I have seen plenty of “end-of-the-world”
movies featuring various scenarios of destruction, but Pixar’s “WALL-E” (2008)
is one of the few that truly scared me into thinking this could happen. The
computer animated film features a small robot left to clean up the mess left by
humanity centuries after they abandoned Earth on a spaceship that serves the
same purpose as Noah’s ark. Only it was not a flood of water that wrecked the
planet, but a mountain of trash that humanity mass-produced since the beginning
of the Industrial Revolutions. Zombies don’t exist, aliens have yet to invade
us, Global Warming may or may not boil us in the near future, but a massive
pile of trash burying the planet? That’s happening right now.
Directed by
Andrew Stanton, “WALL-E” was part of the great summer movie season of 2008,
which featured the return of Indiana Jones, the Academy-Award winning
performance of Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight,” and the rebirth of Robert
Downey Jr. as Iron Man. Younger audiences were also covered with Pixar’s annual
release, but like all of their movies “WALL-E” also has some big ideas for
grown-ups. I was very eager to see those big ideas, even though at the time I
was in Quebec City and the movie theatres didn’t have an original English
version. However the first half of the movie practically has no dialogue, so in
this case it didn’t really matter. Plus I was busy with a summer job I didn’t
really like so any escapism was welcome.
The opening
shots of “WALL-E” reveal planet Earth covered with mountains of trash
surrounded by smog. Alone in this landscape is a Waste Allocation Load Lifter –
Earth Class, a robot with very expressive eyes and the ability to express
itself with many squeaks and beeps. WALL-E’s job is simple: he fills his square
belly with trash and spits out a compacted package. He has built skyscrapers
with these blocks. The last of his kind, WALL-E only has a cockroach for a
companion and spends his quiet evenings watching a VHS recording a “Hello,
Dolly.”
His
uneventful existence is forever changed when a massive ship arrives to Earth,
nearly crushing him. Out of the ship comes EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation
Evaluator), a flying robot sent to Earth to evaluate living conditions. WALL-E
is immediately smitten. EVE looks as though the best designers at Apple
designed her: sleek, egg-shaped, with a gleaming white exterior, and armed with
a plasma cannon. If WALL-E and EVE were human, WALL-E would be a geeky romantic
man and EVE would be a strong beautiful woman. WALL-E even attempts to date her
by taking her to his house and giving him a tour of the place during a sand
storm.
Things
actually go pretty smoothly until EVE accomplishes her mission and finds a
single plant in the wasteland, proving life is once again sustainable on Earth.
Her ship then picks her up and returns her to the mother ship, the Axiom, with WALL-E as a stowaway. The
passengers aboard the ship are an interesting bunch. The last remnants of
humanity, they travel by using anti-gravity chairs and rely on an army of
robots for the most basic tasks. Their lifestyle has made all of them morbidly
obese, like the any individual confined to a wheelchair and living off
McDonald’s menu.
Despite
being robots, WALL-E and EVE are much more compelling than the entire crew of
the Axiom. Of the few humans in the
film, there is Jeff Garlin as the ship’s captain and in a nice reference to the
science-fiction genre, Sigourney Weaver as the voice of the ship’s computer.
The shape and behavior of said computer is very reminiscent of HAL 2000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and also has a
will of its own.
Despite
their limited vocabulary WALL-E and EVE are a great on-screen couple. One the
film’s best scene is when they dance outside the ship’s engines, with the
expanse of space in the background.
I don’t
know if writers Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon were trying to create a great
children’s movie, a new science-fiction classic, or even a romantic story, but
for me this is a cautionary tale. If we continue to mass-produce, well,
anything, we will end up buried neck deep in our own possessions. We may all be
dead and gone one day and all that remains will be WALL-E and his cockroach.
That, and possibly Keith Richards.
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