Caution: fangirling ahead
Major news of the day: I can has internship! My adviser okayed it! THIS IS ME, DOING MY HAPPY DANCE IN THE CORNER!
Now, here's that lengthy WALL•E review I threatened promised earlier.
WALL•E is Pixar's ninth feature film, and the second one directed by Andrew Stanton, who also directed Finding Nemo, and like Finding Nemo, WALL•E is carried primarily not by its story (which is relatively simple and, honestly, nothing we haven't seen before) but by its characters, and the emotions they convey.
WALL•E is many things: a comedy, a drama, a message film, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure; but at its core, WALL•E is a love story, and a far better one than any cinematic romance I can remember seeing in a long time. The story revolves around WALL•E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth class), a small robot left behind to clean up the planet after the humans have left. WALL•E doesn't talk much (the sounds he does make are provided by Ben Burtt, an Oscar-winning sound designer responsible for, among other things, R2-D2's chirps and whistles and Darth Vader's distinctive heavy breathing); however, that little robot has more energy, charm, and expressiveness than a lot of flesh-and-blood actors I could name. WALL•E is an absolute delight, and some of my favorite moments in the movie come in the first 20 minutes: we're treated to WALL•E simply going about his business, compacting trash, collecting his treasures (anything he deems interesting enough to keep, including (but not limited to) a trash can lid, Christmas tree lights, cigarette lighters, a "Hello, Dolly" cassette, and a spork) and interacting with his only friend/pet, a cockroach (which, despite the fact that it looks and behaves like a real roach and not the anthropomorphized insects of A Bug's Life, is still oddly cute, in a gross-ish sort of way). I pretty much spent that whole segment of my film grinning like an idiot and covering my mouth with my hand because I didn't want to squeal aloud in the theater.
Things change for WALL•E when EVE arrives. Sent by the long-absent humans to reevaluate Earth's habitability, EVE is sleek, beautiful, and efficient (her smooth white design, along with WALL•E's familiar startup chime, both attest to Pixar's ongoing love affair with Apple computers), as well as temperamental and a wee bit trigger-happy. She shoots at WALL•E several times when he tries to approach her, and at one point blows up a whole line of stranded cargo ships in a fit of pique after she accidentally gets stuck to a loading magnet. Despite EVE's violent nature, WALL•E is fascinated with her, and eventually is able to introduce himself to her (and then, as always happens when you have two different OSes trying to communicate, he gets her name wrong). Still, once she stops trying to vaporize him, the two get along quite well -- WALL•E even takes her home and shows her his treasures.
All too soon, however, the ship that deposited EVE on Earth comes back to retrieve her, and a panicked WALL•E stows away (if you can call clinging to the hull 'stowing away') so as not to be separated from his new friend. The ship tows him all the way back to the Axiom, one of the massive space cruise liners on which human beings departed Earth, 700 years ago. And then things really start to get interesting...
WALL•E has had a whole lot of love put into it, and it shows; in addition to being a love story, the film is also a love letter to sci-fi movies of the 70s and 80s (the ones many of the Pixar staff probably grew up on); movies like Short Circuit, The Last Starfighter, E.T., and the original Star Wars movies; movies that were hopeful and humorous and whimsical in their story telling. (There's also a great 2001: A Space Odyssey homage in there, it's kind of hard to miss). Don't get me wrong, I'm still a big fan of hard sci-fi as well, but there's definitely a place for science fiction that has that kind of joy and wonder to it, and WALL•E does that beautifully.
And then there are the visuals. The whole film is gorgeous -- no surprise, as Pixar have been outdoing themselves with each successive movie and show no signs of breaking that tradition any time soon. They also show no indication of breaking their tradition of wonderfully imaginative characters and well-conceived stories. However, there are definitely some ways that WALL•E does break tradition, and hat's part of why it's such a good movie.
