*** Official WALL-E Discussion Thread - Page 2

Re: *** Official WALL-E Discussion Thread

Dave, I didn't see that message at all. The message I saw, over and over, was the importance of being connected and being engaged. That's all. You have to read into actions pretty hard to see a message about not buying stuff.

I believe that your critique, shared by a writer at CHUD, is absurd on it's face. The greatest failing is that it equates the Disney studio with the talent. As if Disney has a giant machine and spun this story just to sell stuff. But Disney didn't. The storytellers at Pixar did, and they used the resources provided by the corporation to tell their story. Artist and patron. Don't confuse the two. If Stanton were the CEO of Disney, then your criticism would find richer soil. But he's not.

And interestingly enough, while Disney as the evil corporation is fun...they really aren't. They are pretty progressive for a huge company.

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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.

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The government has become a corporation with the the name Buy-n-Large and you didn't see a message there?

I know I'm skipping a lot of the conversation, but while I don't think it was the primary message, I think it was definitely lurking in there.

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I saw the subtext, but there isn't a message pertaining to it. It's not directed as a good or a bad thing in the context of the film.

I could argue the message of The Matrix was that we should stop advancing AI based on that film's set-up and world using the same metric as basic visual information = a message.

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I don't know what you guys are going on about. It's just a love story.

I give it a 9.5/10. I loved it. And I've got some movie cash to see it again coming from Best Buy with the purchase of the soundtrack.

The first half or so on Earth is as good as it gets afaic. I almost wish they could have constructed the story so that the entire film is WALL-E & Eve on Earth. That might be going too far.

The distance between myself and the global warming gloom & doomers is nearly incaluable and I have no problems with any message(s) in the film. One message I got from the film is that humanity is capable greatness and can accomplish anything when we put our minds to it. Why did they not go colonize another planet? Because it says more to come home and adapt and fix Earth.

Another thing is that while some sci-fi paints either humanity or tech. as the baddie I think this film loves both.

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The mounds of trash were higher than the skyscapers. Eventually, they had to leave earth because of the build-up of all the trash. I've got to believe that was a negative message.


I agree with you, I think the story is mostly a love story. The sci-fi and environment aspects are secondary.

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I forget off hand. But, was the Axiom the only ship with people that left Earth?

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Referencing from a post made in the review thread.


Can't comment on this but I'd like to.


I haven't seen anyone here blaming the alleged problem only on America.


There have been wars that became necessary due to political failure, expediency, or desire. I just haven't heard of any that were actually good for anyone, unless you count all of the military/industrial contractors who become exceedingly rich. The military isn't necessarily bad: until it starts absorbing more and more of the national budget. Then it becomes bad.



The difference is that when the camera stops rolling everyone gets up, dusts themselves off, and continue on with life. I can't say the same when it comes to military action. The two are not analogous.


No one expects people to. Least of all the filmmakers.

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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.

I agree with Brett, this is just a love story and everything else is just there to get our characters where they need to be (the director has been quote as saying as much). I don't think there is any other message in the movie except the love story. Everyone trying to make it about the environment or large corp. are just digging and reading too much into the subtleties of the locations our characters travel through, IMO.

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 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.

Those that keep saying that those messages are so obvious, well they just aren't and it appears that you missed the real message of the movie... finding love. Everything else is just the backdrop and catalyst that our charters play through. At least that is what I took away from the movie.

I think it was very subtle and people are just forcing it to the front. IMO, most seem to miss the real message of the movie. Here I am, one who was worried about the film becoming preachy before it's release, and I'm one of few who think it wasn't preachy at all.

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I didn't say Buddy was "OK", I said he was exceptional. And he was, without question. He was arguably the most exceptional individual in the entire story. Dash -- who is woefully put down because he's not allowed to win the races at school was born that way. It takes no effort for him to be fast. Buddy truly worked to become a (villainous, unfortunately) "superhero" having been born with no superior physical traits. It was Mr. Incredible who pushed him aside -- since Buddy was not "super" -- and alas Buddy chose an evil path. Some of this is in the story. But I feel that thematically it's not completely there. Yes, it's a broad audience movie, but I wish it had a bit more to the story.

