|
Jon Nadelberg on
Wall-E -- It's a Great Big Horrible Tomorrow
I saw Wall-E today with my kid. I did
not have high hopes for this film. To me, it looked like
just another dystopian future where the Earth has been
wrecked and a couple of robots find happiness amongst
the ruins. I’ve seen it before, or something close
enough, several times now. Then there was the review in
the San Francisco Chronicle that said while the
beginning was fantastic, it started to droop and fall
apart at the end. I put a snotty comment about the film
in their comments section for the review. I’m all about
snotty comments in the San Francisco Chronicle comments
sections.
But the kid was dying to see this film, and I have to
tell you something. This was really a fun movie! Yes, it
followed the formula that I laid out in the Kung Fu
Panda review, but it was not quite as noticeable and if
the story was a bit familiar (robot has unpleasant
existence, something changes for robot, robot starts to
be happy, robot has bad time falls to a low, gets
enthused, inexplicably saves the day), it’s disguised
moderately better than it was in Kung Fu Panda and is
overcome with absolutely stunning visuals. The visuals
are particularly striking when compared to what was seen
in a preview for an upcoming Disney flick called Bolt,
which is a CGI animated feature that looks to be just
under "Toy Story" quality in its animation (I don't want
to bag on it, though, it looks like it will be a really
cute film). Wall-E is simply an amazing piece of
animation. Pixar truly does get better with each new
film.
I even liked the opening cartoon, involving a magician
and his magic hat. It was quite funny. It all went by
very quickly, and I'm now the proud owner of a Wall-E
toy and Xbox video game, purchased at Toys R Us. Not
only that, the theater we saw this at was entirely sold
out, and so were several other showings. Here goes
another billion or so bucks into Disney's coffers.
A lot of suspension of disbelief has to take place for
this film to be enjoyed, though. Yes, it’s a cartoon,
but the realism of the animation is getting to a point
where it’s starting to look less like a cartoon with
each passing feature (until you start seeing humans,
which definitely still look like cartoons). This was one
of the problems when Bambi first premiered. The
realistic settings of the film were considered a bit
jarring against the anthropomorphic behavior of the
animals. It didn’t quite sync up for audiences back
then.
Similarly, this animated feature looks perhaps too
realistic, and that made me think about how unrealistic
the situation was. Why were all the other robots broken
down? How did this one robot develop this personality?
How could this entire disaster have happened in the
first place? These are silly things to think about,
sure, but if it looked more cartoon-like, would I have
thought about them? Who knows. Ultra-realism in
animation may be a great end unto itself, but it might
not always serve the story as well as other styles
might.
One other thing that crossed my mind in the opening
scenes of the film where Wall-E rides around a derelict
city was a show on earlier this year on cable. "Life
After People" on the History channel examined what would
happen to our buildings, and everything else we left
behind, if we simply vanished as we do in this movie.
According to them, after about 1000 years, cities would
have all toppled, and be covered with dirt or other
plants. They would no longer even be recognizable as
buildings, derelict or otherwise. This is in good
weather conditions. In the film, there are strange
weather storms that go through the city, yet the city
looks like it was abandoned a day or so earlier, with
even electricity still working. Without humans to
maintain what we construct, our constructions collapse
to rubble within a few hundred years. Maybe because the
movie shows the planet to be toxic and water is not
around, so these types of things are postponed. But
still, nothing lasts forever.
Except garbage, apparently. Where did all this garbage
come from? Why is it everywhere? Even on the spaceship.
They keep producing garbage and dumping it into space.
Where are they getting the material to create this
garbage in the first place? And considering that Pixar
is responsible for a huge amount of completely needless
junk in toys and other promotional materials that go
along with their movies, I find this entire idea as
coming from them to be not just a little ironic.
The film does have a very good ending, and you get a bit
of an epilogue at the end over the closing credits. I
was very glad to see an uplifting and positive end to
the film which seemed a rather bleak and dim view of
humanity up until that point.
Which brings me to my last point, there are supposedly
several attractions being planned for Disneyland based
on this film. One is supposed to be in the running for
replacing the Carousel Theater when Innoventions goes
away, or so I read. I do not know what they are
planning.
With that said, while the film is fun, enjoyable, and
has a positive message at the end, unless the
attractions that they are contemplating also are
positive, optimistic and uplifting, they are once again
absolutely the wrong thing to put into Tomorrowland.
Tomorrowland is about a great big beautiful tomorrow.
This film shows our future to be a desolate wasteland,
with people reduced to being revolting blobs of flesh
constantly eating and zoned out on TV. That is not a
good view of the future. If Disney goes ahead and
creates an attraction based on this film that is about
how horrible the future is going to be, they will have
once again managed to utterly fail in capturing the idea
of the area, and what the promise of the future may
bring.
Aside from it being yet another cartoon adaptation, the
subject matter simply seems inappropriate. While maybe
not as horrifically bad as “Honey I Shrunk The
Audience,“ where science and scientists are flat out
ridiculed, Wall-E presents a view of the world where
high technology has destroyed and enslaved us.
It makes for a fun cartoon, but I don’t want that
presented to me as my future. |
Visit my
Facebook Page.
