Ultimate Pixar Tribute- Movie #9: Wall•E

by Nick DeVito

Plot: (Keep in mind that the plot of this movie is very complex, so I’ll do my best to summarize it in a shorter way than usual.) 795 years into the future, Earth has become so polluted with trash that life has become unsustainable, and all of the surviving humans have left onto a series of never-ending space cruise liners (the jewel ship called the Axiom).

Wall•E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter • Earth class) is the last robot of his kind, and the last “living” thing on Earth (besides his single cockroach companion). He has been spending the last 700 years cleaning up Earth’s trash and putting it into small cubes for easier management.

Over this long period of time, Wall•E has acquired a little glitch: a soul (sort of). One day, a spacecraft lands on Earth and drops off another droid named Eve (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) before leaving again. Wall•E’s incredible loneliness is relieved when he falls in love with her and is able to show her many of Earth’s treasures (after she is very aggressive and reluctant to be friends). When Wall•E shows her a plant however, (probably the last one on Earth) she takes it and goes into hibernation mode until the spaceship returns and takes her and Wall•E off Earth to the Axiom.

It is revealed that many Eves were put on to different parts of Earth, in order to find life (such as a plant) so that that Earth could redeem itself as sustainable once more and the survivors aboard the Axiom could return home. When Wall•E and Eve arrive on the enormous Axiom, they are taken to the captain who (like the rest of the spaceship’s humans) has grown to a form where he can no longer walk due to the effects of weightlessness, and relies solely on robots to do his tasks for him; because of this he has become severely overweight.

When the plant is revealed missing... Alright, I’m not even half way done with this (especially considering that this is the condensed version of the story). Basically, they race to find the plant before the evil Autopilot disposes of it, and that’s all I’m going to tell you about it (although there will still be spoilers as follows). Besides, it’s better to see the rest of the movie yourself.

Well: This is my favorite film of all time. I’m not just talking about my favorite Pixar film; I mean out of all the movies in the world, this one is my favorite.

The Godfather? No thank you. The Shining? Maybe another time. Citizen Kane? It's not happening. Wall•E? Oh, yes! I simply love this movie, and to me, it truly is perfect.

Anyway, as I said everything here is perfect. The visuals are jaw-dropping; they pass Ratatouille’s standards by a long shot, and at some points the things in this movie look like exact replicas of what they’re trying to represent.

When they go on to the Axiom, however, everything looks more like the future we come to expect from sci-fi movies, and it looks just as incredible as Earth does, but in a completely different way.

Watching this movie is a real treat, because Pixar puts the hardest work into creating the most unnoticeable details, including things you probably wouldn’t think about (such as making the air look polluted).

The music is superb! The score takes on several different moods with the same tone, but with a distinct difference to each. One of my favorite parts of the score is when Wall•E and Eve are shown dancing around Axiom in space, (but that’s everybody’s favorite scene). I also love the score accompanying the scene where Eve first lands on Earth and flies around the city while Wall•E looks on. The score playing during the tear-jerking finale is also a favorite of mine. The ending song “Down to Earth” is a masterpiece, and was nominated for an Oscar.

The story is brilliant! It’s a huge leap from the stories of other Pixar films, because the scope has vastly expanded, and it has a lot more complexity to it. While being entertaining on its own, the story dives deeper into the fears of real-life humans, while presenting a polluted dystopia of our future world.

The relationship between Wall•E and Eve (dare I say it), is compelling enough to rival the romance of Casablanca (maybe even enough to surpass it). The ending scene alone is enough to bring most people to tears, and even I am moved by this scene (which is saying a lot since I usually prefer to watch horror films).

But the best feature this movie has going for it is its extreme lack of dialogue. It’s truly a visual performance because the humans are the only people who actually talk, while the robots say very few lines of dialogue.

I love how it honors the old silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton (especially in the beginning). Most Chaplin films involve him trying to impress a girl completely out of his league; this is exactly like the main plot of the movie.