No, I'm protecting myself from the illogical storyline. I caught the allusions to Battlestar Galactica, the Cylon voice of Auto (Otto); the 101 reference, etc. (but I missed the Pizza Truck in the trash. drats! )

But I have to power down the gray matter lest I wonder why a robot sent to find plant life is programmed to immediately destroy any higher forms of life (no humans possibly be left? you want plants, but will destroy any deer or cows?).

It's not irony. It's not unexpected for a large company to present a "message" movie to try and make some bucks. Pixar is not biting the hand that feeds them. They're presenting a message that they clearly don't mean. Pixar isn't a "green" or "low impact" company. They make money by selling stuff to people. It's stuff I want to buy; I've no issue with that. They clearly don't really want people to stop passively watching videos and buying merchandise -- it's their entire business! That disconnect is tiresome to me; there's no irony.

Worse, the anti-consumerism message was not delivered particularly well.

Contrast that with the rich storyline of loss of friendship, of purpose, and of grasping one's mortality in Toy Story 2. "When She Loved Me" is a message and it's profound. Even the simple "laughter is greater than fear" of Monsters, Inc. was clever and effective. Pixar can do "messages", but Wall-E was clumsy for them.

I'll say again that I like Wall-E. It was cute movie and I love the contemplative style of the first act. But I really have to not think about it too carefully or it starts to crumble like the trash buildings Wall-E built.

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You saw a different movie than I did. The one I watched had a robot clearing endless expanses of human refuse -- leftovers from shopping at a blatant Wal-Mart parody -- and building super-skyscrapers with them. There was so much trash that it was the undoing of a legion of such robots working for 700 years to unsuccessfully clean the planet. Humans had shopped so much that there the first viable plant wasn't found for 7 centuries after they abandoned Earth. The trash didn't even stop there; so bad even the orbits were thoroughly filled with jumk satellites. Consumerism was so egregious that a mega corporation ruled the planet. The CEO was global president. And even upon leaving, people had so much stuff they stopped interacting with each other, content to let stuff (robots) take care of stuff, as they watched TV.

This was not a hard-to-see subtext. It was the text.



As noted, the primary story was a love story. And once they got past the scary, dominatrix, sadistic side of Eve, it was quite enjoyable.

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You're right, it wasn't preachy. Unfortunately, some people will say that any message involving the environment is preaching. It reminds me of one of the opening scenes in The Simpsons Movie when the second that Green Day mentions the environment, the town attacks them for 'preaching'.

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Oh, I saw the same movie. But it wasn't ABOUT any of those things, anymore than (I'll use this example again) The Matrix was about advancing AI causing the downfall of civilization. The context of those images is brought in by the viewer themselves, not contained within the film itself. I have great concerns for our future, but BuyNLarge isn't one of them, and I don't think it's Pixar's either. That was merely set-up to establish WALL*E's situation. From the film itself, there is no judgement on the consumer culture, except that it might make you lonely. Hence my belief that the message is about connection. There are many more shots of holding hands than there are of piles of trash. Looking at the just the events of the films...every image of consumerism was played for laughs, not seriously.

That difference in how we see the film drives my opinion. I do agree with your opinions on The Incredibles Buddy. He was exceptional, but what you do with your abilities is more important than your abilities. I think the film covers that. Just not as directly as letting people be great.

I don't think the film is preachy. That's all.

Edwin, I'd love to argue with several of your points, but I can't

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I understand where you're coming from now; and your perspective makes sense.
The context is explicit by the story: Excess consumption destroys planet. Excess consumption forces a diaspora of the few. Excess consumption leads to people becoming a race of morbidly obese who do nothing but consume food, media, and video games. To overcome their hurdles, as much as personal connections, they had to overcome their lazy, sea-cow existences.

