'Wall-E' - An Odyssey for a new age
By: Tim - aurora - Dunn

Pixar's latest mega-hit, 'Wall-E' posses one major problem and one problem only. Is it designed for young kids or adults? I guess the answer is it depends if you're a kid or an adult answering that question as each would say its for them. Think of this as 'The Flintstones' or maybe even 'A Space Odyssey' for a new generation again either works. Not only that but its a new age, I hope, for Disney story telling. Sure each Disney-Pixar has a moral to its stories but 'Wall-E' does not screw around hinting at the many points its trying to get across and even uses several layers and machinations to do so.

 

 

Wall-E starts off 800 hundred years into our future. It seems one hundred years from now we have polluted and trashed our earth so completely that mankind leaves the earth in the hands of Wall-E robots to clean up our mess while they take a relatively short voyage in space. Jump ahead and mankind now finds itself celebrating the 700th anniversary of the ending of their five year voyage and they are now orbiting the galaxy and not the earth. On earth we find only one Wall-E unit left and naturally the only other surviving remnants of our world is a all our trash, a cockroach and Twinkies. Well if nothing else we are right on the immortality of roaches and Twinkies! Our Wall-E is alone and still carries out its task of compacting up the garbage and stacking them into large towers. Babel anyone? After so long and alone, except for his pet roach, Wall-E has developed beyond his programming and gained his own sense of humanity in the soulful sense. He collects small bits of treasures that he takes home and displays among a lace work of Christmas light. With them, at the end of his work day he sits down and watches old Hollywood musicals dreaming of companionship.

 

 

One day while out performing his duty he stumbles across a new treasure, a plant, probably the first alive on earth for the past 700 years. He gently digs up the plant and places it in an old worn boot. As destiny would have it this same day another new event happens to Wall-E, a probe ship returns to earth hunting for signs of life via its 'Eve' robot probes. Well as you already know Wall-E falls immediately in love with Eve. A short series of adventures causes Eve to become some what attached to Wall-E, just not to the same degree as Wall-E is to Eve. Once Wall-E shows Eve the plant he found she scans it, throws it into stasis within her and shuts down to await the return of the ship to pick her up.

 

 

Eventually the ship returns to take her back to the 'Axiom' one of the grandest ships supporting humans. Wall-E, trying to protect Eve chases after her and hitches a ride on the ship. Once the ship reaches the Axiom we find that humans have adapted to micro-gravity and high technology to such a degree that they all zoom around on huge lounge chairs hooked into a social, or should I say marketing, version of the Matrix. Mean while Eve is taken to the captain to deliver her find only to discover that it has been taken sometime in the in-term. Enter Pixars more friendly version of Hal-9000 who has also taken things into his own hands to preserve his mission. Unlike Clarke's Hal this system is intent on saving mankind at all costs by keeping them sedate, never changing, non-human, humans. Happily the contaminated Wall-E with all his quirkiness coated in love and devotion is there to save the day. The question is can he save his humanity while trying to return what he has gained to those who have lost theirs?

 

 

On the surface, Wall-E is probably Pixar's best movie to date, at least in my book it is. The depth of Wall-E is incredible. It ranges from top notch, even higher then normal, computer graphics, brilliant story telling and new to Pixar, fantastic filming. Yep you heard me right on that, the newest component to Pixar's production pipeline is human in nature. Pixar hired some of the biggest and best cinematographers in the business to come in and help out on setting up the camera angles and motions used for the movie. While I seriously doubt many people will jump up and shout wow what a grant camera pan that was as they are more likely to be totally engrossed in the animation and story. Yet its these subtleties that may go unnoticed that actually drive home the story telling. The angles, moves and pans, provide for much of the story telling and emotional impact this movie makes. I'm not sure how much it cost Disney-Pixar for this smart move but smart it was and it will undoubtedly payoff at the box-office and later from our own B&N stores this Christmas when Wall-E most likely will make its DVD debut.

 

 

CG-story telling, something Pixar is a master at, has raised to new levels too. One of the strangest things to me was the mixture of using real human live action sequences in the movie. When you first see it you sit there and ask why? Why, did Pixar make such a blatant, stupid mistake? Sure we saw that in 'Happyfeet' but why in Wall-E? The second and third time you sort of expect it but still ask what the??? But by the end you realize that while pizza's don't grow from seeds, to bad too as I would devote a major portion of my acre of various gardens to a pizza crop, that there was wise wisdom in using live action mixed with CG animation. Wall-E, as mentioned previously endeavors at telling important lessons on many depths and levels for both kids and adults. By the end you can't miss what those points are but just to make extra sure those few live action sequences yell us, hey wake up this is not just a cute cartoon this is a real message its all about you! Are we to sit back and let someone else take care of everything for us? Do we expect a miracle to happen and magically the earth will be cleaned and healed of the wounds we are giving her? Are we letting our power as intelligent beings take over our humanity by getting absorbed into our technology? Or do we really, hidden and lost somewhere deep inside want the adventure of actually living, do we want to be awake, want the unity and companionship of each other, family and a happy healthy world? As cute and lovable as Wall-E is its his gift of humanity that strives to give back to us that will in the Ned make Wall-E immortal.

