Wall-E

(This whole posting may be taken as a spoiler, but read on anyway)

When I first saw the preview for this movie, I became very excited and thought it was going to be a great Disney/Pixar film, on par with Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo. After watching the movie, I came out depressed, feeling let down, and more than a little disappointed. I thought about why this might be the case, and I here put my thoughts on paper:

I plan to look at three different components of the film: (1) Character, (2) Mission, and (3) Aesthetics.

(1) Wall-E himself I believe to be the single greatest character achievement of any Disney film. Never before has an entertainment company been able to produce a character so pure, so innocent, so perfectly genuine, and so unconditional in love. No matter what is done to him by anyone, he shows no sign of vengeance, of anger, or even of processing their negative reactions at all. When Eve, his love and nemesis, rejects him for something he has not done, he is so utterly naive as to not even notice her indifference to him. The interactions that he has with the humans aboard the BNL liner are perfectly selfless. Without any concern or personal reservation, he greets them, "Wall-E," extending his hand and entirely expecting them to return his affections. Usually, if a character is portrayed as naive, the other characters end up taking advantage of him, but this is not the case with Wall-E. He cannot be described as forgiving in any sense, he does not even notice the wrongs done to him. He is the perfect example of utter humility and ought to be emulated in every sense. He is not beyond giving orders, however--he orders his pet cockroach to sit down when he may be in danger and he orders Eve to continue her "directive" when she seems to be faltering.

Eve (or "EEEVA", as Wall-E calls her), on the other hand, is a typical character in a Disney movie, she starts out interested, turns vengeful, but learns to love when she is confronted with the sacrifices that Wall-E has made for her (though he would never consider them sacrifices). She adds much to the film and is somewhat of an integral part of the story, i.e., she assists in continuing the plot with Wall-E's necessarily stagnant character. I will come back to her character when addressing Mission.

Humans are another story altogether. All comedies, by nature of genre, must have "something appealing, something appalling." Well, the humans are the appalling part. They are grotesque, revolting, and entirely incapable. One "heroic" scene in the movie depicts the normally lethargic and boneless (almost literally) captain struggling to walk across a room. I know that the intentions of the creators were to make humans appear dumb, helpless, and as a bane to the universe, but they were worse than that. Their inability to cognisize and mobilize was connected to their inability to dispose of waste. The depiction of humanity was utterly ridiculous. I am not saying that the humans ought to have been depicted differently, but that they should have been removed from the film entirely. The interactions between Eve, the other robots, and Wall-E were sufficient to produce a "G-rated" movie that would be perfectly acceptable to a "G-rated" audience. Unfortunately, people often take the opportunity in children's movies to speak to the parents.

(2) Okay, I'll stop ranting about the humans for now and turn to the idea of "Mission." I am not going to talk about the mission of the movie, as that was blatantly obvious and, in my opinion, rather preachy and overwrought, but I would like to address the them of "directive" in the movie. Wall-E has a directive--to clean up the waste on earth. He follows it implicitly and with great enjoyment, but he is not mindlessly dedicated to the job. Rather, he takes pleasure in finding every opportunity to discover unique things about his mission every day. He lives his directive, but it does not live him.

Eve suddenly appears on the scene and vocalizes what Wall-E has been living this whole time, "directive." She knows nothing but her mission, that is, to find life somewhere on earth. She is, in the beginning, quite literally a machine, but also figuratively a programmed worker who knows nothing but her mission. She shows some interest in the things Wall-E shows her, but is instantly snapped back to "directive" when he shows her a plant he found. Most of the movie, she follows her mission to the letter, leaving Wall-E behind, sending him away, and entirely neglecting him in her desire to place the plant in its proper location. As mentioned above, however, she falters when she realizes the futility of her situation and (huge spoiler!!!!) Wall-E's impending death, but he sets her aright in the always present Disney over-theme of sacrificial love, repeating "directive" to her and bleeping inanely. Of course, once her directive is accomplished, she turns to bringing Wall-E back to life and starts loving him as a partner. But, again, it is only after she accomplishes her mission that she can truly love, so is this really love? I don't know, you be the judge.

Okay, humanity.... It's very simple, really, they have a directive from BNL to have fun, relax, and "EAT NOW". They follow it to the letter (except for the fun part maybe). The captain has a mission to fly around, give morning announcements, and return to earth when signs of life are found. He does this pretty well, and nothing else really, until he learns about earth, dancing, water, and pizza trees from his computer. Then all he really does is follow his directive some more. While there may be a bit of confusion as to whether his or the co-pilot's directive is more important, he asserts his captain-ness and does what he is supposed to do.

The robots from the rejects ward play a key role in resolving the final dilemma, and it is very important to note that they centralize the theme of "mission". Because they are incapable of completing their assigned tasks (due to random malfunctions like painting yellow lines and opening umbrellas incessantly), they are the perfect assistants to the anti-mission endeavor. Basically, the moral here is that nothing ever really gets accomplished when you just follow your "directive."

(3) Finally we come to Aesthetics. I am not qualified to, nor do I desire to discuss the CGI effects or the cool-looking things that they do in the movie, though I do want to say that I didn't like the Mary Poppins-esque appearance of a live-action figure in the film (the demi-god-long-dead president of BNL). Not for any particular reason, just didn't like it. Anyway, I do want to discuss the theme of aesthetic pleasure in the movie. Again, Wall-E is perfect in my eyes, so his sublimation of a lighter, light-bulb, or Rubik's Cube is beautiful to me. His child-like love of everything, regardless of its practicality or purpose (directive), is amazingly unpragmatic.

Eve, of course, has to be the opposite of everything Wall-E is, so she likes things for their purpose--she solves the Rubik's Cube, lights the light-bulb, flicks the lighter on, and tries to figure out what usefulness the video tape has.

Here I think the humans do a good job--they present the idea that aesthetic pleasure is not stagnant, but active. They think that poking a button to hit a golf ball or sitting by a pool is pleasure, but don't truly understand aesthetics until they learn to interact with each other and with the objects. This, I believe is the best and usually most neglected aspect of pleasure that the movie addresses--that things can be pleasurable without having a use and that pleasure is active not morbidly immobile.

Overall, the movie had some phenomenal points--notably, Wall-E and the addressing of aesthetic pleasure--but was exceedingly preachy, obnoxious, and grotesque. I cannot repeat enough how amazed I am at how Disney/Pixar could turn such great potential (it could have been the best child's movie of all time) into an abysmal flop. Imagine it this way, The executives at Disney sat there thinking, "We have this astounding character that kids will love, a great interaction with another character, and phenomenal appeal to people of all ages. Now how can we use that to further our plan to corrupt humanity?"

When Wall-E sat peering into the vaste waste-land of earth, desiring someone to take pleasure in all of it with him (scene 1), I wanted to climb through the screen and slap a bra on my eyes as well. After Eve appeared, I held out hope that the little guy could show everyone how to be human (scene 2). But when they arrived aboard the liner (scenes 3 and following), I wanted to pull Wall-E off the screen and take him out of the theater before they could corrupt him. Fortunately, this was not The Idiot, it was a kids movie, so he remained impermeable to the atrocities of Disney, but my mind did not. I was highly disappointed.