One such way is that the film is, as I mentioned, a love story. Now, all of Pixar's movies have had romance in them, from Bo Peep and Woody in Toy Story to Collette and Linguini in Ratatouille, and of course, my personal favorite, Helen and Bob Parr in The Incredibles. But the romance has never been the central element of the story: it generally happens on the sidelines, while the plot takes center stage. Not so here. You would have no film without WALL•E's dedication to EVE and his adorable desire to hold her hand, and the development of EVE's feelings toward him is equally important to the ability of the film to function at all. Their 'dance' scene is one of my favorites in the film -- it's just so joyous and happy and beautiful, and their 'kiss' is just darling.
The absence of dialogue is another departure; the first half of the movie in particular plays much like a silent film, with music, gesture, and expression filling in all the gaps where dialogue might otherwise be. Though the film is lacking dialogue, it never feels empty or quiet, and EVE and WALL•E's characters don't suffer at all for their lack of verbosity. It's amazing to me just how much feeling EVE's voice actress can put into just yelling 'WALL•E!!!'
The insertion of real-live humans into the CG action is new as well, and a little jarring at first, but i think it's very effective: it makes seeing what has become of humanity, 700 years later, all the more jarring.
Another way in which WALL•E differs, not so much from Pixar's past films as from American films in general, is in the characterization of its heroine. EVE is not simply a pretty face or some abstract ideal that the hero wants to possess or a prize for him to 'get' (tropes which far too many romance stories fall into, hence my general lack of patience for the genre). EVE is just as well-developed and interesting a character as WALL•E, and there's no doubt she's more powerful than he is -- faster, stronger, smarter, more efficient, and of course, better-armed. It's an interesting reversal of gender roles, to have the robot that's coded female be the aggressive, serious, disciplined, and srs bzns one, and the one that's coded male (well, honestly, coded gender-neutral, but sadly our culture tends to read that as male anyway) be sweet, nurturing, gentle, and shy -- and to have both of them end up loving each other just as they are. Usually it seems that if a romance heroine is strong and independent, she gets 'tamed' by the end of the story, but no -- EVE is just as badass at the end of the film as she is at the start -- her feelings and her priorities have changed, but her personality hasn't, and I loved that.
And maybe this'll sound a little weird, but I really liked that EVE isn't sexualized at all. Maybe I've been watching too much anime, but it feels like a nice change to have a robot that's coded female but not sexualized (or even anthropomorphized -- Eve looks more like an egg with flippers, or the flying paper dolls from Spirited Away than anything). Even her voice sounds young and girlish, not sexy (you know what I mean, there have been plenty of instances in various media of the ship's computer or whatever having a sexy female voice, Majel Barret notwithstanding). And like I said, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's nice when it's not done all the time.
Another departure is that WALL•E is such a philosophical film. I mean, all of Pixar's movies so far have had good messages in them, generally about friendship and loyalty and dedication and being true to yourself, and WALL•E certainly touches on these sorts of themes. But it also addresses more topical themes in a fashion that might not work for some viewers, and that makes it risky. There's a definite environmentalist thread running through the movie: after all, the reason the humans have to leave Earth is that they've trashed it so badly it can no longer support life. But on top of that, there's a strong message about the dangers of consumerism, of indolence, of never looking past the screens of our legions of electronic devices to notice the world -- or the people -- around us. I suppose some might find WALL•E preachy for that reason, but I still think it's a really important message that is far too easily and often forgotten.
The last thing I'm gonna talk about will probably make some of you roll your eyes, but I hope you'll bear with me. At first I thought this was just kind of a silly little coincidence, but the more I thought about it, the more it started to make a certain kind of sense, and the more I started to suspect that it was there intentionally. I'm talking about religious symbolism in a Pixar movie, so if the very concept angers you or makes you wet yourself laughing, you may want to quit here. XD This is also where the spoilers start, so consider yourself warned.
