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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Wall-E

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

20:32 / 27.06.08

So, I saw this at 12:01 AM last night (this morning?) and, well, it might not have been as good as Ratatouille, but it only missed it by like THAT much. (And only because that was like, what, one of the three best movies ever made?)

Anyway. It's groundbreaking, charming, sweet, heartbreaking, shocking, gorgeous, catchy, hilarious, smart, and, well, there's this moment, okay, it's just this little beautiful moment and I can't even call it a spoiler because it's totally inconsequential and takes like all of two seconds but, well, Wall-E teaches this one robot of little import...

He teaches him how to wave hello.

This movie is just going take your heart out on the best date of its life.

12:58 / 28.06.08

I'm seeing this today.

Anyone else think the EVE character (female white robot) reminds them of H.E.R.B.I.E. on the old FF cartoon? [I wonder, have they made those cartoons available on DVD? I don't think they have, for some reason.... for the too young/uninitiated, they thought the Human Torch would lead kids to set themselves on fire to be superheroes, so they replaced him with the aforementioned lame robot]

NY Times says Wall*E is brilliant, CNN says 'classic', some other reviews are throwing around the word 'masterpiece'.... sounds good! Pixar is always pushing its own boundaries.

13:20 / 28.06.08

It's all that! God, it's all that indeed. Made me cry three times, and laugh out loud five.

The only problem, if I call it that, is that the best part of the movie is the first act. Mind you, the second and third are each absolute incredible in their own way (which are very different from each other as well), but the first act is simply sublime. I'm telling you, if you don't feel sorry for this poor, lonely robot in the first 15 minutes of this movie, you must have left your soul outside the movie theater.

It's amazing how the people in Pixar managed to make robots express emotions who are not supposed - or eqquiped - to express emotions, only through sound bites and body language. Even the roach is likeable.

Another great thing about this movie is how it avoids simplistic manicheism. The humans of the future are lazy and oblivious to their reality, but are still capable of compassion and easily snap out of their slumber at the smallest stimuli. They are naive, but not dumb. The bad robots are only trying to do what they think is right causing the least bit of damage. And the good robots double as comic relief seamlessly, including the protagonist.

14:46 / 28.06.08

It's a magnificent film, I'm astonished by how beautiful it is. I agree that the strongest act is the first, which is probably the most daring and groundbreaking thing that's ever come out of an American animation studio. Upon reflection, the movie does struggle to maintain those heights in the second and third acts, and I found the climax less emotionally affecting than Ratatouille (I could see the exact moment where I should have had tears in my eyes, and I almost did, but I just didn't quite get there). However I'd easily call it Pixar's greatest achievement, both in technical execution (this film really is stunningly, jawdroppingly beautiful) and in narrative ambition. The trailers mercifully don't give much away but it's Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" done right.

13:52 / 29.06.08

Agreed on all counts.

Just a brilliant film in every possible way.

The short at the beginning (about a magician and his rabbit) is incredible as well; hilariously funny and had everyone in the theater laughing uproariously, clapping and shouting with delight within 2 seconds of the short's having started.

The MUSIC in Wall-E is also utterly fantastic - Thomas Newman's score is perfect and Peter Gabriel's new single, done especially for the film, is terrific. (I know I'm running out of superlatives here, but the film really deserves them)

Eve's giggle cracks me up.

Also, very interesting to note that this is the first Pixar film that, for brief moments, uses human actors. It was interesting to see the videos with human actors and then the CGI humans show up midway through the film - a bit of an incongruous choice, but I figure it was done to show how far apart the last humans on Earth were from the overweight, lazy, docile and unimaginative humans on board ships like the Axiom have become.

I know there are some conservative Republicans out there who have written reviews of this film saying things like 'ah well, all those lefty liberals made another movie about saving the environment, criticizing big business and all that claptrap,' but I feel they're just missing the point and politicizing a film that really isn't supposed to be political (although concerns about the environment and big mega-businesses are certainly there).

13:54 / 29.06.08

Also, Wall-E's indomitable spirit, persistence, naivete and innate goodness (plus his fixation on Eve and getting her to like him, hold his hand, etc.) are just utterly charming. Everyone he meets, he extends a friendly handshake to and introduces himself. It's positively adorable.

14:13 / 29.06.08

Note the early model "Wall-A" enormous garbage machines in the bowels of the Axiom - the "A" part of the logo is dirty and somewhat in shadow, but it is there.

Great tip of the hat (although quite obvious) to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey - and then the ominous red light is revealed to be nothing more than a captain's old-school steering wheel!

"MO" is a hilarious new robot that Wall-E befriends. Love the scene where Mo just keeps saying his name over and over. And anyone with a neat streak in them/hyper-cleaning personality/minor OCD can relate to Mo's deliberating over whether to clean every bit of dirt that Wall-E leaves. (also, the more Wall-E wins Eve over and gets under her skin/helps her out, the more she gets some of Wall-E's dirt all over her)

Note the Sigourney Weaver cameo v/o, and John Ratzenberger (the running gag that he is in every Pixar movie)'s character being named "John."

And when Wall-E seems to have lost his memory/personality at the end, it was as heart-wrenching as E.T. almost dying.

The opening of the film, with the "Hello Dolly!" song playing as we pan through space was refreshing and engaging... and the shots of the cities, destroyed, abandoned and covered with piles of garbage, were chilling.

