WALL-E (2008)

While I still believe Soul is the first movie Pixar made specifically for adults, there was another one that accidentally falls into that category.  WALL-E was undoubtedly conceived as a movie for children on the cusp of and entering into their double digits, but somewhere along the line writers Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon managed to give us not just an amazingly creative bit of animation, but a solid science fiction story not confined to any one age group.

They did this by doing something few movies would do these days: let the story play out visually.  We get some talking billboards giving exposition at the beginning, but it just takes one look at the dry, dusty conditions and the mountains of trash to understand why humans decided to leave their old home behind.  Once we do get into the plot, most of the dialogue is "EVE!" and "WALL-E!", as well as machine noises.  There isn't any traditional voice acting until around the halfway of point of the movie - the billboards and advertisements are live action, after all. 

WALL-E (Ben Burtt) is a small robot whose job is to grab trash, compact it into cubes and stack it for future destruction.  The humans who left Earth to WALL-E and his compatriots planned on returning after five years, hoping that the Earth would be habitable again.  However, when we meet our hero, he is the last of his kind, using the parts of his worn-out counterparts to keep himself going.  It's been 700 years since humans left Earth, and WALL-E has kept at it.  The time has allowed him to gain sentience, as well as a special love of collecting pieces of the past that interest him.  His only close friend is a cockroach that follows him around on his errands.

Into this routine comes EVE (Elissa Knight), an advanced robot sent to Earth for an unknown reason.  WALL-E is smitten, and is rather upset when she goes into hibernation after collecting from him a plant he found.  She is soon picked up by the same rocket that dropped her off and, unable to let her go, WALL-E hitches a ride back to her home base - which turns out to be the Axiom, a ship full of the descendants of humans that left Earth.  EVE's discovery tentatively means it is time for them to return home, but there may be forces bent on making sure they stay right where they are. 

One thing I admired about this when I first saw this, and still do, is how much this looks like a regular movie rather than a work of animation.  It's been 13 years since this came out, and it still looks fresh after all this time.  I complain all the time on here about bad CGI, and this is one of the reasons why: if a cartoon made in 2008 can have effects that are better than a movie, with roughly the same budget, made in 2019, something has gone wrong.  The talent that made this is largely still alive, the programs and machines they have to work with are better, and yet some of the figures in the opening games portion of Wonder Woman 1984 look like graphics lifted from the first Playstation where even the pudgy chair-bound humans in this have more character. 

Also, even though this is a G-rated film made for pre-teens and older children, there doesn't seem the need to spoonfeed the audience the plot.  It plays out in the background and we learn what we need to accept the world the action takes place in.  Whatever messages about the detriments of an inactive lifestyle and what we are doing to the environment are there, but the point is made by showing what has happened to humanity and their home rather than having the characters practically turn to face the camera and deliver a "very special message" so we get the point.  The core point the movie wishes to make, per the writers, was that love between two beings can overcome almost anything - something that, thankfully, is also not hammered home.

If the "love conquers all" theme was more blatant I would probably have more complaints, as I think the hidden message about loving everyone is important but I question the wisdom of presenting love as a cure-all - especially to impressionable children going through abuse or neglect.  Where I do have problems in this movie is the fact that the disaster occurred sometime early in the 22nd century, and we are now entering the 29th.  A lot of the technology WALL-E finds is from the 20th and 21st, and somehow much of it still works.  Getting a Pong cartridge to work at that point would take more than blowing on it a little bit.  I assume that WALL-E himself has gathered some knowledge about fixing many of these things, as it seems his path to sentience took him far beyond his original programming.  I know the reason these items are in here is because it gives us familiarity with this future world, more than a bunch of made-up 22nd century technology would.  Still, with how well the rest of this movie is written and how well it works as straight science fiction, it raises quite a few questions.  

I was afraid that the second time through, knowing more of what to expect, that WALL-E would lose its charm, but no such thing happened.  If anything I got to enjoy more how well this is put together, with just the right amount of drama and comedy, and visually entertaining throughout.  It was an amazing achievement in its time, and remains a classic example of visual storytelling and what can be done with special effects when some work is put into it.  It is also a reminder that sometimes it is best when a story is kept as simple as possible. 

WALL-E (2008)

Time: 98 minutes

Starring: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin

Director: Andrew Stanton