So, it started with me wondering why they named her EVE. I mean, the folks at Pixar are ridonkulously creative, I'm sure they could have named her ISABELLA or DOROTHY and still come up with an equally reasonable-sounding acronym. but they chose EVE. EVE who (seeing as she is a robot, after all) was created to serve man. EVE, who accepts a curious little plant from a strange little thing that crawls along the ground and won't leave her alone. EVE, who returns to her human masters with said plant, which prompts them to leave their little paradise, where all their needs are seen to, where they want for absolutely nothing and need not work or labor or suffer at all -- leave all that, and go reclaim the barren, dusty earth, and live and die and create and grow green things. Can you see where I'm going with this?
This sort of Second Genesis theme is, of course, only there if you look for it, and even if you do see it you're welcome to ignore it; after all, not everyone wants Judeo-Chrstian symbolism mucking up their woobie robot love story, and I can respect that. On a personal level, though, I think it's very cool, for the same reason I think His Dark Materials and Archangel Protocol are cool: because they take religious symbolism but, rather than rehash the same old story, they do something new with it, something that highlights the power and agency and potential of human beings. I'm not trying to suggest that this film is promoting some kind of anti-religion agenda (even if the humans in WALL•E do manage to turn off their meddling, paternalistic 'I know what's best for you now do as I say' voice in the sky); but I do think it promotes a very humanist agenda. It encourages people to take responsibility for themselves and their actions, make their own decisions, and not to let convenience and safety be a substitute for personal freedom. And I think that's very cool.
So that's WALL•E, and if you're still reading this, then congratulations, you're almost as much of a dork as I am. XDb Well done!
In other news, I bought myself a pedometer, to keep track of just how much walking I do during the day. I didn't do as much as I normally would this morning, because I had to take time off work to meet with my adviser, and also it was really humid today and I really didn't want to drag my heavy backpack all over campus, so I hid in the office all morning and then took the bus down to my internship site. But I still walked almost 3 miles, according to that little thing. Go me!
Edit: I linked to this months ago, and then forgot aobut it, but now that the movie's out, I thought some of you might get some extra enjoyment out of it. XD Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Buy N Large.
Now, here's that lengthy WALL•E review I threatened promised earlier.
WALL•E is Pixar's ninth feature film, and the second one directed by Andrew Stanton, who also directed Finding Nemo, and like Finding Nemo, WALL•E is carried primarily not by its story (which is relatively simple and, honestly, nothing we haven't seen before) but by its characters, and the emotions they convey.
WALL•E is many things: a comedy, a drama, a message film, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure; but at its core, WALL•E is a love story, and a far better one than any cinematic romance I can remember seeing in a long time. The story revolves around WALL•E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth class), a small robot left behind to clean up the planet after the humans have left. WALL•E doesn't talk much (the sounds he does make are provided by Ben Burtt, an Oscar-winning sound designer responsible for, among other things, R2-D2's chirps and whistles and Darth Vader's distinctive heavy breathing); however, that little robot has more energy, charm, and expressiveness than a lot of flesh-and-blood actors I could name. WALL•E is an absolute delight, and some of my favorite moments in the movie come in the first 20 minutes: we're treated to WALL•E simply going about his business, compacting trash, collecting his treasures (anything he deems interesting enough to keep, including (but not limited to) a trash can lid, Christmas tree lights, cigarette lighters, a "Hello, Dolly" cassette, and a spork) and interacting with his only friend/pet, a cockroach (which, despite the fact that it looks and behaves like a real roach and not the anthropomorphized insects of A Bug's Life, is still oddly cute, in a gross-ish sort of way). I pretty much spent that whole segment of my film grinning like an idiot and covering my mouth with my hand because I didn't want to squeal aloud in the theater.
