*** Official WALL-E Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[JonZ]

"I like how Pixar is starting to make a lot of their scenes look like they were shot with an actual camera, with shifting focus points, shaky cameras, etc, rather than the perfectly smooth look you see in computer animated films from other producers."


One shot that really stood out for me was the shopping cart scene. This can be seen at the end of the full trailer. The lighting, the zoom in on Wall*E and his movements, EVE passing by out of focus.... I was really in awe of it.

 

[DaveF]

Buy N Large brands direction North
"By associating a direction with our trusted value brand, BnL will now usher in a new era of directional marketing...Now we can assure our customers that by taking a northerly direction they can expect the values and services that only BnL can provide."

 

[CptGreedle]

i think that the other ships are still out there, but that the Flagship, being the Axiom, is in charge of the "EVE" robots and the Earth mission. In other words, if they go back and find that Earth is good to return, then they will send word to the other ships.
That was my impression at least.

I really loved this movie though, saw it twice! The one issue I have is that the second time I saw it was on a digital projector, and it was a mess! I am not sure if it was the screen or the optics or what... but there were large bands, almost like dirt or support beams sticking out from behind the screen, across the entire image through the whole film. I am just glad that it was my second time and not my first. That would have ruined it for me.

What an AWESOME movie, can't wait to get it on Blu-ray

 

[Stephen_L]

Just wanted to chime in on the discussion on the film's themes. Though the subtext and setting of the film represent a criticism of commercialism, and waste they don't seem to be the dominant theme to me. The theme seems to be, "Wake up! Break out of your lock step routine and begin living!" WallE escapes his repetitive rut by finding love. EVE discards her obsession to follow her directive for the love of WallE. The Axiom's captain does it using the computer to discover and wonder at the Earth left behind. The couple on the Lido deck get jostled out of their cyber world and begin experiencing life first person (looking out the view port, playing in the pool, talking and touching hands) The repair ward robots become heroes by discarding their original jobs and running free. The villain of the piece, the Axiom computer resists change, wants to maintain the status quo.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Just to throw some wood on the fire. When the robots on the Axiom are taking EVE to the bridge, there is a shot of WALL*E hovering over EVE exactly like a man escorting his pregnant wife into the delivery room. Her name is EVE. The plant is in her belly. They chase after it like parents for much of the film. There is quite a bit of imagery related to expectant parents. It's all visual, but it's there. And it's there from the moment EVE takes the plant into her belly. Didn't notice that on the first viewing.

And the two humans: John and Mary

 

[BrettB]

WALL-E is kicking my ass. I got the soundtrack today and my movie cash or whatever it's called for another viewing. I'm trying to remain calm but my love for this movie is getting a little out of control.

 

[JonZ]

I saw this again.

I went planning to see Hulk, but at the last minute decided to see this instead.

Enjoyed it even more the second time.

 

[Kachi Khatri]

I feel the message this movie propels is about technology and how reclusive we're becoming when our music gizmos, mobile phones, gaming consoles, and computers are begging for our attention more than a simple conversation with a person around you or a stranger at your local convenient store.

Can you 'really' see a beautiful baby through a 50" Hi-Def display? Or, better yet, can you touch and feel it?

Visualizing and experiencing are two different things...the big point that this movie seems to convey is after Wall-E starts 'waking up' people. People have become so disconnected from society is the message I see.

The mass consumerism is just a satire played for laughs and to create a backdrop to fuel the love-story. The enviro-friendly theme is there but takes a backseat.

