<Ami Thompson / digital>
<Ami Thompson / digital>
Hey, we have to write this foreword.
Rich Moore
When?
Phil Johnston
Two days ago.
Rich Moore
Hmm. What’s it supposed to be about?
Phil Johnston
Why we wanted to make the movie, etc. So why did you?
Rich Moore
I needed the money.
Phil Johnston
You realize this is going to be in the book?
Rich Moore
I was kidding. Jeez. Sarcasm gets lost in text, doesn’t it?
Phil Johnston
Apparently. Anywho . . . Sequels are so often terrible. Do you remember how we decided to do this one?
Rich Moore
I remember when we first started talking about this, we knew we wanted to send Ralph and Vanellope to the Internet. Visualizing the world of the Internet was exciting to me from the get-go. It’s never really been done in film, at least not on this scale. When Production Designer Cory Loftis and Art Directors Matthias Lechner and Ami Thompson first started showing us images of what the Internet might look like in this movie, I was blown away. The work they and the hundreds of artists working on this film did to make the Internet feel like a real world is nothing short of a miracle. So having that as the backdrop where our story takes place was a big part of the appeal to me.
Phil Johnston
Agreed. But saying you want to make a movie about the Internet is like saying you want to make a movie about New York City. There are millions of stories that could be told. So it took a LONG time to come up with the right story.
Rich Moore
True. At first, we were only thinking of the Internet as a way to expand Ralph’s and Vanellope’s world beyond the arcade. The idea got much juicier when we realized that it also had to be a place that would really test their friendship and make things especially difficult for Ralph.
Phil Johnston
For me, once we started thinking of Litwak’s Arcade as a small town and the Internet as a big city, I had my way into the story emotionally. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and eventually left for the big city (I’ve lived in New York and Los Angeles for almost 20 years). So I started thinking about my relationship to the town where I grew up and the friends I knew there, many of whom still live there. Just because I left for something different and some of my friends decided to stay doesn’t mean we aren’t still friends. We are, despite the fact that our lives are very different. As a new character in the film says to Vanellope, “Friendships change, and the good ones grow stronger because of it.” That’s the essence of this movie to me.
Rich Moore
Cool. So I guess we should write this foreword now.
Phil Johnston
I think we just did.