Things change for WALL•E when EVE arrives. Sent by the long-absent humans to reevaluate Earth's habitability, EVE is sleek, beautiful, and efficient (her smooth white design, along with WALL•E's familiar startup chime, both attest to Pixar's ongoing love affair with Apple computers), as well as temperamental and a wee bit trigger-happy. She shoots at WALL•E several times when he tries to approach her, and at one point blows up a whole line of stranded cargo ships in a fit of pique after she accidentally gets stuck to a loading magnet. Despite EVE's violent nature, WALL•E is fascinated with her, and eventually is able to introduce himself to her (and then, as always happens when you have two different OSes trying to communicate, he gets her name wrong). Still, once she stops trying to vaporize him, the two get along quite well -- WALL•E even takes her home and shows her his treasures.
All too soon, however, the ship that deposited EVE on Earth comes back to retrieve her, and a panicked WALL•E stows away (if you can call clinging to the hull 'stowing away') so as not to be separated from his new friend. The ship tows him all the way back to the Axiom, one of the massive space cruise liners on which human beings departed Earth, 700 years ago. And then things really start to get interesting...
WALL•E has had a whole lot of love put into it, and it shows; in addition to being a love story, the film is also a love letter to sci-fi movies of the 70s and 80s (the ones many of the Pixar staff probably grew up on); movies like Short Circuit, The Last Starfighter, E.T., and the original Star Wars movies; movies that were hopeful and humorous and whimsical in their story telling. (There's also a great 2001: A Space Odyssey homage in there, it's kind of hard to miss). Don't get me wrong, I'm still a big fan of hard sci-fi as well, but there's definitely a place for science fiction that has that kind of joy and wonder to it, and WALL•E does that beautifully.
And then there are the visuals. The whole film is gorgeous -- no surprise, as Pixar have been outdoing themselves with each successive movie and show no signs of breaking that tradition any time soon. They also show no indication of breaking their tradition of wonderfully imaginative characters and well-conceived stories. However, there are definitely some ways that WALL•E does break tradition, and hat's part of why it's such a good movie.
One such way is that the film is, as I mentioned, a love story. Now, all of Pixar's movies have had romance in them, from Bo Peep and Woody in Toy Story to Collette and Linguini in Ratatouille, and of course, my personal favorite, Helen and Bob Parr in The Incredibles. But the romance has never been the central element of the story: it generally happens on the sidelines, while the plot takes center stage. Not so here. You would have no film without WALL•E's dedication to EVE and his adorable desire to hold her hand, and the development of EVE's feelings toward him is equally important to the ability of the film to function at all. Their 'dance' scene is one of my favorites in the film -- it's just so joyous and happy and beautiful, and their 'kiss' is just darling.
The absence of dialogue is another departure; the first half of the movie in particular plays much like a silent film, with music, gesture, and expression filling in all the gaps where dialogue might otherwise be. Though the film is lacking dialogue, it never feels empty or quiet, and EVE and WALL•E's characters don't suffer at all for their lack of verbosity. It's amazing to me just how much feeling EVE's voice actress can put into just yelling 'WALL•E!!!'
The insertion of real-live humans into the CG action is new as well, and a little jarring at first, but i think it's very effective: it makes seeing what has become of humanity, 700 years later, all the more jarring.
Another way in which WALL•E differs, not so much from Pixar's past films as from American films in general, is in the characterization of its heroine. EVE is not simply a pretty face or some abstract ideal that the hero wants to possess or a prize for him to 'get' (tropes which far too many romance stories fall into, hence my general lack of patience for the genre). EVE is just as well-developed and interesting a character as WALL•E, and there's no doubt she's more powerful than he is -- faster, stronger, smarter, more efficient, and of course, better-armed. It's an interesting reversal of gender roles, to have the robot that's coded female be the aggressive, serious, disciplined, and srs bzns one, and the one that's coded male (well, honestly, coded gender-neutral, but sadly our culture tends to read that as male anyway) be sweet, nurturing, gentle, and shy -- and to have both of them end up loving each other just as they are. Usually it seems that if a romance heroine is strong and independent, she gets 'tamed' by the end of the story, but no -- EVE is just as badass at the end of the film as she is at the start -- her feelings and her priorities have changed, but her personality hasn't, and I loved that.
