Why doesn't "Ralph Breaks the Internet" have "wreck" in the title?

Why doesn't "Ralph Breaks the Internet" have "wreck" in the title? - Green Letter Tiles on a Colorful Surface

The sequel to Wreck-It Ralph is called Ralph Breaks the Internet. In it, Ralph and Venellope travel to the Internet to buy a replacement controller for Sugar Rush.

Why is it called Ralph Breaks the Internet, though? Wouldn't it make more sense to name it Ralph Wrecks the Internet?

I'm aware that in the trailer, they say it's because it "sounds cooler", but... do we have any actual evidence for an answer for why this title was chosen?



Best Answer

"Break the internet" is a common phrase that's used to describe something that has become immensely popular in a short time, while "wreck the internet" is not a commonly used phrase (compare 1.2B Google hits for the former, and only 73M for the latter). Breaking the internet is seen as something positive for whatever broke it, while wrecking doesn't have that ironically positive connotation. It seems they did not want to mess with the set phrase.




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More answers regarding why doesn't "Ralph Breaks the Internet" have "wreck" in the title?

Answer 2

According to an interview that Post Crescent had with Phil Johnston, the director of the film, it actually is because of "breaking the internet" being "a thing":

In one of the trailers there's a scene where characters talk about "Ralph Wrecks the Internet" versus "Ralph Breaks the Internet". Was that basically a conversation you guys had at some point?

Oh yeah. Of course. That one we were very well aware of, that people were saying "Why isn't it called 'Ralph Wrecks the Internet'", and wrote that as a response to that. That is an example of public opinion affecting our content, however those very conversations we had internally as well, why isn't it Ralph Wrecks the Internet? Oh cause you know breaking the internet is a thing, you know, that whole thing, yeah... we had those conversations in house as well.

Answer 3

From LRM:

“Johnston: Well, it was a really cumbersome title to have Wreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet so I think from the get go we were like, ‘oh, that’s a little long. Can we just pick one or the other?’

I definitely see where he’s coming from there, but apparently, the trigger for this came from the editor-in-chief of the news site Collider.

Moore: We should give a shoutout to one of your fellow journalists, Steven Weintraub. He stopped us at D23 Expo after we showed the princess sequence two years ago and he was all, I want it to be Super Wreck It Ralph, that’s always what they called follow-up games in Nintendo. Super Mario or Super … ‘Well, it’s not gonna be like that, Steve,’ and he was like, ‘but Ralph Breaks The Internet: Wreck It Ralph 2, it’s so long! Think of us poor journalists that have to write that.’
(emphasis added)

So they dropped the "Wreck-It Ralph" part to keep the name shorter.

Answer 4

Maybe the number one reason (which others have hinted at, and I'll go ahead and say) for "breaks the internet" is since "breaks" is a well established phrase, Disney wants their movie to jump to the top of google searches for "breaks the internet". As Nuclear Wang said above: "(compare 1.2B Google hits for the former, and only 73M for the latter)". Disney knows that popular movies are very highly weighted in search results, so they want a large slice of that juicy traffic basically for free. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's a savvy SEO (search engine optimization) move.

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