Wall*E discussion [spoilers]

[E]

Re: Wall*E: The Next Disney/Pixar Film.

Saw it today.

LOVED IT.

It was smart and funny and was brilliantly not preachy.

 

[Dr.Strangefate]

Re: Wall*E: The Next Disney/Pixar Film.

I think Wall-E and Eve have more on-screen chemistry than any other couple I've seen since the last time I popped in Annie Hall or Manhattan.

 

[Planet-man]

Re: Wall*E: The Next Disney/Pixar Film.

Spoilers!

I'm briefly "back" after "leaving" to discuss.

Wall-E and Eve themselves are great characters and basically carry an otherwise decent movie. Other than them, can somebody tell me what the hype is actually about?

The movie had almost no story, or actually, a thin story with a few shallow obstacles that get overcome quickly and without much effort or explaination. Take the villains. After a non-stop assault of some of the greatest movie villains ever, Wall-E doesn't really focus on that. That's fine, but you've got to have something to replace it. The HAL-like computer's motivation? "The president said not to. I am computer!". Okay, plausible, but it's a boring old idea that's been done to death. He's then defeated after a five-second battle that ends in him being turned off....:|

Okay, well that wasn't much, so let's make the REAL villain of the story human sedentariness and fear of change! Yeah, great idea, Pixar! This'll be what all those critic's are talking about who say the movie's practically a religion! Wait.... after centuries of obeseity, no physical strain and constant gratification in a totally safe environment, everybody on the ship is just completely gung-ho about going back to an all-but-forgotten planet and doing farm work all day?! There's ZERO conflict for this or motivation to overcome it. EVERYBODY on the ship is exactly life John, Mary and the Captain and just can't wait to stop being served all the food they can eat without having to do anything bad ever? NOBODY is remotely against the idea of leaving their space-station pleasuredome to go back to Earth and put effort into things, even though the movie already TOLD us that lower gravity and their lifestyle had led to frailty and shocking amounts of bone-loss? This isn't an obstacle that needs to be fought against AT ALL after being set up as pretty much the biggest problem in the movie?

And finally, after having his hard-drive wiped, the solution to Wall-E's memory coming back is just.... love. Again, you have to attempt SOMETHING here so it's still a miracle without being a shortcut because you can't have the movie end on a downer. You can't tell me it wouldn't have been better if they'd had the moment that Eve lit the lighter be emphasized as a huge thing where Wall-E sees her illuminated and realizes that Eve's great because after him simply marveling at things for centuries, she brings them to life. This was sort of hinted at and then didn't really come up again, when it would've been perfect if she'd lit it again and jogged his memory as at least an ATTEMPT to explain that. Or if you'd seen an "Auxillary Memory Activated" thing appear on his screen, or ANYTHING to explain him magically coming back other than "the movie needed it, and you guys all like love, right?".

Finally, and this has been bothering me about a bunch of movies lately, the movie had little semblance of a muscial score. Scenes were scored according to what's going on in them, but the lack of any memorable or hummable music from the film, not even an original "Wall-E" theme, is depressing. Even just throwing Phillip Glass in the screening room with a piano throughout the thing would've improved it by a whole half-point. A proper score like the Toy Story movies or The Incredibles would've bumped it even higher. But, they barely seemed to think about that sort of thing.

Bottom line, it's a 7.5/10 from me, and I don't understand why people are giving it so much more. This now has a raiting of 9.2 on IMDb, making it tied for HIGHEST MOVIE EVER with The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. I'm very opening to explaination here. Please!

Also, live-action president Fred Willard?:?

Also, if a mod could de-spoilerize this an put it in some sort of "Wall-E discussion (*spoilers*)" thread that'd be fine.

 

[Grocer Man]

Re: Wall*E: The Next Disney/Pixar Film.

Spoilers!

I'm briefly "back" after "leaving" to discuss.

Wall-E and Eve themselves are great characters and basically carry an otherwise decent movie. Other than them, can somebody tell me what the hype is actually about?

The movie had almost no story, or actually, a thin story with a few shallow obstacles that get overcome quickly and without much effort or explaination. Take the villains. After a non-stop assault of some of the greatest movie villains ever, Wall-E doesn't really focus on that. That's fine, but you've got to have something to replace it. The HAL-like computer's motivation? "The president said not to. I am computer!". Okay, plausible, but it's a boring old idea that's been done to death. He's then defeated after a five-second battle that ends in him being turned off....:|

Okay, well that wasn't much, so let's make the REAL villain of the story human sedentariness and fear of change! Yeah, great idea, Pixar! This'll be what all those critic's are talking about who say the movie's practically a religion! Wait.... after centuries of obeseity, no physical strain and constant gratification in a totally safe environment, everybody on the ship is just completely gung-ho about going back to an all-but-forgotten planet and doing farm work all day?! There's ZERO conflict for this or motivation to overcome it. EVERYBODY on the ship is exactly life John, Mary and the Captain and just can't wait to stop being served all the food they can eat without having to do anything bad ever? NOBODY is remotely against the idea of leaving their space-station pleasuredome to go back to Earth and put effort into things, even though the movie already TOLD us that lower gravity and their lifestyle had led to frailty and shocking amounts of bone-loss? This isn't an obstacle that needs to be fought against AT ALL after being set up as pretty much the biggest problem in the movie?

