your opinion is invalid. The director’s already throwing a tantrum over on Twitter, and the damn thing is still several months away. He’s probably cracked from the realisation that his career and the careers of almost everyone involved will be toast by the end of the year. The sad part is, when the film inevitably crashes and burns, the wrong lessons will be learned and Hollywood will be convinced that the film failed because of the female cast, as opposed to being terrible, which means no more female casts ever again, which sucks. An all-female Expendables film could be good, once I’ve decided whether Sigourney Weaver or Linda Hamilton should be the leader. They could call it The Expendabelles! I'll just wait for some royalties if they use that name.

And then there’s Emojis: The Movie. They’re making a film about emojis. Fucking emojis. Let that sink in. Some bright spark out there saw emojis and thought to himself “Hmm, I’ve just had an excellent idea for a film. We’ll do a film about Emojis. Who’s popular at the moment? We’ll get them to do voices, put Gangnam Style on the soundtrack and after the credits we can include a scene with the bird from the Twitter logo and the Facebook F so we can do a social media cinematic universe. I’m a fucking genius, I am! Just for that, I’m going to treat myself to snorting cocaine from a hooker’s cleavage using a curly straw! All of the high, none of the nose ruining!”