"Pixar's new film, "Wall-E," is not only strikingly original, but dare I say it, artistically daring--and yet here it is, in the middle of a sequel-laden summer, earning rave reviews and making $62.5 million in its opening weekend, the third best Pixar opening ever. The critics have been rapturous. (See here and here and here.) In fact, for all the talk that critics are out of touch with mainstream moviegoers, critics and audiences are in agreement on one key thing: Nobody makes better movies than Pixar." - Full article here.Ain't that the truth.
John Lasseter
Academy Award - Special Achievement
(1st Feature Length Computer Animation): Toy Story, 1996
Golden Globe - Best Picture, Musical/Comedy: Toy Story 2, 2000
Golden Globe - Best Animated Feature: Cars, 2007
Andrew Stanton
Academy Award - Best Animated Feature: Finding Nemo, 2004
Director of WALL-E, In Theaters Now!
Brad Bird
Academy Award - Best Animated Feature: The Incredibles, 2004
Academy Award - Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille, 2008
Sean, Graeme -- You're the toughest critics I know, I'd love to hear what you thought about WALL-E.
2 comments:
yeah! thats awsome!! i like it!
berto xxx
I think WALL-E, the central story of two little robots is one of the greatest things I've ever seen. They struggle to learn about each other and to cope with their differences in language (and programming / technology). This alone would have made for an interesting story, but the added struggle between their AI "directives" and their developing scale of emotions pushed this movie from a sweet little story into the realm of glorious classical science-fiction.
Lest we forget, science-fiction's purpose is to reflect on the present: sci-fi stories show a possible future and force the audience to connect the dots between now and the potential then. There's something to be said for the idea of space as the final frontier leading to movies about space travelers Going Boldly Where No Man Has Gone Before, in search of truth, etcetera etcetera, and this adventurous theme goes hand-in-hand with stories about space travel, but herein lies the point of the SCIENCE in science-fiction - in its purist form, these stories are most compelling because they adhere to rules of science and logic.
This isn't pure fantasy; this is Something That Might Actually Happen territory. The opening sequence of an idyllic, early-sixties Broadway showtune playing against a dusty brown backdrop of an apparently post-apocalyptic Earth is a bit of a cliche, but it's no less genius for it. The audience hears the song first and associates it with their own past: those innocent souls have no idea what the future had to bring. But now the lifeless cities covered with trash appear onscreen, and the audience realizes that they know as little about their future as the cast of Hello, Dolly! did about theirs. Bits of familiar landscape and pieces of familiar logos and corporate icons fill the screen and evoke a weird nostalgia for things that haven't disappeared yet.
The things that remain are meaningful, too. Our hero is a mobile, self-sufficient, almost-sentient garbage disposal who has constructed nearly a millennium's worth of trash-cube pyramids. Possibly this purgatory proved too much for WALL-E's coworkers, and so he roams the Earth alone except for his endearing twinkie-eating pet cockroach (another stroke of Pixar genius), collecting little bits of humanity and spare parts along the way. Eventually WALL-E finds a spark of green life that has survived somehow - in an apparently sealed, out-of-commission refrigerator that's protected it from the occasional wind-storms.
I'm at odds about this plot point here - Pixar doesn't explain HOW the plant has survived, and I suppose this is fine for the goals of the movie, and certainly better than the George Lucas School Of Spend Half An Hour Of Ridiculous And Unbelievable Exposition To Explain It, but my inner geek was just a little irked about it. Possibly WALL-E was just excited, and his superheated laser dissection of the fridge door was unnecessary, and that the plant had somehow received enough sunlight, carbon-dioxide, and water to survive, not to mention to germinate in the first place. But Pixar is the undisputed champion (in my humble opinion) in attention to detail, and if anybody disputes this, I challenge them to doubt me after they've seen the insides of WALL-E's truck homestead. Again, this is a minor gripe, and it's only relevant as an issue when stacked up against the Humans Returning To Earth plotline.
