Reviews: Wreck-It Ralph

 

           Sometimes an idea comes along that is so obvious and yet so brilliant that you can only bow and take your hat off to whoever came up with it. I can therefore only hope that whoever had the idea “what if we did something like Toy Story with video game characters?” is currently enjoying a nice fizzy drink on a private island somewhere.

            Really, the premise alone might have been enough to carry Wreck-It Ralph, at least for game-fans: the video-game characters of an arcade have lives outside their games and can visit each other’s games after hours. They arrive at the ‘Game Central Station’ (a power-strip), where their checked-over by a surge protector and the graffiti on the walls says things like “Aerith lives.” If the movie was nothing but video-game characters hanging out and getting drinks at Tapper, it still probably would’ve been worth seeing.

            But there is a plot, and a good one at that: Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) is the villain of a classic 80s-era arcade game called Fix-It Felix Jr. Every day he dutifully wrecks the apartment building that the egg-shaped Nicelanders inhabit, allowing the hero, Fix-It Felix (Jack McBayer) to fix it and, eventually, vanquish Ralph by throwing him off the roof.

            After 30 years of this, Ralph is bored and depressed. Every day he has to watch as Felix gets all the glory, the pies, and the medals all for defeating him, Ralph, who never gets any praise or appreciation or pies. “It sure must be nice being the good guy,” he sighs to the ‘Bad-Annon’ support group for villains.

            Ralph’s jealously and depression comes to a head at the game’s 30^th Anniversary Party, which he isn’t invited to. He talks Felix into letting him in, but soon loses his temper at the Nicelanders and storms out. Drowning his sorrows at Tapper (the bartending game), he runs into a soldier from the arcade’s new first-person shooter, Hero’s Duty. Seeing this as his chance to play the good-guy for once, he steals the guy’s armor and sneaks into the other game, which is headed by the formidable Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch).

            Through a series of unexpected events, Ralph ends up more-or-less stuck in a candy-themed racing game called Sugar Rush, where he eventually befriends a ‘glitch’ (a character who was never fully integrated into the game) named Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), whom he reluctantly ends up helping to become a playable character.

            Meanwhile, with Ralph a no-show, Fix-It Felix Jr. has been marked ‘out-of-order’ and scheduled to be unplugged. In response, Felix teams up with Calhoun (who thinks Ralph may have unleashed a dangerous game-play element from Hero’s Duty into the arcade at large) to try to find Ralph and bring him home.

            The first thing that becomes clear about this movie is that the makers loved video games. There are so many little details, so many clever conceits that trying to list them all would easily outweigh the film’s actual script. Consider the “Bad-Annon” meeting: every single character, apart from Ralph, is from an actual game: there’s Bowser, Dr. Robotnik (from the Sonic games), Zangief and M. Bison (from Street Fighter), Kano and Smoke (from Mortal-Kombat: Kano even performs his famous ‘finisher’ move on one of the other characters!), a Zombie from Hosue of the Dead, a bunch of others I didn't recognize (though I'm sure Wikipedia will be able to identify them soon), and the whole meeting is overseen by Clyde, the orange ghost from Pac-Man (indeed, the whole meeting turns out to be set in a Pac-Man map). Later Sonic and Pac-Man have cameos, as do Frogger, Dig-Dug, the aforementioned Tapper, and Q-Bert (who, together with his supporting cast, is out-of-work due to his game being unplugged: Ralph kind-heartedly gives them a cherry “fresh from Pac-Man”).

            Beyond cameos, though, there are also brilliant conceits such as the different ways the film incorporates the game-screen. In Ralph’s game, it hangs in the sky like an enormous sun. In Hero’s Duty, it’s attached to a small robot equipped with a rifle (which turns out to have a personality of its own). I also love the creativity that went into the world of Sugar Rush, which is like something from Willy Wonka’s subconscious: towering candy-cane forests, chocolate rivers, a volcano made out of coke and menthols, and hundreds upon hundreds of sugary subjects ruled over by King Candy (Alan Tudyk).

            But though the visuals are often striking and the video game world spot-on, it’s the story and the characters that make this film what it is. In particular, the relationship between Ralph and Vanellope serves as the emotional heart of the movie. The way these two misfits come to trust and rely on each other is both touching and believable, with many heartwarming (and heartbreaking) moments along the way. It’s these two that give the movie its soul.

