When I first saw this incredible film in the theater (back in 2008), I was thinking - wow this is the best kids movie ever! But I didn’t really think that through at the time, the fact that I liked it that much was in fact proof that Wall·E doesn’t actually fit into the Children’s film genre. Out of Pixar’s many remarkable movies over the years - this one was their least childish story of all. In fact, each time that I’ve gone back and watched it again, I’ve been able to appreciate more of what’s there that I somehow missed in the previous viewings - because this film is information dense - it’s packed not only with layers upon layer of visual gags (some of it coming so fast that it’s hard to catch them all), but there’s also a lot of depth in the messaging as well. Wall·E might actually be the most effective film satire of the 21st Century (or satire of any sort) - and the reason why is that most folks don’t even think of it that way.
What it’s About
Wall·E is about humanity’s future; and a very grim future at that, where the Earth has become uninhabitable and all of its people have died or fled, (we don’t really see what’s happened to the animals other than a cockroach). This hardly seems the stuff of a children’s story - then again we had Grimm’s fairytales too, so who knows. The main characters in this story are robots and they don’t have any actual dialog as such, making their performances all the more remarkable. On first glance, one sees Wall·E and thinks of R2D2 (which no doubt served as a template of sorts for him); R2 was a lovable bot who spoke only in beeps and burps - he operated as a sort of robotic Cheap-laughs and not much else. But Wall·E is no R2D2. He’s a bot with quite a mission and with a heart too it seems.
Wall·E’s mission is to clear away and organize the planet’s literal mountains of trash that were left behind when the humans exited. He is a mobile trash compactor; his acronym stands for: “Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth-Class.” We see later that there is another (somewhat larger) version of him in space called WALL•A; “Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Axiom class,” (“Axiom” being the class of space ship that EVE, Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator came from) - although the Wall·A’s do not seem to have the same personality or empathy as our hero. And Wall·E is both the story’s hero and its romantic lead; which is quite a feat for a trash compactor - but Pixar pulls it off in fine fashion. Wall·E is going about his daily routine (one he apparently has followed for 700 years, and then in drops the girl of his dreams - EVE (which may or may not make them the Adam & Eve of robots?). The movie is separated into three parts - Wall·E before EVE, his meeting her and going into Space and then everything that happens up in space on the Axiom.
The Wall·E Original Movie Trailer
A Truly Biting Satire
Well, so far that doesn’t sound too satiric, right? Wall·E seems like an ordinary guy, just a bit lonely and then way out of his depth when he meets the modern woman EVE (as he likes to reminisce about Victorian England with his favorite DVD where the girls wore white dresses and used parasols). But, no the movie hits us with biting satire from the start - taking aim at the mega-corporation (Buy & Large) apparently responsible for the demise of the planet and providing an homage to most post-apocalyptic fiction by having a cockroach as his sidekick. Of course, just seeing the details of the aftermath of man’s exit of the planet is harsh enough - then we get to see what man has become after 700 years in space on ship run by that company. “Consumers in Space” may have been an alternate title for the movie. Even the name of the space ship is telling…
An Axiom is a fundamental statement accepted as true without proof, serving as a starting point for reasoning, logic, or a system, like “the whole is greater than the part.”
Wall·E even also comes with its own built-in homage to both Airplane and 2001, a Space Odyssey through Axiom’s Autopilot character; the satire occurs on many levels. But perhaps the most ingenious part of this movie, like most other Pixar films - is that it works on all of those different levels; a young child can relate to it, and teens and adults can too - each demographic finding some part that appeals to their taste or perspective. All of the levels in this film though point to a cautionary tale, where mass consumerism gone mad leads to disaster, one which a pair of robots help to finally solve.
Humans evolve into the ultimate couch potatoes in space…
Telling an Animated Story
Pixar’s first big hit, Toy Story looks a bit primitive these days, but it doesn’t feel out of date because of the trouble they took to create seemingly real characters and a world for those characters to inhabit. It was clever, both in dialog and visual gags and it was also heartfelt - something that Pixar played to the hilt in the various Toy Story sequels (and other films). Pixar was a technology company that decided to become a movie studio and in doing so, left the traditional studios behind in some ways - not being as tied to formulaic plot expectations and definitely being willing to take risks that other studios wouldn’t. In Wall·E, Pixar decided to lean heavily on Silent Film conventions to help their non-communicative lead characters build their personalities without saying a word. I’ve read that someone at Pixar watched every Buster Keaton movie to help them come up with the many visuals gags that populate the film; although those gags tend to remind me more of Harold Lloyd than Keaton. Lloyd was the king of Hollywood in the late 1920’s for a reason - he had mastered visual story-telling and sight gags like no other. I think he would have really enjoyed Wall·E, although much of the satire may have been lost on someone from his era.
Pixar’s visual story-telling reached new heights with Wall·E.
Wall·E, Pixar and The Simpsons & American Popular Culture
Why do I like to include clips from the Simpsons here on Raving Reviews? Good question - I haven’t really watched it that much over the years, but this show has been running since 1989 and has taken the pulse of American Popular Culture ever since. It’s like a cartoon time capsule that’s always open. And of course, Pixar got into that capsule, as most important trends and entities tend to do.
Here’s what the Simpsons thinks about Pixar (Wall·E does make a cameo)
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