And had the movie not had the one side couple bumping into each other, the love-story would have rested solely on Wall-E and Eve with the humans being a background cautionary tale on consumerism.

And that would have been better in my view. I found those two to be awkwardly inserted with flat dialog.



More positively...
I loved the sequence where Wall-E rolls through the port and launch site of the Axiom. It was beautifully, realistically created. The auto-commercial fit perfectly and filled in necessary narrative. And was it through there where he got some new treads? Poignant: the realization that he's mortal, perhaps the last of his kind, and an accident away from being stuck -- a self-aware coma situation perhaps. It's that implicit storytelling that Pixar excels at. They way they suggest mature ideas, the deep worries that adults must face, in the midst of "kids" movies.

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^ extracted from the review thread

Dude. Eve held his clamp... just like he wanted her to.... all through the entire movie. Did you spill your drink or something?

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Plus, IIRC, there was a minor jolt of electricity between them.

Re: *** Official WALL-E Discussion Thread

My interpretation of WALL-E's reawakening at the end went like this: if during the course of 700 years of operation he begins to long for companionship (something not at all allowed for in his programming, I bet), he must have developed something akin to a soul, something that existed independently from his motherboard and memory chips. Does the soul live in the brain, or exist somewhere else more ethereal, perhaps non-localizable? I don't mean to delve too far into faith/spirituality, but perhaps it was this "soul" that was reawakened by EVE's kiss and their hand-holding at the end.

Anyway, because I bought into the concept of a free-thinking robot with the capacity to love at the beginning of the film, the ending didn't seem that much of a stretch.

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He was awakened by the princess giving him true love's kiss. It's a tried and true fairy tale convention applied to robots. I don't think anything more metaphysical than that is needed or intended.

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I think it's ambiguous enough to allow for multiple interpretations. Maybe one reason I went with the one I wrote above is because it fit nicely with the major themes I picked up from the movie, as I mentioned in my post in the review thread.

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The filmmakers could have set up the film in any way for Wall-E's journey, but they choose to create this world. The folks at Pixar created a fully integrated world of BNL, environmental degradation, consumerism (on Axiom) run amok, causing humans to disconnect from one another, evolving human bodies, etc. Every single one of those elements was thought out and created, not just "there" as if Stanton pointed a camera at a natural scenery (which of course still would have been a decision). Yes, the film was also about love and connection (how many Disney released animated pictures aren't?), but we shouldn't just disregard the world where a picture takes place. That Pixar did choose this world for this story is pretty gutsy.

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I still want to know what happen to the other ships that left Earth? The BnL commercial mentioned "ships leaving daily" but only the Axiom is in the second half of the movie. Did I miss something?

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I don't think there were other ships. I think the wealthy and elite left on the one Axiom Executive ship (as said in the Axiom billboard). Everyone else remained on Earth, either trapped or trying to fix things (as with the BNL / Global President).

Was there any explicit reference to other ships?

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.

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I viewed WALL-E this evening and really, really enjoyed the film.

The first 30 or 40 minutes of the film was simply brilliant. I was intrigued by the premise of a mainstream animated feature telling much of its story in strictly visual terms (referring once again to the opening third of the film) and WALL-E and the fine folks at Pixar delivered the goods.

The animators did a great job of investing WALL-E with a heart and soul and the juxtaposition of WALL-E and EVE against the scenes from Hello Dolly was just wonderful. The ability of the film to generate such identification and empathy with these characters is just one of the factors that sets it apart from most animated fare.

Did I mention I liked this film?


I also thought that I'd mention that fans of this film who enjoyed the character of WALL-E and the idea of this little robot soldiering on through the centuries would probably enjoy (although the main story points are different) Alistair Reynold's SF short story Zima Blue - which contains an interesting perspective on machine intelligence and a rather long lived robotic protagonist.

- Walter.

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That is what was wrong with it. It was just a twist on an old, tired, animation cliche. This film would have been as great as every one said it was if he hadn't woken up. Love lost. That would have taken some stones, but, being animated, Stanton had to have the prerequisite happy ending.

