12 Recent Movie Sequels That Outrageously Ruined Great Characters
1. Ralph Breaks The Internet - Ralph
This was just awful.
In Wreck-It-Ralph, Ralph (John C. Reilly) was one of the all-time great Disney heroes. He was a brilliantly-written protagonist inhabited by a truly wonderful vocal performance from Reilly; even now, his attempted heroic sacrifice at the end of the film is so, so affecting.
Unfortunately, the very underwhelming sequel completely wrecked him, if you'll pardon the pun.
Gone was a kind-hearted, likable and relatable guy from the first film. Instead, the sequel presents Ralph as an idiotic, whiny and insecure man-child who spends the whole movie being creepy and clingy in his friendship with a ten-year-old girl - yuck!
At one point in the story, he deliberately infects the game Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) wants to relocate to with a dangerous computer virus just so that he'll still have her to himself. Seriously, what the actual hell was up with this?
While Ralph's arc of self-acceptance is arguably one of the finest in any Disney movie, this sequel puts Ralph through an atrociously written arc about learning to be less clingy, and the final boss of the film is a computer virus that takes the form of an army of Ralphs all drooling over Vanellope... yeah, this is one of those ones that gets worse and worse the more you think about it.
Truly, it's hard to think of any recent sequel that treated a great character so badly.