            Ralph and Vanellope are the most important relationship, but they’re not the only one. There’s also Ralph’s sweet friendship/brotherhood with Felix, his heroic counterpart and pretty much the only character from his own game to treat him with any kind of decency. Felix in general is a delightful character: so sweet and innocent, and yet so earnest and, yes, heroic that you just can’t help loving the little guy.

            Felix and Calhoun also develop a charmingly unexpected relationship, where the unassumingly genuine old-school hero disarms the tough, cynical FPS heroine. They don’t have as many scenes together as I might like, but their relationship is delightful and ultimately pays off in a big way. 

            The writing is sharp, witty, and intelligent. Video game jokes abound, of course (When the surge protector asks Ralph’s name, he sarcastically answers “Lara Croft”), but there are also some clever references to classic film and even a few satirical jabs at things like customs inspectors and 12-stepping groups. And I must admit, the film surprised me a few times. There were a few twists and turns that I genuinely did not see coming. In particular, a major plot point is set up mid-way through, but is integrated so well that when it pays off it’s genuinely surprising (all the more so because the way it’s established implies that what ultimately happens couldn’t happen). On the other hand, a climactic gambit is telegraphed pretty early on, though the way it plays out is unexpected and satisfying.

            The cast is absolutely spot-on: John C. Reilly projects the perfect blend of weariness, self-pity, and good-heartedness as Ralph. His deep, loud voice is equally adept at being villainous and heroic, making him ideal for the villain-hero. Sarah Silverman brings all her trademark energy and craziness to Vanellope, but also does great in the more emotional scenes (her emotionally-charged scenes are often truly heartbreaking and probably the best acting in the film). Jack McBrayer, of course, can do the wide-eyed innocent better than anyone, and Jane Lynch has one of toughest female voices in modern Hollywood, and I enjoyed the nuance with which they played their respective characters.

I was a little worried at first that Alan Tudyk’s King Candy might turn out to be simply a camp stereotype, but all such fears were soon dismissed as I got swept up in his exuberant, scene-stealing performance (he’s like a cross between Cesar Romero’s Joker, Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka, and…I don’t know, a sugar-addicted schizophrenic or something). I also have to give shout outs to Kevin Deters as the very gentle and patient Clyde and director Rich Moore as the diminutive, aptly-named Sour Bill: King Candy’s joyless, monotone minion.

The animation is simply gorgeous. There’s the worlds of Fix-It Felix Jr. and other games: perfectly rendered in 8-bit from the outside, smoother but still cartoonish on the inside. There’s the dark, gritty FPS world of Hero’s Duty, the huge, brightly-lit Game-Central Station with its hundreds and hundreds of characters milling around (including dozens of real game characters). And, most of all, the candy-coated Sugar Rush with its perfectly rendered sugar, chocolate, and incredible attention to detail (look closely at Vanellope’s hoodie: the strings are made of liquorish).  

            One thing I was surprised at was that this movie tackles some very interesting and comparatively rare themes: things like the need for adversity and sacrifice on the path to being a hero, the ill-advisedness of trying to take short-cuts (appropriately for a film about games, the movie posits dire consequences for people who try to ‘cheat’), or even the need to sometimes humbly accept unpleasant circumstances and the dangers of trying to force our way out of them. I can’t really adequately explore the film’s take on these issues without spoilers (I might do so in a later post, once I’ve had the chance to see it again), but suffice to say that Ralph’s attempts to snatch at the results of something without the necessary effort comes back to bite him hard, and that both Ralph and another character court disaster by their inability to accept their circumstances.

            There is also the rather tired theme of ‘don’t bully people who are different’ (I am getting really sick of the ‘outcast-bullied-by-narrow-minded-locals’ scenario), though it’s tempered by the fact that Ralph’s reaction to his mistreatment ends up being much worse for everyone than the mistreatment itself, as well as the implication that it was, at least partially, due more to a lack of awareness than out-right cruelty or snobbishness (likewise, the treatment that Vanellope suffers turns out to have something far more twisted than mere snobbery behind it…).