As I said before, the story of WALL-E and EVE (brownie points for the post-apocalyptic-meets-rebuilding-society-while-referencing-Genesis idea in my brilliant geeky moments catalog) is perfect. Of course EVE has to return to home base once her DIRECTIVES take over, and Pixar's handling of all of the implications of this is pitch-perfect. I love the struggle between the AutoPilot and the little nazi alert robot crony and WALL-E's band of retarded/rejected/rogue robots - the scenes involving these malfunctioning beauties had me laughing harder than I think I've ever laughed at any movie, and they have plotwise and thematic relevance to boot, I.E. a band of robots uniting behind a more human cause and rebelling against their draconian DIRECTIVES.
But the humans. I'm still not sure how I feel about the decisions around how to portray humanity. I felt that far too much time had elapsed before the revelation that 700 years had elapsed since Earth was evacuated. It wasn't until this point that I felt remotely comfortable accepting the hover-chair bound goliaths flying blithely around the cruisespaceship. I'm glad that Pixar kept this plot as secondary and merely adjunct to WALL-E's struggles, but I still feel that they should have spent a bit more time with it - I suppose the swift apparition of an entire fleet of hovering fatties was better than a more melodramatic, slowly deliberate THE HORROR approach that any other movie might have taken before showing what the humans had become, but I can also understand this approach. It IS horrifying, and more than a bit of a slap in the face of Americans (corporate superstores and megaconglomorate oil companies notwithstanding), and I feel that Pixar could have been a tiny bit more apologetic about it.
Their overall message was that humans had it in them all along, that they can defy their own directives and proclivities towards sloth and gluttony, but the end result that Pixar shows is frankly unbelievable. The movie later suggests the extent to which humanity has been enslaved by computer screens and all-too-willing robotic assistants, but I just didn't buy the portrayal of humans in this movie. Period. The audience is obviously supposed to see the state of humans as a travesty, but who is supposed to be responsible? Are we honestly supposed to believe it was these same people? Or perhaps the sins of their fathers? The movie hints that it was inherent in the programming of the people at BnL industries, with their instruction manual, their meals-in-a-cup, and their sense-enveloping computer/hoverchair system. But even these cloistered humans can see one-another in their video-chat pictures, and humans are vain. I simply wasn't convinced that such a brilliant, creative, and inventive race could be reduced to the point where these inventions got the best of them - their food is all synthesized now, and I'm unconvinced that a simple singular evil corporation would create such a streamlined food system that provided anything more than what was necessary to live comfortably.
The pictures of the ship's past captains shows the slow evolution of increasing body fat in the average human. Again, I don't buy it. I can understand that these people don't get out much, but unless all science was brought to a screeching halt within the first couple of generations (which it apparently had), most of this could not have come to pass. Somebody would have stepped up by now. I know the idea that more flies are caught with honey, but somebody would have seen through this life. Humans are like that. They rebel, as these robots rebel, and their ideology spreads. Pixar certainly believes this - consider how quickly the captain came around. He apparently required reeducation in every conceivable area, lacking the definitions of things as basic as the sea and even the Earth. Again none of this is movie-breaking material, it's just the accumulated effect of it all. The two or three humans WALL-E bumps into seem to come out of devastating trances, constantly exposing how very ignorant they are ("They have a POOL here?), but also how enthusiastic. And here is the most grating part about this: humans are so well-contained and distracted that they've forgotten some of the most basic elements of what it means to be human, but the evil Orwellian computer AI system is so lapse that simply getting knocked out of their chairs is enough to give anybody an epiphany about the state of their lives. And the system is hardly perfect - look at all of the malfunctioning and rogue robots, not to mention the relative ease with which WALL-E charms EVE the most advanced search-and-recover robot, replete with the power of flight and a death-ray, the embodiment of a Steve Jobs wet dream. Not that we blame her - WALL-E's had plenty of time to evolve into his charming personality.