 

[derek]

Review/comments:

Magnificent. Pixar hits another out of the ballpark and Andrew Stanton and crew deserve a Best Picture nod. The film is just mesmorizing and you can't wait to see what adventure WallE stumbles onto next. While much has been made of the eco-future/consumerism subtext and such I just found it part of progressing the story and didn't get hung up on it. Yes there are a few great messages to be found about humanity's consumerism and the social disconnects of our current/future world but the main driver is the love story. And boy it is heartfelt and tugs at the soul. They say you can't put love into words...but with an amazing story, a few beeps and some incredible animations Pixar succeeded mightily well without them.

btw my kids all liked it but this film is more adult oriented vs Monsters/Nemo/Incredibles. I don't see it quite as marketable or memorable to the happy meal age group but glad Pixar stuck to their creative guns and it deserves all the accolades it gets. '2001' quesioned our origins/future. 'Blade Runner' asked us if androids dream. And now 'Wall-E' postulates the question of love. I have no problem seeing those scifi classics side-by-side.

 

[Chris Atkins]

I disagree with this. As I said in my review, I think the film is very much telling 2 stories: one about two robots falling in love, and the other about humans turning their back on consumerism and falling back in love with the earth. I think this is proven by the last 2 shots of the film (with romantic music accompanying): Wall-E and Eve and then the earth itself.

 

[Quentin]

I thought this was a pretty amazing film. I can't begin to imagine how much Chaplin and Keaton these guys watched before making this. The first half is an amazing achievement - a modern-day silent film, in animation, that held the rapt attention of myself as well as my 7 and 5 year-olds the entire time. Beautiful work.

That said, the second half of this film has two MAJOR problems for me:

1) For a film that succeeds as, essentially, a silent film for the first half why does there have to be so much verbal exposition in the second half? There is simply too much talking in the second half. And, a lot of the information they get out with the exposition has already been made pretty clear...so, it is exposition for the 'cheap seats'. Too bad for such a smart film to fall to that.

2) The second half of this film cheats like crazy. Rules are broken, forgotten, and discarded with nary a thought. It is utterly annoying.

First, the captain can't seem to read the cover of his "Operation: Repopulation" manual. Why not? The babies are being taught to read, there are signs everywhere, and he can clearly read the rest of the manual. Whoops.

Speaking of Operation:Repopulation...this is a plan to return to Earth and repopulate once life was once again able to thrive there. So, why cancel the plan because life has become too toxic? Isn't that the very reason for the plan? It's totally contradictive.

And, if you DID cancel the plan (for no good reason) then why would you send probes out at all? Just don't build or send them. It's over. No plan. Done.

And, if you did bother sending out probes, why does Autopilot bother telling the captain at all? Why not just destroy the plant and be done with it? In fact, if you have a robot on the transport ship STEALING the plant out of EVE's guts, why not destroy it then? Because...no story. That's just bad writing.

Speaking of the probes, why so many? Earth isn't THAT big. And, why retrieve negative probes at all? If they don't find anything...let them keep looking.

I dunno...it just bugs me that such a well thought out, wonderfully detailed film would suddenly get a case of the stupids. It's still a good film, but those faults keep it from being classic.

 

[DaveF]

I'd even rate Kung Fu Panda above Wall-E for Best Animated Feature, as it's more fun, start to stop.

 

[DavidPla]

But Wall-E reaches for something far grander than just another typical animated movie. And it reaches it. Kung Fu Panda is a fun, good movie.. Wall-E is a great, dare I say CLASSIC movie.

 

[DaveF]

That's what I don't get. I don't see how it achieves its reach -- not in a "best movie" sense.

 

[DavidPla]

It's just not your thing.. that's cool. It's just the way many people feel about it. I'm sure you have some "best movies" that other people don't get either.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Best film of 2008 so far. I don't anticipate any other movie topping it. I was never a big fan of Finding Nemo -- The Incredibles was my favorite Pixar film before this one -- but Stanton got me hook line and sinker here.
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Originally Posted by Southpaw
I agree Edwin. The montage of the captains sold it for me as it plainly showed the human race went from "Fred Willard lookalikes" to the more cartoony look of the current passengers and captain.
I thought it was brilliant.