            Then there’re the sly commentaries on the nature of the gaming world, with things like Q-Bert being out of work, the tragedy of unfinished characters and levels (as well as the pride players have in discovering them), the way unplanned elements often spark unexpected reactions from the audience, and, of course, the changing nature of the game world itself with slick, graphically-powerful First-Person Shooters superseding the more light-hearted, simplistic platformers (like Q-Bert). The nature of the threat Ralph inadvertently unleashes serves as a rather wry (and alarming) symbol of the way shooters have effectively taken over the gaming world, overwhelming the more innocent games and all-too-often giving the medium a dark, monotonous feeling.

            Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with FPS’s, and the film doesn’t pretend it (Calhoun is one of the main heroes), but there’s definitely an expressed preference and fondness for the more old-school, good-hearted games embodied by Ralph and Felix. At the very least, the filmmakers seem to be making a plea for more balance and appreciation for the classic games.

            Video games are often a controversial subject. Those who don’t play them, or who play them casually tend to dismiss them as time-wasters; pointless exercises that kill the imagination and ruin health. Gamers, however, know that they can just as easily be lovable, moving, and soul-filled pieces of entertainment – and yes, even art. The medium is in its infancy, and can indeed by misused or abused into a kind of drug, but when you find the good ones, when you use them correctly, they can be windows into marvelous worlds with beautiful stories and beloved characters. Certain games, like certain books or certain films, seem to have ‘souls:’ gamers find themselves drawn to specific games and characters, whom they come to love and appreciate for their own sake; characters like Mario or Sonic aren’t beloved just because their games are good (Sonic hasn’t had a good game in years): they resonate with people beyond the question of game-play. Wreck-It Ralph is, in some ways, an attempt to demonstrate or celebrate this love and this ‘soulful quality’ that players find in certain games. For those who can’t see the appeal of video games, this movie provides a window into why people love them.  

             While I think this is one of the best films of the year, it is not without its flaws. In particular, the very problem that incites the plot, Ralph’s relationship with the Nicelanders, never gets a satisfactory payoff. There’s an allusion to a rapprochement and understanding, but there’s never a moment where either Ralph or the Nicelanders actually make amends or ask forgiveness for their actions.

            Another issue for me was the fact that, having built this incredible universe of multiple worlds and inventive conceits the film more-or-less confines itself to Sugar Rush for at least half its screen-time. I don’t begrudge the time we spent there, and it could be argued that the movie might otherwise have degenerated into a mere series of references and in-jokes, but it still a little disappointing.

            On the other hand, the movie never loses sight of the fact that these are video-game characters, and it keeps throwing clever game ‘tropes’ at us right up until the end (where, yes, we do get what is basically a classic ‘boss battle’).

            I went into Wreck-It Ralph with high expectations, and I’m pleased to say it pretty much met all of them. It’s hilarious, heartfelt, witty, intelligent, and the most fun I’ve had at the movies since at least The Avengers. Here was a world I was genuinely sorry to leave, characters I wanted to see again...in short, it is one of those rare films that left me wanting more. One of the best movies of the year.

Final Rating: 4.5/5. For video game fans, a must see. For everyone else, its humor, heart, and gorgeous animation make it highly recommended.

Reviews: Bioshock

                  Recently I played my way through Bioshock, a thoughtful, disturbing critique of Objectivism. Atmospheric, rich in detail, intelligent, and frightening, it’s a great example of the potential of video games to deal with dark, mature themes in an engaging and thought-provoking manner.

                  The story goes that the protagonist, Jack (no last name), is on an airliner that crashes somewhere in the Atlantic circa 1960, just outside the surface entrance to Rapture: an Objectivist Utopia built under the sea. Descending in a bathysphere, the player is treated to a short propaganda film (“Is man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”) and an awe-inspiring first look at the city under the sea, which consists of huge, water-tight art-deco skyscrapers connected by tunnels, looking as though New York or Los Angeles had been submerged so quickly that the neon lights still glow in the depths (among the many striking images of this scene is a huge whale gliding lazily amid the buildings).

                  Rapture, we learn, was the creation of a man called Andrew Ryan, who desired to create a haven for the intellectual and scientific elite of society, a place “where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small…” In short, a land of totally free industry, with no laws or Religion, only unbridled creativity. No gods, no kings, only Man.

Once inside the city, however, Jack and the player quickly learn that Rapture is no Utopia. Devoid of any restrictions, man’s baser nature rose to the surface with a vengeance, leading to the rampant drug abuse and nightmarish practices (the very first level deals with a surgeon who determined to push the boundaries of human beauty after the manner of what Picasso did with painting. And yes, that means exactly what you think it means).