And maybe this'll sound a little weird, but I really liked that EVE isn't sexualized at all. Maybe I've been watching too much anime, but it feels like a nice change to have a robot that's coded female but not sexualized (or even anthropomorphized -- Eve looks more like an egg with flippers, or the flying paper dolls from Spirited Away than anything). Even her voice sounds young and girlish, not sexy (you know what I mean, there have been plenty of instances in various media of the ship's computer or whatever having a sexy female voice, Majel Barret notwithstanding). And like I said, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's nice when it's not done all the time.
Another departure is that WALL•E is such a philosophical film. I mean, all of Pixar's movies so far have had good messages in them, generally about friendship and loyalty and dedication and being true to yourself, and WALL•E certainly touches on these sorts of themes. But it also addresses more topical themes in a fashion that might not work for some viewers, and that makes it risky. There's a definite environmentalist thread running through the movie: after all, the reason the humans have to leave Earth is that they've trashed it so badly it can no longer support life. But on top of that, there's a strong message about the dangers of consumerism, of indolence, of never looking past the screens of our legions of electronic devices to notice the world -- or the people -- around us. I suppose some might find WALL•E preachy for that reason, but I still think it's a really important message that is far too easily and often forgotten.
The last thing I'm gonna talk about will probably make some of you roll your eyes, but I hope you'll bear with me. At first I thought this was just kind of a silly little coincidence, but the more I thought about it, the more it started to make a certain kind of sense, and the more I started to suspect that it was there intentionally. I'm talking about religious symbolism in a Pixar movie, so if the very concept angers you or makes you wet yourself laughing, you may want to quit here. XD This is also where the spoilers start, so consider yourself warned.
So, it started with me wondering why they named her EVE. I mean, the folks at Pixar are ridonkulously creative, I'm sure they could have named her ISABELLA or DOROTHY and still come up with an equally reasonable-sounding acronym. but they chose EVE. EVE who (seeing as she is a robot, after all) was created to serve man. EVE, who accepts a curious little plant from a strange little thing that crawls along the ground and won't leave her alone. EVE, who returns to her human masters with said plant, which prompts them to leave their little paradise, where all their needs are seen to, where they want for absolutely nothing and need not work or labor or suffer at all -- leave all that, and go reclaim the barren, dusty earth, and live and die and create and grow green things. Can you see where I'm going with this?
This sort of Second Genesis theme is, of course, only there if you look for it, and even if you do see it you're welcome to ignore it; after all, not everyone wants Judeo-Chrstian symbolism mucking up their woobie robot love story, and I can respect that. On a personal level, though, I think it's very cool, for the same reason I think His Dark Materials and Archangel Protocol are cool: because they take religious symbolism but, rather than rehash the same old story, they do something new with it, something that highlights the power and agency and potential of human beings. I'm not trying to suggest that this film is promoting some kind of anti-religion agenda (even if the humans in WALL•E do manage to turn off their meddling, paternalistic 'I know what's best for you now do as I say' voice in the sky); but I do think it promotes a very humanist agenda. It encourages people to take responsibility for themselves and their actions, make their own decisions, and not to let convenience and safety be a substitute for personal freedom. And I think that's very cool.
So that's WALL•E, and if you're still reading this, then congratulations, you're almost as much of a dork as I am. XDb Well done!
In other news, I bought myself a pedometer, to keep track of just how much walking I do during the day. I didn't do as much as I normally would this morning, because I had to take time off work to meet with my adviser, and also it was really humid today and I really didn't want to drag my heavy backpack all over campus, so I hid in the office all morning and then took the bus down to my internship site. But I still walked almost 3 miles, according to that little thing. Go me!
Edit: I linked to this months ago, and then forgot aobut it, but now that the movie's out, I thought some of you might get some extra enjoyment out of it. XD Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Buy N Large.