What I loved was the way the end credits were employed. The movie ended where it was supposed to, with WALL-E and EVE united at last. It was their story, so that's where it had to end. But being humans ourselves, the movie knew we'd want to know what happened to our successors. Watching each successive generation of humans rely less and less on technology and get skinnier and taller again until that last shot of the normal shaped boy fishing on the green debris free earth was one of the most moving sequences I've ever seen. I can't imagine not watching the credits of WALL-E on future viewings.
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Originally Posted by Film Syncs
Just one thing, aren't there people of color in the future? Maybe I just missed them, but it just seemed like a bunch of tubby white folks.




The last shot of a human in the film, the painting of the normal shaped boy fishing, is a black kid. There were also other races scattered throughout the crowd scenes.
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Originally Posted by Stephen_J_H
20 years from now, Wall-E will take its rightful place as a brilliant dystopic satire of the future alongside 1984 and Brazil. Some have compared this to Logan's Run, but it actually satirizes that vision of the future and presents a more realistic vision.




I think it's more powerful than most dystopic visions because it factors in the very human ability to adapt and change. This was best captured in the captain, a fat slob with a third-grade reading level, whose curiosity is awakened for the first time by the disruption of EVE and WALL-E.
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People becoming obese and losing all sense of physical and emotional contact? That's happening already. The same with all food being ingested in liquid form.




One of my favorite scenes in The Last Mimzy was a shot of the boy protagonist on a city bus and every single person is plugged into an iPod, a video game, or a Blackberry. A congregation of people and nobody sees one another. I consciously avoid that temptation and still feel like I spend my days going from incadescent-lit room to flourescent-lit room and back. I look at the kids who still bike and watch to the ice cream stand in my town, and they're never obese — even the chunky kids who obviously have the genetic disposition for it.
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The scathing indictment of our consumer culture is particularly damning, because it doesn't restrict itself to environmental concerns. It goes to the heart of our disposable society and our willingness to submit to corporate dominance. Anyone who didn't equate BnL with Wal*Mart and other monopolists needs to remove his head from his rectum.




I would argue that it's not even corporate dominance. I would argue that it's an indictment of our coddled, liability-prone culture. The movie's about doing for yourself again, taking risks and making the wild leaps. The captain said it all when he said, "I don't want to subsist[sic?] I want to live!" We take all the danger out of life, and nobody gets hurt but nobody learns anything either.
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My only quibble is this: we never see what happened to the animals and if those who orchestrated the evacuation took any steps to ensure the restoration of the various animal species.




Considering that the current generation of babies were all created and grown in a test tube, my guess is that they took DNA samples of all the plants and animals for repopulation at some future date. Then again, seeing as how Buy 'N Large hardly seems like the most forward looking company, it wouldn't surprise me if they let them all die, either.
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Originally Posted by Richard Kim
I saw WALL-E over the weekend, and I loved it. It's the best picture of 08 so far. I do have one problem with it:

If Earth is uninhabitable, why not settle on another planet? Since humans in the film are capable of traveling through hyperspace and seemingly beyond the galaxy, they should also be capable of finding another life sustaining planet, instead of just becoming morbidly obese on a space station. Hell, they could even try settling on Mars, maybe terraforming it.




I think they didn't try to resettle because it simply would have taken too much effort. They had an automated plan in place for restoring Earth. Terraforming and settling another planet would have actually required ingenuity and effort. Remember, this is a civilization that hasn't invented anything new for approximately 700 years.
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Originally Posted by Chris Will
I swear that in the commercial for BnL in in the beginning of the film should more then ship taking off with the Axiom being the biggest and most luxurious. Because of that commercial I was wandering what happened to the other ships.




My guess is that only the richest got a golden parachute out of earth's mess. The rest of the population was left behind to starve or die of old age.
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The movie never states that buying things or large corp. are bad and it never states that we should stop throwing things away or we will destroy the planet. In fact, if anything, it states the opposite because the humans came back home and rebuilt there lives on Earth so, the planet obviously wasn't destroyed by all the trash.