                  See, the scientists of Rapture, freed from ‘petty morality,’ discovered the drug ADAM, which causes semi-controlled mutations. The trouble is that ADAM, together with its stabilizing supplement EVE, is highly addictive and mind-altering, resulting in alarming ‘Splicers’ roaming the derelict city in a paranoid frenzy, attacking anyone who crosses their paths. Andrew Ryan, the city’s administrator, refused to regulate the drug or do anything to stop its spread due to his belief in total autonomy and freedom of market.

                  So now Jack, guided by the friendly-sounding rebel leader Atlas via a two-way radio, has to make his way through the city to find a way out of there, or, failing that, a way to take down Ryan and his mad dream for good. Along the way, he has to splice himself with the ADAM, which is found in “Little Sisters:” little girls with ADAM producing sea-slugs growing inside them, who are in turn protected by the hulking “Big Daddies:” spliced giants in massive diving suits who have been conditioned to protect the Little Sisters (the Big Daddies are some of the game’s most impressive creations, and are fittingly its most famous element, featured prominently on the box-art). Here we have one of the primary elements of the game: the moral-choice system. In each case you can choose to rescue the Little Sister (by removing the slug and returning her to normal) or you can ‘harvest’ her by killing her and taking the slug. The latter grants you more ADAM, but the former…well, doesn’t involve butchering a helpless little girl. The game has two endings depending on which choice you make.

                  The above element may be of moral concern to some, understandably so. I believe, however, that the system is necessary for the story the game is telling. The question is “was Ryan right when he said that the only thing that matters to you is you? Will you do whatever you need to survive, or will you show compassion and humanity?” Most people, I think, tend to choose the latter option (in part because you receive more than enough ADAM to proceed either way, so the choice isn’t really that hard). Nevertheless, having the option to murder children, even if it is presented as wrong and evil, is a legitimate moral concern, and the player must decide for himself whether it would spoil the story for him.

                  On the whole, however, I think Bioshock is one of the more morally rich and worthwhile games on the market today. It’s a story of the dangers of pride and greed, of the horror that lurks in men’s hearts, and of the importance of kindness, family, free will, and (perhaps most importantly) altruism. In short, it’s an utter rejection of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, and that can only be a good thing.                  

                  Rapture, we learn, had problems even before ADAM and EVE. For one thing, with everyone set free from any obligations or regulations, maintenance problems quickly began to emerge…which no one wanted to fix. No one was willing to do the menial jobs like plumbing or janitorial work, since they were all supposed to be ‘society’s elite’ and so above such tasks, so the buildings are filthy. The tunnels leak, the bathrooms are frequently swimming, and whole sections of the city are flooded or in ruins.

                  Then there’s the fact that, once released from ‘petty morality’ the result isn’t brilliant strides in science and art, the result is a nightmarish hell-hole. Artists and scientists pursue their visions with a single-mindedness that leads them to sweep others unwillingly along with them, grinding up their fellow citizens in their own pursuit of happiness. They make some incredible discoveries, but then, rather than trying to find the best, safest, or most worthwhile use possible, they dump them on the market in the most petty, carnal, and unstable form.  

                  Indeed, the city was so heartless, so hostile to any kindness, generosity, or charity that the swelling underclass became willing to follow anyone who would show them any kindness at all. A man who expressed any altruism in Rapture, therefore, would have an army ripe for the taking…

                  At the entrance to Rapture is a banner proudly summarizing its philosophy: “No God, No Kings, Only Man.” Well, they got Man, alright, and it turns out that there’s a reason we have God and kings in the first place. As C.S. Lewis once noted, “all get what they want. They do not always like it.”

                  The problem is that an exultation of the Will above all else (“A man chooses, a slave obeys”) is a self-defeating philosophy, because the dominance of the Will always means, eventually, the subjugation of the Will; of someone else’s Will (this point is emphasized a number of times, most notably in the story’s key twist). Saying ‘Will is the supreme good’ means, in practical terms, ‘my Will is the supreme good,’ which is the same as saying ‘I get to do whatever I want.’ It’s the philosophy of the two-year-old in a clever sounding-package.

