Wreck-It Ralph Limps to $240 Million

I loved Wreck-It Ralph. I think it is the best animated film of 2012. That said, I find its financial under-performance to be somewhat satisfying.

The geniuses running Disney — and by geniuses I mean complete idiots — named Tangled Tangled because they wanted to de-emphasize the female character to attract a male audience. The same logic is undoubtedly  underlying their renaming of The Snow Queen to Frozen. Honestly. Where do they get these ideas? I wish that I was as smart as them.

They believed that The Princess and the Frog under-performed because, I'm not kidding, the word "princess" was in the title. As such, one would expect a movie with the word "wreck" in the title to perform amazingly, because, ya'know, boys like violence... or whatever.

Instead, Ralph is trailing Princess's receipts by over $25 million. Account for inflation, and it's probably over $30 million. Suck it, Disney.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I am reveling in Ralph's performance in the way that I hate Disney executives, but not in the way that I hate to see artists who have dedicated five years of their life to a project only to see it not set the world on fire. The amount of work that goes into an animated film is enough to make me desire that every animated film, almost regardless of its quality, sells millions of tickets. The consummate artists behind the scenes deserve it.

But what I hate more than anything is when a movie studio condescends to us, and animation companies do it more often than anyone this side of romantic comedies. I cannot help but derive some degree of satisfaction when that condescension is proven wrong.