I would argue that the movie does say that Buy 'N Large specifically is bad, but mainly because people like Fred Willard's character run it. It's a satire of the mega-stores, so it's going to be a bit vicious. I like to think of Willard's attitude as being a more G-rated slam at Eisner's tenure atop Disney: patronize and aim for the lowest common denominator.
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I going to have to go with what the director says, which is that there was no intended environmental message. It was just used as a back drop to isolate Wall-E and give him a reason to go on his adventure. Yes, there subtle hints and things the movie pokes fun at but, I don't think the movie sets out to preach a message about corporations or the environment.




I agree. The environment is a mess because of the mindset of the culture presented. The quality of earth is a direct reflection of humanity's investment in itself. The earth that WALL-E travels through is the vision of humanity at rock bottom. Earth is restored because the humans invest in the elbow grease to bring it back from the brink. They had become so disconnected from the place they were living that they allowed it to become unlivable. I'd like to think that if we ever hit critical mass, public opinion would push back. The culture here had essentially forfetted its right to public opinion.
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Originally Posted by DaveF
As for what awoke Wall-E: the princess kiss is the best explanation . Earlier in the movie Eve touched heads with Wall-E, sending a spark and jolting him. I don't think the spark was shown when he awoke, but the physical situation was repeated. And of course, she held his hand.

But it doesn't matter. We knew he would wake up. He had to. He did.




I agree. It's the scene in the flower shop at the end of City Lights in reverse. WALL-E was blind. But with that intimate touch, he could see again.
As for a non-thematic answer, it's possible that the circuit board was WALL-E's memory. He operated for the first minute or so on the default instructions preloaded into memory. Once those cycles had run through, he tapped back into his main system and was loaded with a fresh set of instructions from the OS that had become idiosycratic over the centuries.
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Originally Posted by Chris Atkins
I disagree with this. As I said in my review, I think the film is very much telling 2 stories: one about two robots falling in love, and the other about humans turning their back on consumerism and falling back in love with the earth. I think this is proven by the last 2 shots of the film (with romantic music accompanying): Wall-E and Eve and then the earth itself.




I think the movie is about one story: connection. WALL-E and even are one example, John and Mary are another, and humanity and earth on a macro level is another. A physical touch jumpstarted each:
WALL-E and Eve's paws, John and Mary's fingers, and the captain's handful of earth from WALL-E's shell.
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Originally Posted by Quentin
I thought this was a pretty amazing film. I can't begin to imagine how much Chaplin and Keaton these guys watched before making this. The first half is an amazing achievement - a modern-day silent film, in animation, that held the rapt attention of myself as well as my 7 and 5 year-olds the entire time. Beautiful work.




I saw the movie at 7:40 at night in an 4k digital theater. Not only was the picture quality unlike anything I've ever seen, but the scores of children in the theater were quiet with the exception of a few enthusiastic outbursts the whole way through. Having watched a good deal of silent film over the course of the spring, I was stunned to see how many of those old beats and conventions could still be so effective today. WALL-E was very Chaplin-esque, but the dark humor and "stunt work" was straight out of l'oeuvre keatonnienne.
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First, the captain can't seem to read the cover of his "Operation: Repopulation" manual. Why not? The babies are being taught to read, there are signs everywhere, and he can clearly read the rest of the manual. Whoops.




He can read it, but read it poorly. Everyone seems to have a roughly third-grade reading level. Enough to manipulate their technological babysitters, but no more. Between first being handed the manual and actually using the manual at the climax, he'd spent countless hours learning about earth. One of the things he probably learned about was books.
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Speaking of Operation:Repopulation...this is a plan to return to Earth and repopulate once life was once again able to thrive there. So, why cancel the plan because life has become too toxic? Isn't that the very reason for the plan? It's totally contradictive.




