Gramercy Pictures, Blockade Entertainment, and Rainmaker Entertainment’s adaptation of Ratchet & Clank will arrive in theaters in less than a month. Just last weekend this year’s WonderCon was held with Los Angeles, bringing with it the usual payload of news stories surrounding several animation-related projects (expect those articles in the coming days). One of these projects is Ratchet & Clank and, to celebrate the occasion, Gramercy Pictures dropped the first two clips for the movie online.
The first clips showcases Ratchet’s first encounter with Clank, whom Ratchet saves from his crashed ship:
The second clip shows Ratchet and Clank on a joyride through Metropolis (capital city of the planet Kerwan in the games) as they go to warn the Galactic Rangers of the threat against the galaxy:
Once again, the clips reaffirm the creative team’s commitment to a faithful adaptation of the video games. Besides the visual style, both clips (particularly the second one) are packed with all the back-and-forth dialogue and banter that is a trademark element of the game franchise. Seeing as how this is an origin story – co-written by one of the writers from the original games – it’s neat that we get to see the beginning of the interaction between the two.
I would also like to note the animation itself. While it doesn’t quite pack the top-shelf visuals that we are accustomed to seeing in big-budget offerings from the Big Three (Disney, DreamWorks, and Pixar), the production still looks polished enough that I was thoroughly floored by the scene of Ratchet and Clank flying through a futuristic cityscape, enhanced thoroughly by director Kevin Munroe’s unique choice of where he puts the camera during action-y set pieces.
More so than the first trailer, the clips do a better job of communicating what the film is all about and further assuaging any doubts about the film’s devotion to its source material.
The film is directed by Kevin Munroe (and co-directed by Jericca Cleland) from a screenplay by Insomniac Games writer T.J. Fixman, Munroe, Gerry Swallow. James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, and Jim Ward reprise their roles from the video games as Ratchet, Clank, and Captain Qwark. They lead a cast that includes John Goodman, Bella Thorne, Rosario Dawson, Sylvester Stallone, Vincent Tong, and Armin Shimerman as Dr. Nefarious.
What do you think? Do these clips make you look forward to Ratchet & Clank?
Edited by: Hannah Wilkes