But, and this bears repeating, the humans. They've been content to waste away in their tightly scheduled existences (where they do nothing), but suddenly they all see the light, and all at once! The captain's got it covered, he's read the definitions of irrigation and farming, and he clearly can understand the techniques behind them! I understand the plot requirement of getting WALL-E back to Earth as soon as possible, but this newly-freed humanity is NOT ready to deal with Earth in its current state. A single plant is certainly promising for earth, but simply jumping to insta-hyper-space speed and landing on Earth seems DANGEROUSLY optimistic. The audience knows that a little plant and a cockroach have been able to make a living on Earth, but what about the people on the ship? Other than the huge dust storms and the habitual cloud cover, there are plenty of potential dangers this new Earth might have in store - poisonous air, a lack of oxygen, or simply an inability to sustain edible crops in a volume suitable to the population of this space station. And furthermore, WHAT do these people think they can accomplish in their state? Just wake up one day with zero knowledge or skill, and suddenly become self-sufficient farmers on a POSSIBLY arable desert planet? And everybody's so enthusiastic about it! Not a single skeptical voice. I suppose this is meant to show how humans are childishly optimistic at heart, but SOMEBODY should have been responsible enough to suggest that perhaps they spend a few weeks putting those tele-screens to work by educating the masses about basic ecology, and that's just for a start. Pixar could have used established science-fiction concepts about space travel, such as the fact that a ship that's been away from earth for 700 years might be kinda far away by now, but instead the captain presses the magic insta-teleport button and BAM, humanity's back on Earth ... to ostensibly recreate a farming civilization and lose a lot of weight, if the credit animations (which looked great, by the way) are any indication. Humans are adaptable, but holy hell. I think a good arbitrary time limit would have been good. It's as easy as LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN. I'VE INPUT PARAMETERS THAT PUT THIS SHIP ON A PATH BACK TO EARTH. TRAVELLING AT OUR TOP FASTER-THAN-LIGHT SPEEDS, THIS BABY WILL HAVE US BACK ON SOLID GROUND IN TWO YEARS! I KNOW IT'S BEEN A WHILE, WE'RE ALL NEW AT THIS, AND THAT WE'VE GOT A LOT OF WORK TO DO! SO LET'S GET TO WORK BY LEARNING AS MUCH ABOUT EARTH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE! WITH YOUR HELP, I KNOW WE CAN BLAH BLAH BLAH I AM MAKING AN INSPIRATIONAL SPEECH.
As for WALL-E and EVE, they could use the much speedier jettisoned life-pod (speedier, of course, for scientific reasons that could be explained at the discretion of the Story Consistency division of Pixar, even though I'd argue that they were a little off their game for this particular plotline) of the same kind they used earlier in the film, in order to get WALL-E his necessary components earlier, yadda yadda yadda. If THAT'S a stretch, they could simply have put WALL-E on cryostasis or some shit, which would have allowed EVE to worry and have the same experience as WALL-E did back on Earth when EVE went into I HAS A PLANT hibernation mode.
So there are my gripes, which I see as minor, especially because they all concern the sub-plot of the humans. A little too fat, a little too easy to circumvent the demonic AI's best laid plans, and a little too overeager to GET FARMIN, Y'ALL!
Honestly, I think it could have been a better movie with just an abandoned spaceship full of long-dormant security bots and an increasingly-obsessed-with-finding-plants-step-two-?-step-three-PROFIT megalomaniac type AutoPilot. And the malfunctioning robots. As far as I was concerned, a little more THE HUMANS ARE DEAD might have brought this film an extra level of bittersweet deliciousness - possibly our (in this situation) unseen progeny might eventually return to Earth, but as far as the audience knows, WALL-E and EVE the only lovers left in the universe.
As it is, however, WALL-E is still nothing short of wonderful. I only put this much effort into thinking about the things I truly enjoy and care about, and if I can write a mountain of words over this molehill list of minor grievances, that just goes to show how much I really like it after all.
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