As much as we loved last year's animated hit, "Wreck-It Ralph," and the world Disney built for it, the movie leaves with you a longing to travel to the other games in the arcade. What else is out there?
To celebrate the home video of "Wreck-It Ralph," we get you give you a small answer to that question. Included on the deleted scenes from the film is an entirely new game world, "Extreme Easy Living 2," where a very different-looking Ralph travels to a social, "Sims"-like game in an earlier version of the movie during a low-point in his adventures.
The filmmakers eventually cut the game from the movie, but some previz work is included on the Blu-ray and DVD.
You can watch the scene above, and after the jump, we spoke with director Rich Moore about "Extreme Easy Living 2," what led to it being cut, and whether it might end up in a sequel.
What was the inspiration for "Extreme Easy Living 2"?
Where the story was when we had this concept was that at a certain point in the film, Ralph decided to give up on his quest to get the medal. 'Extreme Easy Living 2' became this bottom that Ralph hit. It was a place to go to give up. We would talk about 'Extreme Easy Living 2' as a place where there's good guys, no bad guys. There's just guys and chicks and beer and sharks and volleyball. It was the hedonistic place, kind of like 'The Sims' combined with 'Grand Theft Auto' social gaming type place that really had no objective to it. It was just collecting these things called 'Like Its,' that you would kind of change your costume and get new accoutrements and accessories and collect 'Like Its' from the other characters that live there. It was bottom of the barrel for Ralph. It felt like a place where he would go and slink away into obscurity and drink away his sorrows of how he hurt Vanellope back in 'Sugar Rush.'
How different was the story when this scene was part of the film?
The big bones of the story were pretty much the same. The mechanics of how we got there were a little bit different. This was back when in 'Sugar Rush' there was a whole component to that world where you had to put together your cart from separate pieces and a lot of the time that Ralph and Vanellope spent in 'Sugar Rush' was going around the world collecting the different pieces for the cart, doing these different activities, these different mini-games. At that point in the story process, Felix was traveling with Ralph and Vanellope. Felix had gone on this journey with Ralph, and throughout this journey, Ralph was lying to Felix and telling him that he knew that Felix liked Sargent Calhoun. Ralph was feeding him this line that 'Sargent Calhoun likes you too, and she told me that you need to help me on this special mission of mine, and if you do, it's really going to make her happy.' It was a very heavy plot that was going on that we ultimately trimmed down into the story that it is now.
What led to the decision to cut the game world entirely?
It became this fourth video game world that we visited really late in the game that came into the story pretty much in the third act of the movie or late in the second act that we had never been before. We heard it alluded to, and it seemed very late in the story to be introducing this new place with all of its rules. It was a whole other world to learn. It felt like a lot for the audience to digest at that point, unfortunately.
Would you consider including "Extreme Easy Living 2"?
Definitely, it was a game world that we really loved. It was one of the most difficult decisions on this project, to lose that game world, because we all thought it was so great. It was so funny. It was almost. It just seemed like it wrote itself. It was one of those things where the material for it seemed so abundant. It was really painful to cut that out of the film.
One thing too was we really couldn't figure out how it had any right to be in an arcade. It was so specific to an online game or a social game that it didn't make any sense to be an arcade cabinet. There's never been a game like that. We decide, 'Well, maybe it's the game that's on the arcade owner, Mr. Litwak, maybe it's on his laptop or something in the office, and somehow Ralph travels to it.' It became a very convoluted story. It became really hard to even introduce. This could be a movie in and of itself. I think we could build an entire story around going to this game because it seems like there's a lot of humor to be found in it.
"Wreck-It Ralph" is available for digital download today. The Blu-ray and DVD hit shelves next week.