One of the most interesting details in the game is, typically, one that takes some thought to fully understand. In a world built around self-interest, where every carnal pleasure is encouraged and the needy are dismissed as ‘parasites,’ religion is obviously banned (one of the many ‘regulations’ that undermines Ryan’s broad claims of ‘liberty’). In one level, in which Jack explores a wharf, you find boxes of contraband: Bibles and crucifixes. As time goes on, you discover more and more; hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Often you discover an executed body marked ‘smuggler’ nearby.

Here the game acknowledges the fact that man is not naturally satisfied with himself: man needs God. The people of Rapture, cut off from God and kings and told to be free, freely decided that they would rather like to have God back, thank you very much. They wanted God so much that they were willing to risk Ryan’s wrath to have Him. They wanted Him so badly that thousands and thousands of Bibles and crucifixes were smuggled in, the warehouses on the wharf are chock full of contraband Bibles (interestingly enough, this is the only contraband we see). And these are just the ones that were discovered. The game shows an unusual grasp of human nature in this detail: wherever government has tried to quash religion, it has only flourished. The atheist, much as he may hate to admit it, is always the oddity. The people of Rapture, we see, were almost literally starving for God. Ryan’s perfect vision could not satisfy them.

Rapture’s motto, “No God, no Kings, only Man” is ironic in another way: what, exactly, does Ryan think kings are? Does he think they are some kind of separate species distinct from man? No, kings are nothing more than men, men who, if he were consistent, Ryan would more often than not respect by his own philosophy. Kings are men of strong will who create. There is no distinction between “Kings” and “Man,” as if one were contrary or outside the other. And while we’re on the subject, let’s not forget that God became a Man as well…

But Ryan isn’t consistent. He is stubborn, unrelenting in his ideals, but he is inconsistent. He praises liberty and free-will, yet more than once he murders people who do not conform to his will (including imposing the death penalty for smuggling and other offenses). He insists that he despises laws, yet bans religion, free-speech, and other such basic human rights.

The truth is that Ryan is everything he supposedly hates: he imposes his will upon others, constraining and depriving them of “the sweat of their brow” just as much or more so than any of those people he so despises. It might be that he was a man of ideals who utterly failed to live up to them when it came to the point, as so many of us do. Maybe. Or the truth may be that perhaps Ryan never actually believed in freedom or liberty or any high ideals like that, despite what he told himself. Maybe he chaffed at laws and regulations merely because they prevented his doing exactly what he wanted. Maybe he built Rapture, not as a place where anyone could be free, but where he specifically could be free to do as he liked. I rather suspect it’s the latter, but it’s clearly a point where there isn’t a solid, easy answer. All we can say is that Ryan’s mouth said one thing while his actions said another. At one point Ryan recounts the story of how he once bought a forest, only to have the state insist he allow the public to have access to it. In response, he burned it to the ground. All that matters to him is himself.

 Again, for such an imposing, dignified, sophisticated figure he bears a striking resemblance to a toddler.

He himself, at one point, seems aware of this contradiction. As he watches the utopia he created collapse into anarchy, he asks himself whether he might have been wrong, whether his ideals might be mistaken. The moment of grace is opened for merely a moment before he slams it shut again, declaring that “to question is to surrender. I will not question.” He so determined in his own will, his own chosen course, that he will not allow even the question of truth to interfere. He’d rather win than be right.

As you can probably tell from the fact that I just spent three paragraphs discussing him, Ryan is a fascinating and three-dimensional character; expertly written and wonderfully brought to life by voice-actor Armin Shimerman. If I had the time or inclination, I could probably write a whole essay just about this one character. He may be a heartless, monstrously self-centered hypocrite, but his personality is so forceful and his idealism so absolute that he becomes fascinating. Like a black hole, he’s empty and void, but he draws you in nonetheless. His final scene will probably go down in history as one of the most memorable and remarkable video-game villain show-downs of all time.