Keaton’s influences come from the physical humor of Wall•E trying to impress Eve, and from his emotionally colorful face. What I mean is that Keaton was the master of expressions in the silent era, and this was a huge piece of inspiration for the robot characters.

Wall•E is easy to proclaim feelings in comparison to the other robots, because he has eyes, brows, a voice (sort of), and artificial “elbows”. Take a look at Eve or M•O however; all they have are two eyes. It’s incredible watching how much Pixar has accomplished with this film, and this is only the first twenty minutes!

The first dialogue comes 5 minutes in (but it doesn’t technically count since it’s a recorded message over a holographic billboard). Wall•E and Eve don’t exchange their first words until 22 minutes in, and the first human words aren’t spoken until 39 minutes into the movie!

Even still, most of Wall•E’s words consist of: “Wall•E, Eve, and directive,” among other various bleeps and bloops. Director Andrew Stanton and his crew had to watch old Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton movies every day in order to master the art of visual performances.

The end credits are, in my opinion, the best credits ever! It first goes through an epilogue of human life after the Axiom landed back on Earth, while showing it through many different forms of art in chronological order. It starts out as cave drawings, hieroglyphics, and mosaics; and it ends with works inspired by Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Auguste Renoir.

Then it goes into a visual reenactment of the entire movie through 8-bit pixel animations, all while “Down to Earth” plays in the background. Don’t even get me started about the legendary sound effects from Ben Burtt (who created all of the sound effects from all six Star Wars movies, all four Indiana Jones movies, E.T., and the recent Star Trek remake).

If the movie has one problem, it’s that sometimes the movie becomes so cute, that it’s hard to decide if you truly think a scene is great, or if your childish glee is taking advantage of you, but that’s hardly a complaint. Seriously though, just when you think the movie can’t be any cuter... God! It is! I’m mainly talking about the “First Date” scene, but this goes for the entire movie as well.

It’s hard to decide on my favorite character. We grow an incredible bond with Wall•E over the course of the movie. In the first ten minutes, not only do we love the character, but we feel pity on him. The audience wants Wall•E to get the girl just as much as he does, and his personality just makes him more likable, and all the more sad when it seems as if he is dead (Spoilers, much?).

In fact, before the film’s release, Pixar went on a nation-wide advertising campaign; solely to get Americans into liking Wall•E’s character through the use of trailers, TV spots, and a full-sized "living" robot traveling across Disney parks and various museums.

On the other hand, Eve is just so dang cool! We like her character just as much as we like Wall•E, and we want her to complete her directive, even if it means abandoning Wall•E. However, when she realizes she does love Wall•E (spoilers again?), and proclaims that he is her new directive... well, it’s one of the most heart-warming scenes in motion picture history.

Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if more than one of these scenes made it on to the list of the best scenes in cinema history. What else can I say? It might not be your favorite movie, but I at least hope you understand why it's mine.

Final Thoughts: It was nominated for six Oscars (even though it only won one for Best Animated Feature), it proved that Pixar could literally do anything, and I’m kicking myself for not being able to see it in theaters.

For some reason, I can’t stop obsessing over this movie; I love it so much that I think there might be something wrong with me. One might believe that this film is nothing more than a family oriented romantic-comedy, but upon viewing they would realize that Pixar has helped to create two computer animated robots with a limited vocabulary into some of the most 3-dimensional characters of all time. Unfortunately, Wall•E ends up like Blade Runner by being slightly ahead of its time, but I love it regardless.

I should probably stop now, however, because this is starting to turn into less of a Pixar tribute and more of a Wall•E tribute. What else is there to say other than it is the best movie ever made?

I give Wall•E five stars out of four. Can I do that? Sure, I can; it’s my review. *****

(...and if this still isn’t a good enough reason to see this movie, then hear me out: Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America, loves Wall•E! Now you have no excuse not to see this film).