Wall-E

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Ah, the Pixar Debate - one that is Everlasting and always Intriguing.

[innerSpaceman]

And to touch on something GD said pages or so ago, I don't think the societal skewering was without enough substance. Satire does not need to go too deep to be satire. Quite the contrary, when a barbed point is so on point it's instantly recognizable and humorous, what's more to tell about it other than the pointing itself?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

And to touch on something GD said pages or so ago, I don't think the societal skewering was without enough substance. Satire does not need to go too deep to be satire. Quite the contrary, when a barbed point is so on point it's instantly recognizable and humorous, what's more to tell about it other than the pointing itself?

It's not so much that the satire didn't go anywhere, it was that the characters within the satire didn't go anywhere. All we saw was a bunch of half-baked random encounters with no character arc. There was nothing for me to care about, no emotional connection to these non-pedal decedents of mine that had me caring one way or another whether they made it back to Earth or not. Pixar movies are usually far better about that, where characters aren't just set pieces to push a plot along but actual emotional beings the audience cares about. Starting with an excellent social commentary is not enough to make up for lack of good story telling. Especially when that social commentary isn't all that unique (a lot of the same stuff was brought up by Idiocracy, and even that highly imperfect movie covered far more interesting ground than this did, imo).

[innerSpaceman]

Well, to be honest, there were only 3 human characters, and two of those were barely cameos. There was the lady and her potential beau, voiced by the Pixar perennial John Ratzenberger, who were "awakened" from their hover-stupor to view the world with wonder and the promise of love. That was their entire arc, admittedly weak. But they were the most minor of minor characters.

The other human, the Captain, I thought had a rather decent character arc, no less thoroughly predictable than the more fully realized arc of Eve.

Did Wall-E even have any kind of character arc? I don't think so. He was likeable ... but besides falling in love, was he any different at the end of the movie than at its start?

[Alex]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Well, to be honest, there were only 3 human characters, and two of those were barely cameos.

That's kind of my point in considering that part of the story weak. Since we never get to learn anything really about the humans why should I care whether they return to earth. Or the sense of wonder they have when they do. Or why it is that you can stack them 20 deep in a steeply tilted spaceship and none come to harm (or why tilting a spaceship with artificial gravity would even have any effect on the humans inside).

Did Wall-E even have any kind of character arc? I don't think so. He was likeable ... but besides falling in love, was he any different at the end of the movie than at its start?

While Wall-E is the central cute character, I don't really think his was the story arc but rather it was Eve that provided it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex

(or why tilting a spaceship with artificial gravity would even have any effect on the humans inside).

Or why residents of a spaceship with artificial gravity would be subject to the deterioration associated with microgravity. Or why WALL E breaking someone's display screen causes sudden onset of awareness whereas the emergency robots chasing rogue robots can knock people off their chairs with reckless abandon. Or why Fred Willard would have bothered with giving the autopilot special orders to stay away from earth since if the reason was that life was unsustainable then there would have been no plant life to start the return process anyway, or........

I've thus far avoided going into the many many weaknesses I found in that plot. It's full of gaping holes. But I don't want to dwell on them because it's just going to make me like the movie less and I'd really prefer to keep liking it. So I'm trying to just kinda ignore it and focus on the far superior element of the movie.

As for WALL E's character arc, perhaps he himself doesn't have an arc, but he is intimately involved in one (EVE's/the relationships's) and one that is done in a thoroughly artistic manner. He may not grow much, but he is a fully fleshed out character that the audience can actually connect to, not a prop piece.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

SPOILERS, people. Looks like the boxes are gone. Those that haven't seen it should probably stop reading the thread now (or rather, have stopped reading it a few posts earlier).















I admit it, the humans "waking up" bugged me. And the fact that they actually wanted to go back to earth bugged me as well. As I said before, the happy-sappy, easy-peasy ending was mandatory, but didn't make a whole lot of sense. I didn't mind though because I knew the rest of the amazing film couldn't have been made by anyone else - and as it had to have a happy kids ending, there we are.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

And the fact that they actually wanted to go back to earth bugged me as well.

I don't see the issue with wanting to go back. While I cannot totally understand living on a cruise ship for my entire life, and I admit that these people do not have a point of reference for 'something else' (such as Earth), I would think that basic human nature (for an educated person, which I would presume these people are) would want to be somewhere else besides the one and only place they have ever existed. I had presumed that the notion of 'going home' had been passed down from generation to generation in some form, even if the real experience had long ago been lost.

At least that's how I experienced it.

And I did not spoilerize this as at this point, if someone who hasn't seen the movie is still reading, there's not much more damage that can be done.

[€uroMeinke]

I haven't ranked the films yet and Ratatouille and the Incredibles are as biased to me as Cars is to NirvanaMan.

In my mind Tour Guide Barbie was all it took for me to rank TSII over I

I kinda like that in Wall-E you care more about the machines than the people - I find it a smart meta-commentary on the overall theme of the story.

[innerSpaceman]

Yes, you were mostly routing for the insane robots from the cyber-asylum, and only tangentially for the humans because they are us (and they were not presented unsympathetically) in a situation (return to Earth after exile) we were naturally routing for as Earthlings.

As such, I didn't mind that the humans (other than the captain) were cyphers ... and appreciated that a story from the robots' point of view would have the robots be the main heroes ... and the main villains.


I don't even have a problem with the black plot holes of deep space. Artificial gravity probably takes a lot of energy. So they don't have full earth gravity, they have, perhaps, moon-level gravity. And the gravity generator can have issues, so when the ship goes off kilter at a time when the grav is having issues for drama sake (just as all good SciFi technology does), the humans fall Poseidon-Adventure style to one edge of the giant cruise ship.

Yeah, they don't get hurt from the pile-up. D'uh, they're marshmallow people with no skeletons.



Oh, and they're cartoons.