Opinion: Wall-e
Usually I wouldn’t bother going to the cinema for a kids’ film, certainly not one put out by Disney, but I made an exception for Wall-e, partly because IGN gave it a good review, partly because I like some of Pixar’s stuff and mostly because it stars a robot. And I have to admit, I was impressed by the film.
Superficially, not only was the detail in each of the characters impress me (the rusted paint and tarnished metal of Wall-e himself being a particularly nice touch, reminiscent of the beat-up X-wings in the original Star Wars movies) but the cinematography was brilliant too. One of the most important aspects of this that I noticed was the blurring of distant objects, as if the camera was focused on the foreground. Of course, in CGI films, there is no camera, and the depth of field is potentially infinite, meaning that the makers deliberately added this in. And rightly so; it really helps the suspension of disbelief, that everything in the film existed and was filmed. The effect also helped to highlight the important objects on the screen, effective when focusing on the movements of the characters. I know this isn’t the first film to use such an effect, but for some reason it did really stand out in this particular one.
Speaking of the characters, they are, without exception, well-made and likeable. Often in these films, there’s a loud, annoying comic-relief character (Shrek‘s Donkey comes to mind), but Wall-e abstains from such cliche and instead focuses on two primarily silent protagonists. Though their silence could have hindered the presentation of their personality, the animated movements of Wall-e’s two camera-eyes (the only components of his face) convey a surprisingly eloquent range of emotions. The effect of these movements can really be seen in a very late scene in the film where Wall-e has apparently lost his memory. All of a sudden he is transformed into a very lifeless, static-faced robot, and, although aesthetically he does not change at all, I’m certain that even the smallest child in the audience could tell that some spark of personality was lost in the machine.
E.V.E too, while less animated than the more mechanical Wall-e, is easy to read thanks to her more advanced voice synthesiser (though she still says little more than “wall-e” throughout the film, her tone of voice switches convincingly between concerned and chiding, urgent and angry) and her pixel-art eye-display.
Almost my favourite character, however, was, strangely enough, Wall-e’s little cockroach friend. Although he was just a cockroach, drawn and animated stylistically, but without any anthropomorphic features, he had a lot of personality depicted entirely through the way he scurried about and perked up his antennae. And there were several moments throughout the film where you really find yourself caring for the little creature because he occasionally get stepped/rolled on, and you’re almost certain he’s going to be smooshed, but then he just pops back up again and it’s fine. If you want a point of reference for how amazing the effect of this guy is, has anyone ever seen Quentin Tarantino’s Deathproof? In that there’s a car scene where the film’s villain is trying to ram the protagonists’ car off the road, with one of the protagonists strapped to be bonnet. Eventually he succeeds, and the protagonist, this young woman, gets hurled off and disappears. Her friends get out the car, and look down at the ground, assuming, as the viewer does, that the woman is dead. Then, all of a sudden, the woman jumps up in the field she landed in and shouts “I’m okay,” then disappears back into the field. It’s a brilliant moment in its surprise funnyness, but it’s nowhere near as satisfying as seeing that little cockroach jump back up, and she had the advantage of being human and integral to the plot.
For a kids’ film, having easy-to-understand characters that children can identify with is, of course, essential, and in creating these, Pixar have been successful. Their success with this film extends further, however, for, while the character development does not extend far beyond the standard in children’s film (ie. The characters start out lonely and eventually learn the importance of friendship), the ideas and messages within the film do.
For example, one of the primary morals of the story is a warning against the over-reliance of humans on technology. We are shown in the second-half of the film a society of overweight humans who have lived on a spaceship for seven-hundred years, all relying on floating chairs for movement, screens permanently before their eyes for entertainment, and robots for everything else. Although hardly an Orwellian dystopia, this brightly coloured society presents a somewhat shocking satire and projection of our own culture’s future. Not only do we see corporations dictating what people should eat and wear, and mankind forced into space by the mess they created on Earth, but we are also shown the dangers of letting technology take over our lives and blind us to the world around us.
Now this last idea, was an important theme in a science-fiction novel I read some time ago: Roger MacBride Allen’s Isaac Asimov’s Caliban. In the novel people had all forgotten how to do anything for themselves because they had robots to do it all, and this had, from time to time, led to people dying, just from sheer lack of doing anything. Now I’m just using this book as an example because it’s one I’ve read, but I’m sure there’s hundreds of others, primarily in the sci-fi genre that warn against the same. And there’s films too, like the Matrix for example, which depict machines as detrimental or dangerous to mankind, but none of these are as accessible as Wall-e, especially for children.
This simple presentation of complex and relevant ideas makes Wall-e not only a great kids’ film, but also a great family film: one more akin to the all-ages appeal of Studio Ghibli offerings than the child demographic of, say, Pokemon the Movie (I can see now why my Dad fell asleep in the cinema during that particular cash-in).
Tags: Caliban, Cockroach, Deathproof, Disney, IGN, Isaac Asimov, Pixar, Quentin Tarantino, Robot, Shrek, Star Wars, Studio Ghibli, Wall-e
