A Deep Dive Into the Ratchet & Clank Movie

I’m not much of a PlayStation gamer in all honesty (though I’m trying to get more into the ecosystem) despite having grown up with the original console. I currently own a PlayStation 2 that I bought in 2020. One of the first games I bought for it was the original Ratchet & Clank game. I was hooked almost immediately. I bought the second game shortly after and have been playing my way through the PS2 games. This franchise has captured me in a way few video games do, and is what got me to consider jumping into the PlayStation ecosystem (currently I’m an Xbox main, Nintendo second, and occasionally, I’ll play on the PC, but mostly old or small games because my computer is weak). After playing through the first few games, I decided to watch the movie. Don’t get me wrong, I knew the movie had a bad reputation going in, but I just had to see for myself. To be honest, I don’t think it’s as bad as it’s made out to be. That said, it is the blandest movie I have ever seen. So, let’s dive into the movie and try to understand why it didn’t work and how it could have been better:

We start above the planet Tenemule where Chairman Drek is about to give a villainous speech (as indicated by the screen telling us that he’s going to do so in three seconds). It’s trying so hard to be funny, but fails. It’s just lazy internet humor, “call the police” jokes, and people being too hyper as the punchline. Maybe one or two of those jokes I may have laughed at as a small child. Honestly, I think this scene really establishes well why the humor in this movie doesn’t work. The first sin it commits is that it doesn’t allow jokes to build up. Everything must be a quick gag. Not only that, gags must be made upon in quick succession. There cannot be any serious moments. If someone says something that’s not funny, then it must immediately be followed up with a joke. Everything is a joke in this movie, nothing is ever taken seriously. Even scenes where they have a chance at making something heartfelt, they go for the gags instead. The writers also consistently go for the lowest effort jokes at every turn. It feels as if the writers just decided that since this was a movie that was supposed to appeal to children, they just didn’t have to put effort into their humor. In the original game that this is re-imagining the humor was cynical, subtle, and well-crafted. It was a satire of capitalism. This movie removes all subtlety from the humor, eschews the satire, and uses humor that is very in your face. It focuses on mostly one-off gags and slapstick humor instead. Anyway, to finish off what happens in this scene, Drek orders the “Deplanetizer” to be fired and commits a Death Star against Tenemule.

Meanwhile, on the planet Veldin, Ratchet is found working out and finds out that due to Tenemule being the fourth planet to be destroyed recently, the Space Avengers (ahem, I mean, the Galactic Rangers) are expanding to include a fifth member. The Rangers are holding tryouts for the fifth member to be decided upon. Ratchet dreams of being a Galactic Ranger and wants to go to the try-outs. Meanwhile, though, he has a job to do as an over-eager mechanic. He consistently goes overboard and ends up making things worse (which does lead to a fun scene of an out of control space car). As his boss puts it, “you’re a great mechanic, you got a lot of heart, but you’re careless.”

Look, I understand that things have to change for the movie. This could never have been one-for-one with the original video game that this is a re-imagining of. That said, why would they change Ratchet like this? One of the things that made the original Ratchet so great was that he was a snarky, cynical asshole who didn’t want to be a hero. He was forced to be a hero because of the circumstances. He just wanted to be a mechanic, he didn’t want to do hero things and was resentful towards Clank. Heck, he tried to sell Clank at times. Now, though, he’s a starry-eyed wannabe hero? I genuinely don’t understand why this needed to be changed, or why you would want to. This is a complete 180° of his character that just didn’t need to happen. It felt like change for the sake of change rather than something well thought out. The original arc was interesting and full of great moments. This movie just throws all that out to make him into a loveable wannabe hero so they can have a superhero origin movie for kids.

We go back to Chairman Drek where he plans to destroy another planet and the Galactic Rangers. He plans to create an army for himself and defeat the Rangers in a span of two days. So, he goes to see Dr. Nefarious, who is the main antagonist of the series. Nefarious is creating killer robots who know everything about how the Galactic Rangers fight, and therefore can destroy them. The power goes out, though, which causes a glitch which creates a defect: Clank. Clank is a small little robot who isn’t all about destroying the Galactic Rangers; therefore Drek sends his strongman, Victor, after him. Clank escapes in a ship, but it is shot as it’s lifting off. Clank tells the ship to go to the Galactic Ranger’s homebase (so he can warn them), and the computer makes a snarky remark that they will never make it.