WALL-E

The 2008 Pixar animated film, WALL-E seems to have split audiences as more time has gone on. Doing really well at the box office, winning the Best Animated Feature award at the Oscars, and being released during a period when Pixar was arguably at its highest (having just released films like Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Ratatouille), WALL-E did still manage to make an impact when it came out, with critics and audiences loving it. However, a common consensus for the film was that the opening of WALL-E is considered one of the best portions of any Pixar film ever to be constructed, and the rest of the movie is only just solid. While no one seems to dislike WALL-E, it was one of the first to at least feature this kind of crucial differentiation that divided people on the film’s quality. Despite this, WALL-E is still a very touching, entertaining, and insightful movie that got people to fall in love with a robotic romance set in the far future. In the 22nd century after consumerism, corporate greed and environmental neglect left the planet in the state of disarray, Earth was no longer fit for humans to live on, which prompted the mega-corporation, Buy n’ Large to evacuate humanity aboard a giant spacecraft known as the Axiom and leave behind robots to clean up the mess. After 700 years, only one robot remains, a little junk robot named WALL-E (voiced by Ben Burtt). Though he continues his job and enjoys the various human paraphernalia he recovers from his job, he is desperately lonely on this isolated planet. This changes when a spaceship arrives with a futuristic robot named EVE (voiced by Elissa Knight) who has returned to Earth to look for signs of life. Immediately smitten with her, the two slowly to start to form a friendship, but EVE is put into stand-by mood once she sees a plant that WALL-E discovered. After returning to the Axiom with WALL-E tagging along, its discovered that the generation of humans have grown fat and dependent on their robotic helpers to do anything, with even the captain of the ship (voiced by Jeff Garlin) being reliant on the ship’s auto pilot, AUTO. Once it’s revealed that AUTO is preventing the humans from going home and is trying to confiscate the plane to make sure that doesn’t happen, WALL-E and EVE need to fight against this threat, get the plant to the true captain, and bring humanity home after being gone for so many years. WALL-E contains a lot of strengths, with likeable characters, fantastic animation and music, and a truly remarkable opening, but the generic and evenly overly simplistic second act of this film takes what was an outstanding film and morphs it into just a pretty solid one.

The focus of the story has a heavy environmental push at its centre, with its entire premise centring around the follies of mankind, the self-reliance on technology and the necessity to car for one’s own wellbeing as well as their location around them. Thankfully, not only is the element done for the most part very well and not at all in a preachy way, but it also has a very human centre which ironically come from the main characters, as their bond and blooming romance fuels the rest of the movie and keeps its audience very engaged. It sounds like the film went through several different story restructures as the director Andrew Stanton and the writing team consisting of Jim Reardon and Pete Doctor, kept trying to find different of using this one idea of ”earth being abandoned with a singular robot being left behind to clean it up”, but it feels like they direction they went with was the most digestible (one draft had the humans being replaced with a gelatinous alien species known as the Gel, it sounds pretty odd). Most of the opening is really where a majority of the film’s pros are featured as everything surrounding it is honestly pretty perfect, as even the first shot of the Earth consumed by mountains or even buildings worth of garbage is such a fantastic image and so quickly sets up the theme and message of this story without having to say a single word. On top of that, its minimal dialogue allows for a wildly fresh experience that relies on sounds and physical communication and context clues to build upon its world and characters, the atmosphere is amazingly bleak and overwhelming yet never sorrowful or unpleasant due to the likability of the lead, there’s a soft even meditative calmness to the film that is further pushed by the musical score, visuals and characters , and the sole focus on the two leads and their growing romance is very engrossing and entertaining. The slow pace and subdue tone allow the audience to soak in the environment, the characters, and the message without getting bored by it, it has great levity mixed with the ever-present knowledge of humanity’s destruction of the planet, and its feels decently grounded in a realistic manner despite starring two cutely designed robots. While all of this is top-tier material, problems start to arise when the movie travels to the spaceship where the rest of the humans are. It’s not so much that they film goes downhill as there are still good scenes during and after this detour, but it rather goes very stagnant and generic against an incredible intro that could’ve held the movie together perfectly fine. The subtle manner in which the film was stating its environment message being replaced by a more openly spoken and even obviously presented delivery isn’t wrong, but it feels in stark contrast to its previous attempt and seems disconnected from the opening because of that. It starts to feel a lot more formulaic and traditional Pixar during these sequences, including cartoonish side characters that don’t stand for much outside of recognizable voices and attempts at selling toys, the conspiracy surrounding the robots trying to prevent the humans from leaving could’ve worked, but the plan and execution of said plan is very stereotypical, and what was once a wholly unique-feeling experience has now transformed into something a lot more mainstream and predictable.