 

 

I won't venture much into the Pixar animation as what more can you say other then we expect the best and once again we are given a new level of what the best is all about? How strong is that animation? Well for the first nearly 20 minutes of the movie there is zero dialog. True we have music but there is virtually no spoken dialog. For the next 20 minutes the dialog is extremely short and few in-between. All of the real dialog is in the animation and it speaks volumes! From the animation and cinematography we hear all we need to hear about what Wall-E is, who he is, what he wants, the budding relationship between him and Eve, we hear all of this with our eyes and not our ears. That is the ultimate hallmark of true animation!

 

 

In my viewing of Wall-E we naturally had the vast majority of the audience composed of kids but I'm happy to say there was also a healthy number of childless adults there as well. I can't pretend to speak for everyone but I did, and still do, get the impression that the adults loved this movie more then the kids. At the surface this is a Disney cartoon and will be loved as such. However the 'Shrek' syndrome, which really is just an extension from 'Toy Story', has hit Wall-E. There are a ton of little inside bits and jokes that only the older generation would recognize and fully appreciate. From the obvious, Hal-9000 to the painting of the various captains of the Axiom where from a distance the very first captain looks an awful lot like Captain Stubing from 'The Love Boat'. Of course you have the 'Star Trek' five year voyage, the Hollywood musicals, the allusions to 'Logans Run', 'The Matrix', 'Silent Running' and many, many other movies. But one of them that had me roaring with laughter was Wall-E trying to decide where to put a new treasure, the spork! When I was a senior in high school our school made a switch from real metal forks, spoons and knives to a plastic spork and knife. We had an uproar that lasted months over this drastic move. What were we becoming creating all of this new disposable waste, simplifying things to gross hybrids to supposedly be better then the original. This is exactly the kind of thing Wall-E wants you to remember and think long and hard about.

 

 

'I didn't know we had a pool!' Another thing I truly appreciated and loved in Wall-E was all the particle effects. I'm at heart a particle guy, always have been probably always will be, I simply love particle effects. While the particle effects in Wall-E are not the 'best' they don't need to be and indeed would not fit in if they were fully PR looking particles. But the many explosions, the dust storms, the rings of Saturn, the galaxy of stars, the fluids and best of all the outer space dance sequence (here's where the new cinematography views really paid off!) were enough on their own to make this my favorite Pixar film.

 

 

I also want to take a couple seconds and mention another important feature of our annual Pixar feast, the Pixar animated short that preludes the main feature. This one is called 'Presto' and like magic it makes a new jump in both Pixar story telling and animation. In it we find a magicians rabbit that is hungry and all he wants is his carrot. Sadly the magician, with real magical hats, lives by the adage that the show must go on and so our poor rabbit friend has to wait. Or does he? Somehow I believe that this short was intentionally designed to complement the story of Wall-E. Yes, we do have magic in our lives thanks to technology, but we have baser needs inside of us that must come before the magic. Not only are these needs more important but they, in the end, are way more satisfying and by remembering to feed those needs first only then do we become a hit. Like 'Wall-E' itself, 'Presto' is an instant classic for both young and old, but I think the old will love it more!

 

 

Conclusion:

I could go on for pages and ages on all of the wonders of Wall-E but I think the best thing I could say is stop reading and go see Wall-E. Just like '2001, A Space Odyssey', Wall-E is a visual feast and adventure that will go into the many, many future CG forum polls, and records as one of the best. Not just for the animation but also for the story and the story telling. This is a movie that will hopefully help awaken us to a new intelligence in the universe, the one that is falling asleep inside us.

Ratings:

- For a movie going experience I give it: 5 out of 5 stars.
This was so much more then just another Pixar animated movie. This one has hard hitting morals to teach us in the most pleasant and enjoyable ways!

- For a technical piece of CG and VFX work I give it: 5 out of 5 stars.
First this is Pixar, need I say more? Yes actually I do, no product should ever have to live off the merits of the past to be good. Happily 'Wall-E' does not need to do that as more then a few past Pixar pieces has had to. On the contrary, 'Wall-E' has set a new standard for CG animation one that will make most liekly be rewarded heavily in next years many award presentations!

Voice Credits:

WALL•E / M-O - Ben Burtt
Eve - Elissa Knight
Captain - Jeff Garlin
Shelby Forthright, BnL CEO - Fred Willard
John - John Ratzenberger
Mary - Kathy Najimy
Ship's Computer - Sigourney Weaver

Directed - Andrew Stanton

Writing Credits
Screenplay - Andrew Stanton
Titles - Jim Capobianco

Producets
Executive Producer - Pete Docter, John Lasseter
Producer - Jim Morris

Original Music - Thomas Newman

Film Editing - Stephen Schaffer

Animation:
Pixar

MPAA: Rated G (for Grand I say!).
Runtime: 103 min