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Just got back from seeing Wall-E and loved every minute of it. I think it's great, subtext, or not, that it can at least generate discussions like this one. I mainly saw it as a sweet love story between two unlikely protagonists, and I think that any subtext behind that had more to do with being connected to the world around you rather than rampant consumerism is going to destroy the earth.

The animation was incredible, and 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.

I also got a kick out of how the sound that Wall-E makes when he's fully charged is the Macintosh boot-up sound!

Also, the Presto short was hilarious!

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I do think the happy ending is the right choice. These are happy ending stories, and when has a Feature Animation from Disney or Pixar not had a happy ending? But it could have been done better. Just the twist of Wall-E's damaged circuit board rendering him "dead" until repaired was sufficient. And it had a clear and direct solution. The subsequent amnesia was just piling on, and required a magic solution to a realism story.

I could have done without the spring-loaded cockroach. It exceeded my "ick" factor and it violated the rules of the world: everything was "real", but no cockroach has that dog-like loyalty and comprehension.

I loved the little scrubber robot. His frustration at the unending and inexplicable contamination was palpable.

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Of course, there should have been a happy ending. What I find amazing is that I cared more about and that Wall*E and EVE made a better romantic couple than 99.9999% of the humans Ive seen in plenty of crappy romantic comedies.

This movie had alot of heart. While I laughed a few times I smiled though almost the entire thing. My G/F loved it and laughed often. One of things I enjoyed so much was how much emotion they were able to project through the robots, epsecially through EVE, with a simple set of glowing eyes.

"The one I watched had a robot clearing endless expanses of human refuse..."

When I was in school, I remember the population of the planet being 4+ billion. That number now seems to be 9. In 20 years the population has doubled. So how bad will it be in 100 or 200?

I dont get some of the criticism being thrown at the movie. The SciFi genre has always used social/political/moral/warning of such and such a danger issues for backdrops for stories. Gattaca constantly warns of the dangers of genetic manipulation and I dont think Ive ever heard anyone call that film preachy.

As for people becoming fat, lazy and disconnected - well thats already happening and I wouldnt blame it on consumerism(more technology). Look in a SUV when you drive by. No one is talking everyone is watching a DVD. My G/Fs kids (who are overweight) are spending their teens in chat rooms and playing online video games. They dont hang out with friends, dont ride their bikes, dont play sports, dont do anything. From the minute they home to when they go to sleep, theyre in front of a monitor. I work at IBM and 3/4 of the people I see everyday are overweight. Obesity is clearly a problem today.I also frequent another forum that has a romance section when I need a good laugh. Its full of young people who meet on myspace and in chat rooms - and have no idea how to communicate with each other in person. This subtext IMHO is one of the films strengths, not weakness(but Im also a pessimist). I agree with Kirk, I applaude them to use these ideas for a Pixar film.


The 2001 gag was funny. Kubrick was very interested in the idea of robots taking on human attributes and the idea of them developing a soul. Hal learning to lie and even becoming afraid at his own demise and AI's David even lashes at in jealous behavior. The Capt standing up with TSZ blaring in the soundtrack was one of the films funniest moments.

I dont have a problem with the robot cute gags. They were cute and again I think its appropriate. They are there but I didnt notice it happening as often as someone mentioned earlier.

I think this film is a huge achievement. Visually is beyond impressive, stellar, add whatever you want here, its all of those things.

I liked it better than Ratatouille and think its edges out Finding Nemo and would put it up there with The Incredibles and the 2 Toy Stories films.

out of 4s


Oh yea, and Presto was wonderful. As someone mentioned earlier, definitely reminiscent of the old similar Looney Tunes cartoons.

Re: *** Official WALL-E Discussion Thread

There absolutely was a small spark. EVE's head was on the right of the screen, slightly above center, and WALL*E's was about center on the left. As EVE leans in, there is a small spark between their heads, though EVE does not notice it.

It's there

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I asked earlier..But, does Disney have a site or does anyone have a wav file of Wall-E going "Whoa"??