Other characters are not as fascinating as Ryan, but are at least well-written and engaging. There’s Atlas, your helpful guide, of whom I can’t say too much without giving away major plot points, but suffice to say he isn’t quite what he seems (there are a number of clever clues to his true nature throughout the proceedings). Dr. Bridgid Tenenbaum, a Holocaust survivor (she was spared because she collaborated with Dr. Mengele), who has since recovered her humanity and acts as the advocate for the Little Sisters. She’s interesting because she is aware of her own former evilness and doesn’t seem to want to escape herself, but only to help the innocent children, basically admitting that she doesn’t deserve or is now incapable of having a normal life. Frank Fontaine, Ryan’s arch-nemesis, who is a criminal mastermind who came to Rapture as a smuggler before deciding that a city that denied all moral and legal regulations would be a true utopia for an opportunistic mobster like himself. Yi Suchong, the brilliant-though-amoral geneticist who created the Big Daddies (and, in a richly deserved moment, discovered for himself just how effective they were). Finally, there’s Sander Cohen, an utterly insane ‘artist’ who does things like coating live people in plaster for statues, murdering his competitors, and rigging pianos to explode if the pianist fails to play his songs right. Almost all of these characters have a surprise or two up their sleeves and only a handful are ever encountered in person: most are met only through radio messages or audio-diaries that are found scattered throughout the levels. For the record, my favorite of the bunch is Dr. Suchong, just for the sheer vindictive pleasure I had in discovering how justice caught up with him.

There are a lot of bite-sized joys in the game: little details that bespeak the care and effort the developers put into it. The way the Big Daddies gently pick up the Little Sisters to put them into their sleeping tubes for a while; the delightfully-annoying vending machines that laugh mechanically when you access them; the incoherent muttering of the splicers before they attack; the way the Little Sisters refer to their Big Daddies as ‘Mr. Bubbles’ and delightfully cheer them on as they try to kill you; the fifties-style cartoons instructing you on how to use each new power. Then there is Rapture itself, which is a triumph of design. Art-deco towers rise out of the ocean floor, gleaming with neon and glowing spot lights, while inside there is nothing but filth and decay as far as the eye can see: rubble blocks doorways, water spills in and pools on the floor, oil puddles every few feet, and charred and disfigured corpses lie every few feet. Everywhere you go is the same sense of ruined opulence, with dim, flickering lights illuminating the plaster-covered corpses inhabiting a rich, beautiful theater, or spacious, sumptuous apartments cut in two by a cave-in from the floor above while the former inhabitants rot on their own dinner tables. The city itself is symbolic of its own history: from the outside, it is beautiful and awe inspiring. Inside, it is a nightmare. Rapture is a whitewashed tomb: inside is nothing but decay and filth.  

Bioshock is an excellent game, but it’s not perfect. For one thing, while I appreciate the vast scope and opportunity for exploration, it sometimes becomes all too easy to get lost and hunting through the dark, decaying rooms for the means to proceed can sometimes get oppressive or downright boring. Key information is often delivered via the audio-logs, which can sometimes be almost incomprehensible due to ambient noise, the sounds of combat, or simply the heavy accents of many of the characters, not to mention the fact that the diaries themselves are easy to miss. You can go back and listen to them again, but these can be tedious, especially since the map screen, where they’re found, is rather difficult to navigate properly. Switching between weapons and powers in the heat of battle can be frustrating, and one of the most annoying elements in the game is the need to manually switch between ammo types, meaning that it’s entirely possible to pull up a gun that is out of the selected ammunition, requiring you to switch to a different type while enemies tear into you with machine gun fire. Likewise, guns don’t automatically switch to the next ammo type when they run out of their present type, something that would have been greatly appreciated.

In general, though, Bioshock is a rich, disturbing, and ultimately rewarding experience. The game has a good story, which is told very well. It looks great, has incredible art direction, good writing, and tackles deep, important themes in a thoughtful, intelligent manner. It’s at times smart, scary, and beautiful, while remaining fun to play almost throughout.

Final rating: 4/5

                   Recommended to anyone who doesn’t mind the gruesome violence and profanity, despite some structural flaws.

Memorable Quotes:

Andrew Ryan: “In the end, what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No. A man chooses, and a slave obeys.”

Atlas: “Would you kindly?”

Frank Fontaine: “Life ain’t strictly business.”

Andrew Ryan: “What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks ‘what is my share?’ A man creates. A parasite says ‘what will the neighbors think?’ A man invents. A parasite says ‘watch out, or you’ll step on the toes of God.’”

Andrew Ryan: “There are two ways to deal with mystery: uncover it, or eliminate it.”

Andrew Ryan: “In the end, the only thing that matters to me, is me. And the only thing that matters to you, is you.”