00:38 / 30.06.08

t was interesting to see the videos with human actors and then the CGI humans show up midway through the film - a bit of an incongruous choice

I've heard this mentioned negatively several times, but I think there's a pretty solid reason for it - the film establishes early on that WALL-E is fascinated by "Hello, Dolly!" and it's his model for understanding human behaviour. Now, once they've shown the film clip, then they've pretty inescapably established the image of "real" humans (the alternatives would be to either re-create the film with animated characters, or to invent a fictional film for WALL-E to watch, neither I think would be as effective). So once they've established the "real" humans, there needs to be an explanation for the appearance of the animated humans, which they cleverly did by showing the historical portrait gallery of Captains of the Axiom - the first portrait was a photograph of a real human man, and as the camera panned across each portrait you saw a subtle evolution occurring until the final portrait, which was of the animated character. The video images of Fred Willard as the President/Buy-N-Large CEO are hundreds of years old, before the humans (d)evolved. It's all very cleverly done, and for good reason.

08:08 / 30.06.08

Absolutely fantastic movie. Can't really add much to what's been said already, but I personally got the impression that the live-action video was meant to contrast jarringly with the world in general; that is, in a CGI universe full of emotional robots and closed-off people, the 'real' people were the most fake things.

covered with piles of garbage, were chilling

I loved the piles that, at first, seemed like buildings, and then realizing they were showing exactly how long Wall-E has been alone and doing the stacking thing.

03:12 / 01.07.08

movie.

of.

the.

year.

until july 18, that is, hehe.

but seriously, what an amazing piece of entertaining art. RATATOUILLE was not so engaging for me. it was topped by WALL-E by a body and a robot head.

i had trouble accepting the abandoned Earth was cgi, it was so perfect, and terryfying. Wall-e's 'life' so sad, recollecting mementos from the garbage like an iron version of I AM LEGEND, the true last inhabitant of the planet had to be a lonely man, despite not being human at all. until he met his iBook girlfriend.

i wish i was a kid seeing this. and if i was a parent i'd feel bad taking my kid to a McDonald's afterwards.

03:15 / 01.07.08

i mean, he WAS humanized, but you know what i mean.

04:36 / 01.07.08

Cute Wall*E shorts

20 seconds to minute-long vignettes on Wall-E's encounters with bouncy balls, magnets, n' stuff.

17:10 / 01.07.08

Interesting - obsese/overweight people speak out against Wall-E.

Is the movie discriminatory?

I was wondering - were there any non-white people on the good ship Axiom? One thing I've noticed is that with the exception of Frozone in THE INCREDIBLES, Pixar's human characters have been almost all exclusively white. I'm not complaining, I'm not crying 'racism!', just making the observation...

17:13 / 01.07.08

were there any non-white people on the good ship Axiom?

Yes, there were. You can see them in the crowd, specially in the final showdown by the pool.

18:21 / 01.07.08

Interesting - obsese/overweight people speak out against Wall-E.

I'd say the defining characteristic of those people speaking out is their lack of intelligence, not their obesity.

The movie is not critical of fat people purely for being fat, and they're not portrayed as unnecessarily ugly or stupid (merely ignorant). The portrayal of the obese citizens of the Axiom is to show that they are the end result of 700 years of humankind devolving into laziness and irresponsibility by being catered to in every respect by automatons, and doing nothing for themselves. It's a satirical view of the future, condemning our readiness to sacrifice effort for convenience.

18:38 / 01.07.08

I agree.

seriously, Cameron's thoughts echo my own. The movie is criticizing the immense intellectual and physical laziness of the ridiculously immobile characters of the film's future - NOT people who are overweight in the present/real world.

10:42 / 09.07.08

I loved this film, it's one of the freshest, most exciting things I've seen in a long time.

It was so strong thematically, particularly how the introduction of one uncontrolled element (Wall-E) into a sealed society (the Axiom) can increase entropy on a massive scale. He's only there for a short time, and immediately the tedious slumberlike world is turned on its head. People start falling in love, robots start going 'rogue' and in the end one disparate element causes the repopulation and invigoration of Earth's whole biosphere! What a film!

14:27 / 09.07.08

re: obese Axiom citizens.

the captain learns at one point that life on no\low gravity environments for generations can make your bone structure weaker-smaller. i don't know how accurate this is in terms of space knowledge [and putting artificial gravity in the mix]. but as was pointed before here, the citizens are not demonized by being fat - they stand up for a change as soon as they learn the stakes.

anyway, i've seen people on imdm.com boards writing they won't take their kids to watch it because the implied environmental-concerns message in the movie is tipically "liberal \ leftist \ democrat" and kids should not be doctrined in the apocryphal knowledge of trying to clean the fucking planet you live in.

for me that just validates whichever message the movie was trying to pass on to kids. at least the fat people of Axion broke out of their programming.

15:50 / 09.07.08

I have heard a lot of people say that the CGI movie HAPPY FEET was too over-the-top 'let's save the enviornment, kids!' and infuriated/turned off a lot of Republicans because of it (the movie also came out at the height of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth success). What I heard, though, was that HAPPY FEET (didn't see it) was not a very well-made made movie and that the environmental message was clunky, hit-you-over-the-head and was just too much. So in that sense, if the movie sucked and was cheesy/preachy, I could see that it would deserve the backlash it got. However, Wall-E's message and themes are well-delivered, subtle and not preachy. "Common sense" about the environment (as well as big business/corporations) seems to be what is called for - the story is functioning as a cautionary tale/fable. My father, who sometimes leans Republican, bless his heart, saw Wall-E and wasn't remotely turned off by the environmental message or 'liberal' themes.

15:57 / 09.07.08

What exactly is liberal about environmentalism anyway?