Review of Ratchet & Clank (2016) by Resumegam3 — 29 Apr 2016

I've been excited for this film ever since its 2013 announcement (it's based on my favourite game series of all time) and now that it's finally here, I'm happy to say that Ratchet and Clank is a good movie. The story has a very similar plot to the first game on PS2 and the reboot game on PS4 - Ratchet, a mechanic on Planet Veldin, wants to be a Galactic Ranger and goes to the tryouts when they arrive on his home planet. However, the Rangers don't think he has 'what it takes'. Clank is then introduced, one of Chairman Drek's defective warbots. After being chased by Victor Von Ion (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), Clank escapes the warbot factory but crash-lands on Veldin, where Ratchet finds him and checks him for damage just before Clank wakes up and Ratchet introduces himself with a nickname for the robot instead of 'warbot defect', Clank. When Ratchet and Clank save Planet Kerwan from an attack by the warbots and the Blarg, they are placed into the Galactic Rangers by the leader, Captain Qwark. Their mission leads them to a plan about Chairman Drek's 'Deplanetiser' which is destroying planets and using the remains of them to make the perfect planet, so now Ratchet and Clank must stop him from destroying every planet in the galaxy. But Dr. Nefarious is also involved (in his pre-robot form since he wasn't introduced until the timeline of Ratchet and Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal) and is trying to sabotage Drek's plan to do it all himself.

I was a bit worried about the film's quality since Rainmaker Entertainment (one of the studios making the film) have produced lots of straight-to-DVD Barbie films, but the animation is still very good-looking almost-all-around. The film replaces Kevin Michael Richardson with Paul Giamatti for the voice of Chairman Drek, and he acts surprisingly well. Of course, there are some references to past games in the series and even some to other PlayStation platforming games. There are some jokes that gave me a good laugh (many of the people who worked on the games have written the film and Ratchet, Clank and Qwark's original voice actors reprise their roles), even if there are maybe a few too many 'modern' jokes (segways, hashtags and texting). However, if you're not a fan of Ratchet and Clank, this film might be less enjoyable for you and end up in around the 4 to 6/10 scores. Since the film is only an hour and a half long, it leaves some of the new characters like Elaris, Cora and Brax quite underdeveloped.

But overall, I was definitely satisfied with the Ratchet and Clank movie and I'm looking forward to any sequels Rainmaker, Blockade and Insomniac Games might make. Even though you'll probably enjoy it less if you don't play the games, it's still a good animated film and one of the best to be based on a video game.