Released on Disney+, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is the animated reboot of the live action
family movie of the same name; as well as based on the original 2007 book.
Being one of the shortest Disney Animated Features in the studio’s history,
it’s still a fun and endearing story about something that we can all relate to:
Entering Middle School. And being being centered around such an intense time in any kid’s life..
It’s a perfect story to explore morality in the context of childhood.
Today, we’re going to figure out who the best and worst characters are.
I’m Kyle with WickedBinge; and this is Diary of a Wimpy Kid Characters: Good to Evil.
Now, a quick note… This story focuses on the world through the lens of a kid just starting
his journey in middle school. So we aren’t dealing with the most extreme moral decisions.
Still, the stakes are high… I mean, the cheese threat is very real. But we’ll be
weighting our rankings contextually based on the fact that most of the characters are kids.
With that out of the way, as usual, we’ll be starting with the most good and noble
character and working our way down to the most evil. These characters are The Good.
Now, first up. It’s no surprise that the character who earns the Gold Medal of Good
is Rowley. Really, his character is about as good natured as you can get.
He’s pretty much a lovable dork who is completely comfortable with who he is.
He may go along with Greg’s plans to try to become popular and change himself
based on what other may think of him… but he’s clearly doing so to make his friend happy.
Really, if there is anything to criticize Rowley for is that he’s a pushover;
and that he should do more to stand up for himself when ordered around by Greg.
He doesn’t care if the things he likes seem childish; whether it’s the games he plays or
his Halloween costume. Honestly, the world would probably be a lot more pleasant if more people
were like Rowley - not so concerned about what others think, and also non-judgemental himself.
Rowley is idealistic and seems to respect what his parents say. I suppose he did sort of plagiarise
his friend’s comic phrase… but he didn’t seem to understand why that may be an issue,
so we can’t really hold that against him.
We are giving the Silver Medal of Good to Manny. At first, we wanted to avoid ranking him too high
just because it’s easy to rank any baby or toddler high just based on their innocence…
but c’mon… when he gave that full size candy bar to his kind of mean and neglectful older brother…
Nobody could deny this is a good kid.
Rounding out the good section, which is surprisingly short, are Frank and Susan
Hefley. Greg’s Parents. They aren’t the most in-depth characters on the
show… but they’re both pretty clearly good. They care about their family and
act as good parents. Specifically Susan, who makes it a point to take Greg aside and
explain to him how messed up it was to force his friend to lie about being hurt.
I suppose, the negatives for these two are Susan’s overbearing nature… she seems a bit too
overprotective… and Frank neuroticism. But both of them seem to have the best intentions.
With the good characters out of the way,
we now move into neutral territory… These characters fall into The Grey Area.
First up, we have Rodrick. We’re actually going to cut Greg’s older brother Rodrick some slack.
No, he doesn’t really seem like the nicest older brother,
but… that’s kind of common for older brothers. They like to mess with you.
And yes, he does try to scare Greg a bit about middle school…
practically talking about it like he’s preparing him for his first day in prison… but we feel his
intentions may not be the worst. He seems to really believe that the concerns he brings up
are valid. And although he talks poorly about Rowley… reinforcing the idea that he’s a baby.
One could argue he’s trying to protect his brother from being bullied… in his own warped sort of way.
Next, we have Fregley… This kid kind of represents the perfect grey area. A chaotic neutral. Nothing
he does is moral or immoral… He just exists in a state of constant weirdness. And that weirdness
doesn’t speak to his morality one way or another… Still, a very strange kid, to say the least.
Now, rounding out our Grey Area… we are placing Greg Heffley. And to be honest,
if he didn’t make the ultimate cheese sacrifice at the end of the movie,
Greg would have landed squarely in the Bad Section.
Greg is very narcissistic. He’s only concerned with his own status in
school and doesn’t seem to have an issue throwing his own friend under the bus
if it will result in him getting ahead. It’s actually very off putting.
Even in the intro of the movie, he talks about his friend as if Rowly is beneath him…
and he only hangs around with him in the meantime until he’s famous one day. Not
a good way to talk about your friends. He’s definitely a user in that regard.
Greg is also clearly very insecure,
and those insecurities seem to drive many of his immoral decisions.
After coming up with the candy trick-or-treating scam,
he pushes his friend who is scared to go through Snake Road…
He also scoffs at the idea Rowley has to join school clubs to make friends,
and instead says he needs to come up with a plan to get what he wants quickly.
So he demonstrates quite a bit of laziness.
His worst action is hurting his friend physically accidentally…
and then pressuring him to lie about it to cover it up. Then when he gets a cast,
he actually credits himself as the reason everyone starts to like Rowley after signing his cast. This
is actually pretty deep narcissistic behavior that would actually be pretty concerning in real life.
But, we’ll credit Greg for coming around in the end… He sacrifices himself, so to speak,
by taking the blame for the cheese biting… Which is quite the heroic act
in the context of this story. So it’s nice to see the two friends come together again…
Is Greg totally redeemed? Probably not. It seems like his behavior will continue at least a bit…
but at least he improved himself enough in the end to get out of the Bad section.
And finally, we reach the dark side. These characters are The Bad and Evil.
First up, we have The Librarian. We actually don’t see this character
in the movie… but we have to add them to the bad section.
Taking Greg’s comic and censoring it by changing all of the words before publishing it
without his knowledge was pretty terrible.
Especially since what it was changed to got him bullied and ridiculed. Not cool.
Our Silver Medal of Evil goes to The Bully. Not the most screen time, but also worth noting.
Sure Greg may have accidentally bumped into him with his lunch tray in the cafeteria…
but that didn’t warrant this giant kid clocking him in the face for it.
And finally, we have to give our Gold Medal of Evil to The Teenagers. In all seriousness,
these are probably the most cliche kid movie villains… straight out of
the 80’s bully movie trope… But these kids are pretty psychotic.
These kids are in high school, old enough to drive,
and they’re out harassing 10 year olds by chasing them around with their truck. That’s
pretty deranged. Then to show up at their middle school and physically
assault them… Well, they should probably be locked up in Juvie or something for this.
But what do you think? Did you like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid animated reboot?
And who do you think was the best and worst character? Let us know.
Don’t forget to hit that notification bell, and most importantly, stay wicked!