Wall-E

“Buy N Large. Everything you need to be happy. Your day is very important to us.”

Taking a break from the classics, but this one should be considered a new classic, let’s take a look at Pixar’s masterpiece, Wall-E.

Despite not having kids and being in my fifties, I do love some children’s movies and family-style animated specials. Wall-E is not just one such film, but one of the best, if not the very best film in this category I’ve ever seen.

The film has two main settings: an abandoned Earth covered in garbage and a huge spacecraft known as the Axiom, that the remaining humans and their robots call home. We quickly find that Earth is not completely abandoned, despite how it looks. The title character and his little cockroach friend are soon seen, making their way through the waste that Wall-E collects and compacts inside his square body, to be released as small cubes. We soon see that there are perhaps millions of these compacted cubes all across the desolate landscape. We also see other Wall-E robots that are no longer functioning among the endless piles of trash.

Besides seeing Wall-E labor away at garbage compacting, we also see his curiosity as well.

Well, that'll ruin my phone's reception!

This curiosity brings him to discover the first bit of green we see, as he finds a budding plant among the endless piles of detritus. This plant is also how he meets Eve, and how their almost antagonistic initial relationship grows over the course of the film into love. That single little plant that they bring back to the last bastion of humanity also starts a chain of events that see our heroes meet more robots, especially the wonderful M-O, starts captain McCrea on a path of discovery, makes the humans think beyond their chairs and their routine, and ends with a triumphant and hopeful ending that continues through into the closing credits.

This is truly adorable.

Once we arrive on the Axiom, the stark contrast between the ruined Earth and the sleek and gleaming starship is immediately evident. We see humans that have been altered by their existence in a state of perpetual luxury and low gravity, riding on their chairs and focused on their projected screens, into doughy beings that have a ‘big baby’ appearance. Buy N Large, also known as BnL, created this escape vessel and their machines handle everything, from ship functions to every whim and need of its human passengers. While it does have a human captain, it is largely a ceremonial role at the point of Wall-E’s arrival.

On our way through this enjoyable romp of a film, we get to see what the Axiom was originally built for, and why Auto, the ship’s AI, is doing what it does. We get some wonderfully enjoyable chase scenes, danger, cliffhangers, and some interesting concepts for this kind of ark in space (Doctor Who reference intentional, although the Axiom lacks the Wirrn, luckily for them). The interactions between humans and robots, even when antagonistic at times, always feel genuine and they add more character to the film.

The film does have dialogue, especially once we meet the humans on the Axiom, but it does an amazing job in conveying emotions and situations with little to no speech barring some short vocalizations from our robot friends for large parts of the movie. I don’t feel I can even aptly describe how well it's done in words; it has to be experienced to get the full effect of just how evocative the film can be through body language and well-framed presentation. Making digital and mechanical faces express this much emotion is truly remarkable, and the creators of this movie should be proud of what they’ve accomplished here.

"No, I don't appreciate dirty jokes."

Despite the film’s apocalyptic setting, it conveys hope and growth more than decay and despair. Even early on, when all we see is an Earth so covered in trash that even reaches into orbit, manifesting as clouds of debris above a desolate world, the movie still comes off optimistic and human. Our plucky protagonist dutifully goes to work against a Sisyphean task of cleaning mountains upon mountains of garbage, but he too comes off positively, and his collection of odds and ends, and especially the VHS tape of Hello Dolly he watches every night, portray a different kind of hero, but one that we can immediately sympathize with. He feels like someone we know despite him being a little robot that’s reason for existing is to crush garbage down into smaller chunks.

Eve brings a different perspective, but she too is quickly sympathetic, despite some conflict between her and Wall-E at times. This conflict is vastly overshadowed by their obvious feelings for each other, but it too adds character growth, and makes Eve even more likeable as the film progresses. She may start off a bit aloof, but this doesn’t last. That character growth is a large part of how we reach the optimistic conclusion to the film.

One thing that this film does that feels very classic is that the leading man (Wall-E) is basically an average looking, working class guy while the leading woman (Eve) is sleek and modern and comes from above, mimicking the classic rich and beautiful woman that our hapless hero falls for, and after some initial misgivings and misunderstandings, she falls for him in return. Their differences are readily apparent, and the intentional design choices in how their appearance conveys this immediately and so convincingly is yet another feather in the cap for this creative team.

Even the humans are well done. Yes, they are indolent and have some bone and muscle mass degeneration from living on a low-g ship in the lap of luxury for so long, but they are instantly likeable. Instead of being demanding, arrogant, or otherwise unpleasant, they come off truly decent and caring, and play a large role in helping our robot pals and in doing so, themselves as well. Captain McCrea personifies this as he too grows as a character and takes true command from Auto, instead of acquiescing to its demands.

"Oh, that looks like it hurt!"

A fantastic film for any age. It’s a love story, a story of hope after tragedy, and a story of the perseverance of the human spirit. I can’t recommend this one enough. Brilliantly made, funny, captivating, and gorgeous, it simply should not be missed.

Four loveable robots out of four.

-All the robots are great here, but besides our main duo of Wall-E and Eve, I have a soft spot for M-O. How can I not love a robot that makes friends with the very source of his frustration like he did with Wall-E? M-O also experiences growth during the film, and that just makes me love him more.

-On the Blu-Ray I have of this film, the ‘Burn-E’ short is brilliant and after enjoying the main film, I highly recommend watching it as well. It’s wonderfully silly and has great direct tie-ins to the main story.

-Fred Willard was all over the place when I was a kid, and he’s perfect for his role here as president of Buy N Large. He also appears in the flesh on screen, a rarity in Pixar films.

-Not sure why the Wall-E models on Earth are so small and the Wall-A models are gigantic. The E is for Earth and the A is for Axiom, so the robots left behind to clean an entire planet are roughly toaster sized while the ones that only clean up the Axiom are huge.

-A lot of chatter about why our Wall-E was still functioning while we see other Wall-E robots that have clearly been wrecks for years, perhaps even centuries, is that he achieved sentience/sapience beyond his basic programming. We do see him repair himself in an early part of the film, as well as his junk collecting and boundless curiosity, which lends credence to this theory.

-At one point in the film, they were originally going to have Wall-E save Eve from a critical situation, but the final version has this reversed. I honestly feel this makes more sense as while Wall-E is wonderful, Eve has greater capabilities for such things, and it turns the hero/damsel thing on its head in a fun way.

-Originally the humans on the Axiom were going to be green blobby things that didn’t even know they used to be human. This was found to not work so well for a hopeful and family-oriented movie, as well as being very unsympathetic characters. So, this was changed to the idea that humans on a spaceship where their every need was fulfilled by robots, and the lower gravity, gave us the big baby version we ended up with. I feel it was a wise choice.

-The pictures of prior captains of the Axiom on the bridge was a nice touch too. We both see that the captain varied between genders and races, and the slow changes from humans like us, to the ones we see on the ship when Wall-E arrives. We also see that despite the changes, they are quite long-lived.

-The film has some great voice actors, including Sigourney Weaver as the Axiom’s computer, John Ratzenberger as John, Kathy Najimy as Mary, Elissa Knight as Eve, and Ben Burtt as Wall-E and M-O.

-Auto, the ship’s autopilot is voiced by MacInTalk, being the only character in the movie voiced by an actual machine.

-Did I mention how much I love M-O?

Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.

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