Wreck-It Ralph sequel will unite the Disney princesses

Wreck-It Ralph sequel will unite the Disney princesses — and Star Wars!

The world wide web brings people from around the world together — mainly so that they can bicker and be mean to each other.

That’s what goes down in Ralph Breaks the Internet — the sequel to Walt Disney Animation Studios’ 2013 video game comedy Wreck-It Ralph. In footage revealed Friday at the D23 Expo, we see him uniting characters from two entirely different universes — the classic Disney fairy-tales… and Star Wars.

Disney’s princesses cross paths with the galaxy’s most uptight droid.

And they bicker. And they’re mean to each other. This really is the internet.

Our rough-and-tumble hero (voiced by John C. Reilly) and his sweet-and-sour friend Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) have escaped their arcade consoles and fallen into the realm of massive multiplayer online gameplay.

In a meta, cross-promotional twist, that odyssey leads Vanellope into a real website owned by everybody’s favorite parent company — OhMy.Disney.com.

Disney, of course, owns not only the Wreck-It Ralph movie, but also Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and the rest of those happily-ever-after ladies. And (breaking news from 2012!) they also own Lucasfilm.

That clears the way for a scene like this: Vanellope, getting a tour of the OhMy.Disney site by a new character — the digital trendsetter Yesss (voiced by Hidden Figures star Taraji P. Henson), the algorithm for a site called Buzzaholic.

“She’s always up on the latest trends, so she has the ability to constantly shift the look of her hair and clothes. And because she lives in a cyber world, her clothes are made of fiber optics,” says Phil Johnston, who directed the movie with Rich Moore, who made the original. (They preivously worked together on Zootopia.)

Ralph asks Yesss: “How exactly do I go virus?”

She tells him he has to appeal to a big group of people, but everyone online is into niche. But Disney, she says, has bought up all the individual things that people love, however. That leads them to OhMy.Disney.com.

Once inside this, uh, familiar-looking digital amusement park, Yesss, Ralph, and Vanellope watch the “users” of the site geek out over a coterie of princesses, who are escorted through the park by a group of security guard Stormtroopers.

Overhead, Iron Man blasts through the sky, Dumbo flutters into view, and an X-wing fighter darts after a TIE Fighter. Tinker Bell tickles Ralph’s nose until he insults her by calling her “Stinker Smell.”

Vanellope watches the court of princesses disappear behind a stage door into their dressing room and decides to follow after for a little fangirling. She’s never seen a group of women looking so glamorous.

The princesses will be voiced by many of the actresses who performed them originally: Tangled‘s Rapunzel (Mandy Moore), Beauty and the Beast’s Belle (Paige O’Hara), The Princess and the Frog’s Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), Aladdin‘s Jasmine (Linda Larkin), Brave‘s Merida (Kelly Macdonald), The Little Mermaid’s Ariel (Jodie Benson), Frozen’s Anna and Elsa (Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel), Mulan’s Ming Na, Pocahontas’ Irene Bedard, and Moana’s Auli’i Cravalho.

When Vanellope turns up in their dressing room, the princesses react to the little glitch’s presence by leaping into attack mode: Merida draws her bow, Mulan points a sword, and Cinderalla smashes a glass slipper and holds it out like a broken bottle.

Vanellope disarms them by explaining that she’s a princess, too, from the video game Sugar Rush. The women ask her a series of princess test questions to determine her bona fides. One of them is: “Do people assume all of your problems got solved because a big, strong man showed up?”

While Vanellope lavishes praise on their gowns, the princesses admire her casual street-wear. “I’ll get my mice on that!” Cinderella declares.

Soon, all the princesses are lounging together in shorts, sweats, tank tops, and, as Ariel says, “What’s this called again…? Oh yeah, shirt.”

Before long, a stage manager enters to give them the 5-minute warning for the next performance. It’s C-3PO — everybody’s favorite golden fussbudget.

Cinderella, obviously irked, turns on him icily: “Why, thank you R2-D2.”

Sleeping Beauty shakes her head. “Stop … you know he hates to be called that,” she says, before calling out cheerfully: “We’ll be right there, BB-8!”

C-3PO shuffles out, muttering to himself. “Such insolence. ‘You’re good with princesses,’ they said. ‘You’ll love this job.’ … Oh, how I long for the days of Captain Solo.”

Moana tells Vanellope goodbye, and the little video game glitch goes in for some hugs — only to get an arched back and a rabid hiss from Meeko, Pocahontas’ raccoon.

Ralph Breaks the Internet will hit theaters Nov. 21, 2018.