While it’s hard to say that a lot of the characters in this film are very memorable or anywhere near the same level of iconic as some of Pixar’s other films, the two leads are very enjoyable characters to be around and make for some instantly iconic characters for the company. The dualling nature of their personalities makes their relationship very engaging to watch, the design of both of them are very distinct and the animation really adds a lot of color and personality, and its genuinely wholesome watching these two robots fall in love.  WALL-E is very curious and maybe a bit of a hopeless romantic, but he’s also very eager to help and incredibly likeable and innocent in a world of nothing but hard-core robots. EVE is very much the opposite with being more directive-focused and quicker to jump to violence, but her softer side coming through around WALL-E is very sweet and their conclusion is very touching. Although not having much dialogue, both Elissa Knight and sound designer Ben Burtt bring a lot of personality to these voices despite them still sounding very robotic in nature. The rest of the cast isn’t anything that special, and even considering the minimal cast they have anyway, the fact that little to none leave much of an impression, that’s not a good sign.  The only one that does okay is the Captain of the ship who does go through his own arc of standing up for himself and taking back command over the ship, but a lot of the other robots only feel like one-note gags rather than characters, all the humans kind of look and act the same and they only seem to exist to push forward a message, and AUTO going full HAL 9000 in trying to take over the ship is fine from a story-telling perspective, but again doesn’t leave much of an impression (although it is funny knowing that his voice is just MacInTalk).

The animation feels the film is very impressive, even for a company as great at animation as Pixar, and a lot of atmosphere and mood is set thanks to how well the film constructs color, textures, and lighting. The musty browns and harsh golden light of the earth gives off a nice rustic run-down feel to the whole environment, and it even works well for contrast when they travel to the spacecraft where everything is polished, clean and features a lot of whites, purples, and blues. The ship is sadly not a very interesting location to be around sadly, as it just seems to feature a lot of familiar elements and components that we’ve seen from other futuristic sci-fi stories, and it doesn’t bring enough new to the table to distract the audience away from that. It’s not awful by any means (that imagine of every person being wheeled around in a hovering lounge chair is a good visual), but it’s not very memorable, and the already mentioned lacking robot design and even the little choppy way the humans look can get a little distracting (which is made worse by the fact that a lot of them looked like reused models).  Also, the film’s odd usage of live-action feels like an odd decision that doesn’t seem to serve any purpose and only draws more attention to how not-natural these people look (if there were no humans in the world, it could work but that isn’t what happens). The music is very nice, with the score by Thomas Newman being uplifting and atmospheric and even the usage of the soundtrack featuring classic songs from the 1930s and even the soundtrack of Hello Dolly, works well in the film and even helps bring a sense of timeless identity to the picture. Very much like the popular video game franchise, Fallout, it captures the lifeless environment with ironic songs that not only set the mood perfectly with the upbeat hopeful melodies match with ugly reality, but also does a solid job capturing the mood and spirit of the scenes they’re featured in.

WALL-E is still a very enjoyable flick that has still in the hearts of many for all these years, so it’s not like any of its problems held it back so hard. It could have been an unbelievable picture if it kept the tone from the opening, but the movie’s oddly segmented quality does hold back what could’ve been one of Pixar’s best films, and just makes it another perfectly capable and entertaining, but not above-average project. The two leads are likeable and engaging, the animation is very nice, and it has some light-hearted entertaining elements for kids to get interested in, but it also has some very mature and atmospheric moments for adults to get sucked into. Even if it does get worse as it keeps going, it’s not enough to ruin what came before, and there are far worse movies out there with a similar kind of message. Put on your Sunday clothes and see for yourself whether this movie is a success all the way through or if you are more half and half.