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Trashing the WALL-E backlash
It seems that a backlash of sorts has developed against WALL-E, my absolute favorite film of the year.
After the initial flurry of raves (including my own) I’ve sensed an increasingly vocal dissatisfaction with Pixar’s latest film - most of which I can live with. If you think it’s too arty, or that the second half is heavy-handed, or that the movie is (shudder) boring, I will fiercely disagree with you, but allow that you are entitled to your opinion.
However, there are a couple of complaints about WALL-E that I simply cannot abide. Some people grumble the film is an anti-global warming tract, an animated version of An Inconvenient Truth. Other have been aghast that the movie denigrates obese people.
Wrong! Factually, provably, wrong!
It’s all too easy to dismiss the stupid global warming accusations. Obviously, WALL-E has a green message on its mind, but it’s not about global warming. If people would bother to pay attention to the movie, they would see that the dominant energy source on Earth is solar power. Greenhouse gases seem to be long gone, not that it got us out of trouble.
No, what has desolated the Earth is massive littering. A newspaper WALL-E rolls over bears the headline “TOO MUCH TRASH.” The planet became so covered with it, we killed the plant life and had to leave. Some people scoff at this notion too, but anyone who doesn’t think we humans are a wasteful lot hasn’t looked by the side of the highway lately. And anyone who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to live a little cleaner than we’ve been doesn’t have his ducks in a row.
The complaints that WALL-E ridicules the obese are even more troubling. It’s simply not true.
I’m sensitive to attacks on the less able-bodied myself, because I’m disabled, with a mild case of cerebral palsy. That makes it especially hard for me to lug around 50 pounds of weight I shouldn’t have. But WALL-E didn’t offend me - it emboldened me to do something about it. I wish the movie made more people feel that way.
Yes, the humans in the film who live on a spaceship have wide girths and seem to spend a lot of time slurping down food. But writer-director Andrew Stanton and his co-authors Jim Reardon and Pete Docter aren’t laughing at fat people and suggesting they deserve contempt or even pity - far from it.
First of all the movie explains that because humans have spent several hundred years in space, they’ve suffered massive bone loss. People of the future aren’t fat, they’re small-boned.
More important than that, WALL-E’s main concern isn’t how much humans eat. It’s that they’ve become so beholden to technology, letting machines do everything for them, that personal contact is alien to them. That’s why the characters John and Mary, the two humans we get to know besides the captain, seem so shocked when they actually - touched each other.
As Stanton explains in this interview with Christianity Today, “I wasn’t trying to make the humans into fat, lazy consumers, but to make humanity appear to be completely consumed by everything that can distract you—to the point where they lost connection with each other, even though they’re right next to each other.”
And here’s the ironic counterpoint: the two most romantic characters in the film are the robots, WALL-E and EVE, who learned to be affectionate by watching the way humans used to behave in a bygone era.
It saddens me that such a life-affirming sentiment gets lost amid complaints of such narrow vision. As far as I can see, the attacks on the film say a lot more about the attackers’ self-esteem than they do about WALL-E. The movie might improve their outlook - if only they would decide that they would live a little.
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Comments
By Dude
August 20, 2008 11:48 AM | Link to this
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. However, the one problem I have with it is the ironic fact that Wall-E has made a mint in consumer goods (namely, crappy plastic toys). This is the very trait of human nature that the movie decries! It’s all a bit two-faced for me.By SRCputt
July 18, 2008 10:02 AM | Link to this
Then in the LA Times, came the criticism that Wall-E doesn’t go far enough, complaining it wan’t like classic sci-fi such as 2001, Silent Running, and Blade Runner. Forgetting of course, that the theatrical ending of Blade Runner was a far worse cop-out than anything in Wall-E. This critic seemed upset because, at heart, Andrew Stanton is an optimist (as if there’s something wrong with that).By Barb =:)
July 16, 2008 1:55 PM | Link to this
Wall-E was a disappointment to me. While I liked it, I was not blown away and I would put it 4th or 5th on the Pixar list behind The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Toy Story. I may even throw Monsters, Inc. in the list above it, but could be talked out of that. While it was a cute film and the animation was excellent, the story didn’t engage me as much as the others. I think all the pro Wall-E hype by critics had my expectations set higher and I was more disappointed in the film because of it. The saving grace for me was all the Hello Dolly moments. That was a cute twist. My favorite film so far this year has been Iron Man. I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I am hoping The Dark Knight will be even better.By ME
July 16, 2008 11:29 AM | Link to this
You go! Obviously some people missed the most important lessons of this movie. Not to mention its just darn heart warming and entertaining. I got it. We waste so much and we’re all buying it from the BIG BOX stores. What’s worse than the waste is the time we are wasting - remember we only get a short time here and life should be filled with love, happiness and friends… WALL-E shows us that even a robot can have all those things! And a robotic society can come out of their technology bubble and see the beauty around them!