Okay, so I'm like weeks late to the party, but I finally took Daughter to see WALL-E last night. If any of the 12 of you who read this haven't seen it, just skip this post. I don't think I'm going to give away anything, but really, the plot isn't why you go see this film.
ObOMG: The graphics are freaking amazing! The tracking shots as WALL-E is racing back and forth from his home are gorgeous, and the sheer amount of STUFF going on in each frame is ridiculous.
ObApple: EVE is what you get when you let Apple design a robot.
Alright, now to the bee in my bonnet. I've had people tell me this is a very political movie. I've also read blogs and "open letters" from fat people who think the movie is targeting them as the butt of the joke. (Full disclosure: I'm fat. I weigh 340 lb on a 6'1" frame, and even though a lot of is muscle, a lot of it isn't. I could lose about 100 lb.)
So, in a future 800 or so years from now, the Earth is totally polluted. Oh, by the way, apparently, Earth was also pretty much taken over by one retail chain (Buy-N-Large), and American culture is 100% dominant, at least aboard the Axiom. It should be noted that the Axiom is just one of many space-going habitats that mankind has escaped Earth in, so maybe the NorAm-centric nature is because the Axiom launched from America (apparently, New York City). Buy-N-Large has long since managed to pervade every aspect of human life, even before the space arks take off. This only gets worse on the Buy-N-Large-owned arks, where robots do EVERYTHING for humans, and every aspect of life is pretty much dictated by the ubiquitous electronic signage throughout the ship. As you might imagine, a human race which doesn't have to work for anything, doesn't. As 700 years pass, people become sedentary and fat, tooling around on their hover-chairs, catered to by robots, and avoiding pretty much everything but consuming. Ironically, the ads for the space-arks (one of which is conveniently still operating on Earth after 700+ years) depicted a very active shipboard lifestyle, with the hoverchairs originally meant to enable the less-physically-able to enjoy shipboard activities.
(Note: I have some personal experience here. Everyone knows the Wii is this wonderful little machine that lets you get up off the couch and be active while you play video games. Well, my friends and I have managed to discover how to use the Wii Remotes from the safety and comfort of the couch. We can play a full 9 holes of Wii Sports golf with the only energy expended being the occasional flick of the wrist. But I do stand up to play Guitar Hero.)
Yes, the haplessness of the Axiomites is played for laughs, but I didn't get the sense it was out of mean-spiritedness. I think everyone can agree that a life that sedentary is NOT healthy, by any definition of the word. If you happen to be fat right now, and you're living a life that sedentary, then maybe you can take offense to the movie. But if you do even the smallest things for yourself, THIS MOVIE WAS NOT ABOUT YOU. It's only when the introduction of WALL-E (and the discoveries he unwittingly makes) adds a little chaos to the ship that a handful of these sheeple start thinking for themselves. And once these people shake off the stupor induced by having their every whim instantly catered to, they start becoming human again. The man and the woman who get "woken up" by WALL-E find one another, and begin what appears to be a romance. Never once are we given the idea that these fat, sedentary people are ugly or unworthy of love, they're simply blind to the possibility. (Now, this does raise the question of where the babies in the nursery have been coming from, but being a Disney flick, all the "love" is pure, platonic, and at the hand-holding, spark-generating level.)
Another minor nit. In the movie, the Earth is covered with trash, near-Earth space is littered with what appears to be millions of satellites, and apparently the whole planet became uninhabitable. The amount of trash seems far out of proportion to the amount of raw material that the Earth can produce. Yes, yes, I understand, hyperbole. What I don't understand is if the human race of the movie can produce enough space arks to evacuate the entire planet (all 6 billion or so, unless there's been an unmentioned apocalypse sometime before the exodus), why can't they just load up a bunch of these arks with garbage and pilot them into the sun? Apparently, resources other than arable land are not lacking in this version of Earth. Each of the arks has the ability to sustain the lives of thousands of people for hundreds of years, not to mention the resources required to build the arks, and the resources represented by all that trash.
Litter bad. Recycling good. Sedentary bad. Exercise good. Retail bad. Farming good. Love is universal. Holding hands is the nec plus ultra of love, at least for robots. Dancing is double-super-plus-good, particularly when unencumbered by gravity. And little white Apple robots (hmmm...Eve tempted Adam with an apple...), when not being watched by supervisor robots, will indulge in egrgious wastes of power just to do a little supersonic jetting over a trashed landscape before getting to work. Oh, and a robot that can appreciate "Hello, Dolly!" and fall in love with a little white iBot can be surprisingly practical when it comes to the demise of its fellow WALL-Es (dead comrades = spare parts). Interesting set of lessons, if you choose to view it as a movie with lessons, but I chose to be awed by the spectacle, and touched by the love stories.
Your own mileage may vary.
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