It got too behind schedule for Buy 'N Large's instant gratification mentality. Fred Willard's CEO couldn't conceive past five years, much less 700 years in the future. Things were also probably far worse when the gas mask footage was shot. The world may still be a shit heap in WALL-E's time, but it had come back from the bring enough to again sustain life.
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And, if you DID cancel the plan (for no good reason) then why would you send probes out at all? Just don't build or send them. It's over. No plan. Done.




The cancellation was an override order. There was no one will sufficient ingenuity to change anything else but the return order. The probes were a carefully designed exercise in futility.
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And, if you did bother sending out probes, why does Autopilot bother telling the captain at all? Why not just destroy the plant and be done with it? In fact, if you have a robot on the transport ship STEALING the plant out of EVE's guts, why not destroy it then? Because...no story. That's just bad writing.




Why destroy the plant if it's not in conflict with A113? He only sought to destroy the plant once it became a threat. Previously, AUTO had throught he'd nuetralized the problem by stealing the plant. AUTO might be dangerous, but he is first and foremost a caretaker, after all. Killing wouldn't be his first instinct.
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Speaking of the probes, why so many? Earth isn't THAT big. And, why retrieve negative probes at all? If they don't find anything...let them keep looking.




Earth actually is that big. 316,958,741 square miles. That's alot of ground to cover for such a little probe. And perhaps the negative probes need to be cleaned or recharged periodically.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I am in complete agreement, Adam. The credits really bring closure to the story. In addition to your comments, I would also observe that one of the biggest changes depicted in the credits is the transformation from dependancy (aboard the Axiom) to symbiosis (during the scenes depicting the reclamation of the Earth) between mankind and the robots.

I also loved the tree roots being sourced by the shoe in the final graphic.

Viewed the second time this weekend with a friend, and it really held up for me. Right at the top of my films for 2008.

- Walter.

 

[Chris Will]

I have a little problem with people calling the first part of the movie a silent film because, even though there is little to no dialog, there is nothing silent about it. It keeps people engaged because of the wonderful use of sound design. There is sound every where in the beginning of the film. Wall-E himself is hardly silent for long, he's always making noises and beeps plus there are the Hello, Dolly clips (not to mention the score). Modern day silent film this is not IMO.

If any film qualifies as a modern day silent film it would be Cast Away. There is less going on sound wise for most of the film (no spaceships landing and taking off, etc.) and it also has no score for a good portion.

I don't think general audiences would sit through a silent film, or even mostly silent film these days (especially young kids). Calling Wall-E a silent film is doing a disservice to the great sound design of the film. It's the sounds in the beginning (with the visuals) that keeps everyone so engaged IMO.




Speaking of the Hello, Dolly VHS... I wonder why they chose VHS instead of DVD, which would connect better with today's audiences (I bet some young kids these days have never seen a VHS tape).

 

[ErikP]

I took the VHS nod as a reference to our throw away society once again. A new technology came in (DVD) and we're quick to trash the old one.

Great film.

 

[Van594]

Kachi , I totally agree with you on this. Yes to others who say the love story was one of top points but what is love ...interaction between two or more people or robots. What I saw besides the the overly obvious points about the consumer and enviro-friendly messages was a warning message about becoming a watcher and not a doer.

Everyone of those people had screens in front of their faces while the real world passed by. What they were looking at was the future version of the internet...nothing more, nothing less.

The movie was just as much a warning to us to get off our butts and go get a life. Our children are the first since birth all internet kids and frankly it's looking not so pretty. I can remember playing baseball down the street with the neighborhood kids...now they get on the internet or text about doing it instead...or doing anything. Hell we can't even land a man on the moon anymore. Society is treading water in many ways...well except for advances in weapons, we always seem to be good at that. All those fat people let the cyber world carry them along until it got to the point where they didn't know any better. A pool that no one even realizes is there? To me that was the scairest message in the movie..that we just stop doing.

Anyways, great movie.