Cinefantastique Online

A wonderful CGI film that teeters on the brink of greatness

By Steve Biodrowski

Is it “one of the absolute best hard science fiction films” of the past decade?  Or is it “leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind“? Well, neither actually. In the former case, Harry Knowles was perhaps bucking a little bit too hard to get himself quoted in the advertising campaign; at least his reaction in some way reflects what is up on the screen – the 97% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes proves he is not alone in bestowing praise on the film. In the later case, Shannen Coffin – along with the likes of Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg - was simply indulging in what passes for “thinking” among paranoid wing-nuts, who see liberal conspiracies everywhere, especially in Hollywood movies (for example, the silly advance reaction to THE HAPPENING, discussed here).

One is tempted to conclude that the truth falls somewhere between these two extremes, but the wing-nut reaction is so extreme as to make the formulation useless. WALL-E is, quite simply, a wonderful animated film that teeters on the edge of greatness but stumbles ever so slightly toward being merely very good. The movie is at its best and most innovative during its first third, which plays like visionary piece of science fiction gene-spliced with a silent movie romantic comedy. As horrible as that hybrid might sound, it is actually a potent combination. Vast cityscapes, beautifully rendered with computer-generated imagery, dazzle the as much as any live-action special effects movie, while the quirky little love story engages your heart without insulting your head.

The titular robot lives along on Earth, which has been abandoned by the human population, which plans to return once the mess it left behind has been cleaned up. Wall-E spends his eyes compacting garbage into neat, square blocks and stacking them onto structures as high as skyscrapers (these scenes rank alongside 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and BLADE RUNNER as memorable visualizations of the future).

Somewhere along the way, Wall-E has expanded beyond his programming - which is to say, he has developed a personality. From the heaps of garbage he salvages items that interest him, and adds them to his collection. He also has a cockroach¹ companion – a hint that Wall-E’s circuits are yearning for something more: friendship, maybe even romance.

The opportunity arrives in the form of Eve, a graceful robot who arrives on a mysterious mission to Earth. Wall-E is immediately smitten, even though her first reaction to him is to use her blaster. In the grand tradition of silent movie comedy heroes (who won the beautiful girl in spite of their own unassuming appearances), Wall-E captures her interest and soon her devotion.

This amazing section of the film is a triumph of animated pantomime. Although the two robots exchange a few words (basically, their names), the storytelling rests on the visuals, which succeed magnificently at overcoming the most obvious hurdle built into the plot: How can we identify with the romantic yearnings of an inhuman mechanical droid – especially when he can never tell us what is in his heart?

Unfortunately, the filmmakers at some point decided this avante garde aproach could not be sustained for feature length, and who knows? Maybe they were right. (It is perhaps a miracle that the silent movie approach sustains itself for as long as it does.) In any case, it turns out that Eve’s mission is to check for signs of live on Earth; when she finds them (a plant that Wall-E had discovered earlier), she returns to outer space, with Wall-E in tow.

We then get a look at what humanity has been doing for the intervening 700 years: basically, growing fat and lazy in low-gravity. Unfortunately, Pixar’s design and animation of human figures has always been the weak brush in their palette; they are better at toys, insects, monsters, and robots than at people, and WALL-E is no exception. Writer-director Andrew Stanton had been avoiding this problem: early scenes provide glimpses of humanity (on broken view screens and old TV sets) that featured live action (clips from HELLO, DOLLY!² and new footage of Fred Willard as the CEO who crafted the clean-up plan for Earth). Having established that people look like real people, Stanton makes the mistake of switching to animated humans, and we are supposed to assume that several centuries of de-evolution not only turn you into a pile of blubber but also make you look computer-generated.

This sad state of affairs is part of the film’s new plot thread. Eve’s discovery is supposed to set in motion a return to Earth (which was originally intended to take place within a generation of leaving), but the space ark’s auto-pilot has other ideas, creating an opportunity for some suspense and heroics. Like Dave lobotomizing Hal in SPACE ODYSSEY, the lazy descendants of Earth will have to regain control of their ship (WALL-E drives the comparison home with a reprise of Richard Strauss’s famous “Thus Spake Zarathustra” – this time used not to signal the intervention of a mysterious monolith but to underscore the willpower necessary to stand up and walk after a life spent living in a mobile chair.)

