Wall-E comment

I took some time to post a comment about a Wall-E story on Digg, a I didn't want to waste all that effort on Digg, so here it is for your enjoyment.

"I can agree that the animation and graphics of the movie were well done, but the story is not cohesive or great. It completely lacks in truth and depth.

The main conflict of the films is that Wall-E is lonely on earth. So the goal of the whole film is for Wall-E to find love. This plot and conflict are set-up in the first act of the film when Wall-E is on earth.

But a sub-plot of saving the human race soon takes over the film and completely overshadows the love story which should have been the central focus of the film. Pixar should have chosen one or the other, no film can truly support multiple focuses like this. The human story could have been used to support the love story, but I never found that to be apparent, it always seemed to be an equal and separate issue.

What was made worse by the film is an exceptionally weak and deus ex machima climax. The climax of the film was when Eve has to fix Wall-E and save him. When he comes back to life without a personality it is an exceptionally sad moment. But suddenly Wall-E finishes his reboot sequence and it comes back. This is a pathetic and meaningless solution to an amazingly interesting love story.

The meaning I get from this climax is "wait a few minutes and your love with come back to you...". If that is what the creators believe about love than I applaud them on their success... I don't know what they believe about love, but it needs to be something much more meaningful than a reboot process.

I have lost my faith in Andrew Stanton at Pixar, however I still believe at least Brad Bird has the ability to make good film.

If you actually want to see a good film, I suggest finding Speed Racer at whatever theaters it is still playing in. The critics of this film where confused by the faced paced action and colors , it is an exceptional film and in my opinion blows every other film this summer out of the water."

Kyler

2 comments:

Mory said...

You're absolutely wrong.

Where did you go wrong? Right at the beginning of your understanding of the movie:
"The main conflict of the films is that Wall-E is lonely on earth."

Not even close. The main conflict of the film, right from the very beginning, is between following "directives" and finding life.

The entire movie is focused single-mindedly on that one conflict, finding other emotions (such as loneliness) as called for by that overarching theme. We see the conflict in WALL•E himself, then we see the very same conflict between WALL•E (Darn, that's getting annoying to type.) and EVE, then we see the same conflict between WALL•E & EVE and the other robots, then we see the same conflict between the humans and their environment, then we see the same conflict in the humans themselves, then we see the conflict between the humans and the robots/corporations/governments, then the whole thing is summed up concisely and artistically by the beautiful scene you call a "deus ex machina". From a tiny little spark of a robot, the flame of life spreads outward inevitably until it overcomes all directives.

In short, you have missed the entire point of the movie, which it worked toward with a single-minded vision. WALL•E is a work of astounding clarity.

Maybe you should watch it again. :P

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