Even Insomniac and Sony couldn’t intervene to make a good videogame movie. Is there hope?
As of the time of this writing, “Ratchet and Clank” is more or less a certified box office bomb with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of less than 30%, where it will go on to join the rest of its video game inspired kin that have spawned cinematic garbage.
While the simple question of why the movie is bad can be easily solved within the first 20 minutes of viewing, the matter of how it managed to suck, despite the resources that were poured into it by the producers of the source material is perhaps the bigger question that should be analyzed; one that may be at the heart of a new trend that could quite possibly be more damaging to the cinematic reputation of videogames that the career of Uwe Boll if certain inferences can be made regarding the recent “Assassin’s Creed” trailer.
In order tackle this question using “Ratchet and Clank” as the case study, we’ll need to delve into why the film is problematic, to say the least, while also looking further into the source material itself, and what the elements that went right and wrong could mean for future video game to film adaptations.
“Ratchet and Clank” follows its titular duo, the only known member of his species and a defective war robot, on a mission to save the Solana Galaxy from the evil Chairman Dreck, who is cherry picking planetary land marks in order to build a custom made world for his people at the expense of the innocent.
The wide-eyed naïve and idealistic Ratchet, itching to see the rest of the galaxy and believing that he’s destined to do something great teams up with the less competent and easily jealous Captain Quark and his Galactic Commandoes to undertake a journey that shows him being a hero isn’t everything that it may seem.
If “Ratchet and Clank” sounds to be a little bit on the generic side, than my description may not have quite been on the accurate side because the film is actually A LOT on the generic side of western children’s animation.
The PG-13-esque edge that the video games are famous for has been filed away in favor of producing a bright, light, high energy, and humor oriented feature that exists purely for the kiddies; the same kiddies that were probably less than 4 years old when “Ratchet and Clank” was in the heyday of its popularity.
From the naïve newcomer leaving behind his friend/mentor/surrogate parental figure, to the sorrow tinted moping of the fallen hero after a failure, to the race against time climax, It’s hard to find anything unique about “Ratchet and Clank” beyond its own production design lifted wholesale from the games through the usage of the game studio’s original artistic resources loaned out to the film’s production crew.
This film pulls out every western animated cliché with no sense of irony, criticism, or even celebration that I was half way surprised that they didn’t go all the way and manufacture a one dimensional love interest for Ratchet, of which several options could have been pulled from the games in order to make happen.
It’s a movie, whose greatest sin isn’t terminal incompetence but terminal laziness. What makes I unbearable is that it’s about an hour and a half not necessarily of making narrative mistakes but of doing absolutely nothing at all with such an inventive lore and setting to pull from both visually and in potential of storytelling. Not a single moment of emotion sticks the landing, nor a single joke illicit anything passed a brief smile yet nothing is particularly painful.
”Ratchet and Clank” is one of the most frustrating types of bad products. It’s hard to outright hate because you do truly believe that the people working on the film really did care. James Arnold Taylor and David Kaye, 2 seasoned veterans of the voice acting community reprise their role as the titular duo from the source material of said characters and deliver performances as firm and seamless as the games that they have served so excellently for nearly a decade and a half, along with a handful of celebrity voice actors that put in a decent job given the blandness of the material.
Furthermore, the animators at Rainmaker Studios have put forth a solid and mostly successful effort in terms of sheer production; sound design is solid, the animation is gorgeous, and the entire film definitely has the look and feel of a product worthy of financial release.
Sadly, the limp writing and direction of the final product make “Ratchet and Clank” feel like more of a cash grab than it was probably intended to be. The unfortunate result is that the best thing to come out of this film is the Playstation 4 game based on its material, which was already a no brainer.
Next time on “Tools of Construction:” Where did the approach go wrong?
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