It is not a bad sci-fi scenario, but it is disappointingly conventional after what preceded. The shift sends WALL-E from being a great film to being an entertaining cartoon. As much as Stanton wants to “play with the big boys,” he relies on the the medium of animation – or rather our expectations of that medium – to get him over the humps in his story. After all, it what we are watching is just a cartoon, we not only will accept Wall-E sentience without addressing the philosophical quibbles, we will also accept that corpulent humans, coddled all their lives by machines, will somehow manage to re-inhabit the Earth simply because a single plant has grown there. (What they will do about the missing – presumably dead – animal life is never mentioned.)

Perhaps we should not fault the film too much for asking us to overlook the believability of the scenario. WALL-E really wants to deliver a message along with its love story, and that message has nothing to do with the “evil of mankind.” In spite of its robot hero, the film is really saying something about human responsibility: that people need to clean up their own mess, not rely on machines to do it for them. There is no suggestion that the Earth is better off for the absence of humanity; rather, the real problem (stated rather bluntly) is that humanity has abandoned Earth instead of tending to it themselves, and the solution is for people to get back home instead of enjoying their extended stay in outer space.

One suspects that this is the part of the message that truly has the wing-nuts brains fried. One of the myths promulgated by Republicans like Newt Gringrich is that technology, not politics, will ultimately solve all our problems, creating a post-partisan paradise filled by an overwhelming abundance of goods and services, along with the leisure to enjoy them. The humans in WALL-E live in exactly this sort of paradise, and the film makes it clear that they have become somehow less than human; fortunately, as pleasant and safe as their lives are, a ghostly trace of ambition remains – and they trade their cushy comfort in exchange for the hard work of restoring Mother Earth.

This is WALL-E’s true crime in the eyes of the wing-nuts. The script does not say that humans are part of the problem but part of the solution. The real problem is disengaging from the world, relying on machines to do the work that people should do. The idea that people are preferable to machines is neither radical nor liberal; if anything itis profoundly conservative. Only someone looking for a place to grind his ax could find fault with the movie’s message, which is nothing more outrageous than, “Technology cannot save all our problems, and even if it could, there is some intrinsic value in doing a little hard work yourself.”

Since this message mongering sounds at odds with the robotic love story, it is only fair to note that the script actually ties the two threads together quite nicely. [SPOILER ALERT] Like Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, Wall-E is forced into unlikely heroics in pursuit of his love object; he rises to the occasion – goes above and beyond the call of duty, putting himself in harm’s way and paying the price, leading to a devastating tear-jerker moment when Eve reassembles the damaged droid, only to find that the flicker of personality that made Wall-E more than his programming, might not have survived…[END SPOILER]

WALL-E has all the virtues one expects from a Pixar animated film: humor, excitement, imagination. It also has a little something more, an impressive ambition that seeks to go beyond what animation is assumed to be capable of. On the most fundamental level, it makes the audience care about its title character far more than Spielberg’s heavy-handed A.I. ever did. Its first act goes beyond entertainment to be reckoned as one of the great achievements in cinema – a perfect example of form and content working in perfect symmetry to create art in a way that is unique to the medium. Clearly, WALL-E wants to be regarded not merely as a great cartoon but as a great film, period, and during its first act it largely succeeds. That it ultimately falls short reflects less a failing than a raising of the bar: when you aim this high, you can beat all the competition even if you fail to set a new world record.  

 TRIVIA

Wall-E’s mechanical voice is provided by Ben Burtt, the sound designer who worked such magic in the STAR WARS films.

WALL-E (2008). Directed by Andrew Stanton. Screenplay by Andrew Stanton. Cast: Fred Willard. Voices: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Although he does not act as a conscience, it is tempting to see this cockroach friend as Wall-E’s equivalent of Jiminy Cricket – another insect friend of an artificially created character who achieves humanity.
2. This title has been corrected in this text. Originally, the article misidentified the musical seen on WALL-E’s TV as THE MUSIC MAN.