And finally, after having his hard-drive wiped, the solution to Wall-E's memory coming back is just.... love. Again, you have to attempt SOMETHING here so it's still a miracle without being a shortcut because you can't have the movie end on a downer. You can't tell me it wouldn't have been better if they'd had the moment that Eve lit the lighter be emphasized as a huge thing where Wall-E sees her illuminated and realizes that Eve's great because after him simply marveling at things for centuries, she brings them to life. This was sort of hinted at and then didn't really come up again, when it would've been perfect if she'd lit it again and jogged his memory as at least an ATTEMPT to explain that. Or if you'd seen an "Auxillary Memory Activated" thing appear on his screen, or ANYTHING to explain him magically coming back other than "the movie needed it, and you guys all like love, right?".

Finally, and this has been bothering me about a bunch of movies lately, the movie had little semblance of a muscial score. Scenes were scored according to what's going on in them, but the lack of any memorable or hummable music from the film, not even an original "Wall-E" theme, is depressing. Even just throwing Phillip Glass in the screening room with a piano throughout the thing would've improved it by a whole half-point. A proper score like the Toy Story movies or The Incredibles would've bumped it even higher. But, they barely seemed to think about that sort of thing.

Bottom line, it's a 7.5/10 from me, and I don't understand why people are giving it so much more. This now has a raiting of 9.2 on IMDb, making it tied for HIGHEST MOVIE EVER with The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. I'm very opening to explaination here. Please!

Also, live-action president Fred Willard?:?

Also, if a mod could de-spoilerize this an put it in some sort of "Wall-E discussion (*spoilers*)" thread that'd be fine.

*reminds self that just because it's Planet-Man dosen't mean saying "love it for what it is" is an acceptable response*

The sedentray bit was there from the very beginning, and the humans were intended to be far more antagonistic (speaking unintelligibly, resembling giant cells), but changed it to be more antagonistic, leading to the creation of Auto.) As for Auto himself, I felt he worked as he was dedicated to doing his job in a ship full of robots gaining souls.

The President (who, granted, is not the most viable scource of information) implied the problem could be pretty easily solved with some excercise. I like to think a decent chunk of the people stayed on the ships, for fear of the change. Besides, it's pretty clear there was more then one ship, so it's possible that one or more ships resisted the great migration and stayed in space.

I'm afraid I can't come up with a viable explanation for Wall-E's memory recovery that I think would satisfy you. I don't think an auxilary memory thing would have been possible, as I was under the impression all of Wall-E's major CPU parts had to replaced.

I was under the impression that Fred Willard, known for playing idiots, was doing a fairly subtle Bush impression. The live-action thing never bothered me, so perhaps that's just a matter of opinion.

The film has a soundtrack. Complete with original Wall-E score. It's right here. http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10100226

Also...why in the world are you looking for explanation for why this film is so loved? Do you really need a yay or nay from other people to form an opinion? People have different opinions. Take Citizen Kane. I view it as an icredibly boring and pretentious film while critics rave about it. Just because everyone else loves a film dosen't mean you have to. (Or inversely, Kalicki and Ultimates 3.)

(I apoligize to mods in advance if this qualifies as a personal attack.)

 

[Planet-man]

Re: Wall*E: The Next Disney/Pixar Film.

The sedentray bit was there from the very beginning, and the humans were intended to be far more antagonistic (speaking unintelligibly, resembling giant cells), but changed it to be more antagonistic, leading to the creation of Auto.)

I don't understand what this sentence means.

I will clarify myself by saying that I thought the idea of laziness being the villain was good when it first came up in the movie, and then disappointed by the fact that it didn't end up being an issue. People just suddenly didn't want to sit around being attended to all day, with no motivation or arc for the change. Bad storywriting.

The President (who, granted, is not the most viable scource of information) implied the problem could be pretty easily solved with some excercise.

...which was obviously a naive solution, but even if it wasn't and everyone could regrow their bones and lose three hundred pounds just as easily as an obese person on Earth, IT'S NEVER EXPLAINED WHY THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF AXIOM WOULD SUDDENLY WANT TO AND HAVE THE WILL TO, let alone want to do physical labour all day on an all-but-forgotten planet after they lost the weight.

I like to think a decent chunk of the people stayed on the ships, for fear of the change.

But it never happened in the movie...

Besides, it's pretty clear there was more then one ship,

I don't remember that. The ads kept talking about "the Axiom" and showing it as if it was one big station. Did they really talk about a bunch of them in the movie?

so it's possible that one or more ships resisted the great migration and stayed in space.

But it never happened in the movie....

I'm afraid I can't come up with a viable explanation for Wall-E's memory recovery that I think would satisfy you. I don't think an auxilary memory thing would have been possible, as I was under the impression all of Wall-E's major CPU parts had to replaced.

Then that's an even worse hole.

I was under the impression that Fred Willard, known for playing idiots, was doing a fairly subtle Bush impression. The live-action thing never bothered me, so perhaps that's just a matter of opinion.

I got the Bush impression, I just thought it was weird and pulled me out of the movie to randomly have a live-action character interacting with the CGIs. But as you say it's a matter of opinion. I didn't count it against the movie.

The film has a soundtrack. Complete with original Wall-E score. It's right here. http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10100226

I know it has a *soundtrack* and that a composer scored. I just personally don't like it when these types of movies are just scored scene-by-scene without having one or several distinct melodies tying the whole score together(see: Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, The Incredibles, Signs, Ratatouille, etc).

Also...why in the world are you looking for explanation for why this film is so loved? Do you really need a yay or nay from other people to form an opinion? People have different opinions.

Partly because I still want to love this and want to know if there's something in the plot that I just missed but other's saw and could tell me about and then I would see why its great and love it too as I was looking forward to doing.

Partly because as a huge fan of movies and storytelling and popculture and as an aspiring filmmaker I'm genuinely curious at what has occured to make so many think so much of what I'd call just another above-average CGI flick. A thin, (what I thought was an obviously)hole-filled plot surrounded buy a generally entertaining movie.

#6 on IMDb. Tied ranking with The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. One way or the other, I have to know.

 

[Dr.Strangefate]

It's not Shawshank or Godfather good, and once you give it a few months, it will even out a bit on IMDB, I'm sure, but in general I don't think one should consider IMDB to be anything close to the best judge of a film's quality.

You make a few valid points, but I don't agree with a lot of what you've said... ******* ****ing work in the morning, I really don't have time to put together the response I'd like to do but I'm absolutely going to try.

I just generally think you are mostly missing the point. The stuff with faux-Hal and the Captain are sub-plots... They aren't the main focus in the story. The climax of the film is the reprogramming of Wall-E and his de-personalization. I think that the true point of the film is that Wall-E developed a personality, and emotions, and in many ways gained something completely etheriel, the very thing that makes us human; A Soul. This isn't ingrained in his circuitry, It's something far greater than that. I am very happy with the Kiss from EVE jump-starting his soul back in action, because it is pretty much exactly what you are saying. The Kiss was extremely significant, i think, as the real embodiment of what the personality-ized wall-e wanted and needed, and all of a sudden, it brought it back within him.

As for the motivation of Humanity, I believe this film is showing that the general purpose of our entire species has always been to change, and that they had been unfortunately thrown off-track for 700 years by convenience and a complete lack of knowledge of what they are and what they can do. In the end, the people decide to change... And I think that Grocer Man's right in the fact that not everyone would have changed, but since that wasn't the central focus of the movie, it would have distracted from the relationship that this film is founded on. In the end, it is in our nature to want something better. Subsequently the film is commenting on the fact that this is why we should avoid this future altogether and change now. I think any more concentration on it would have been detrimental to the film and outright preachy.

The big thing I agree about is that they shouldn't have gone with a live action Fred Willard. 700 years, or 7 Billion years, Humanity wouldn't evolve into looking like stylized charactitures.

 

[Planet-man]

It's not Shawshank or Godfather good, and once you give it a few months, it will even out a bit on IMDB, I'm sure, but in general I don't think one should consider IMDB to be anything close to the best judge of a film's quality.

Obviously, but I'm still interested in what caused the raiting to happen. It's a phenomenon.

I just generally think you are mostly missing the point. The stuff with faux-Hal and the Captain are sub-plots... They aren't the main focus in the story.

The problem is, though, that they take up WAY too much screen time to get away with that. Of course Wall-E and Eve are the main story. I wish they were even MORE of a main story because up until the humans appear the movie is worthy of its hype, but when they start to get focus it becomes much less serious and poetic and more of a cartoonish oaf-fest. But either way, they're there, and they're there a lot, and not making their story go somewhere properly isn't impressive.

I'd also argue that tiny sub-plot or otherwise a storyline/arc in a movie needs to be a lot better and more thought out than that if you're trying to make a perfect film for the ages.

The climax of the film is the reprogramming of Wall-E and his de-personalization. I think that the true point of the film is that Wall-E developed a personality, and emotions, and in many ways gained something completely etheriel, the very thing that makes us human; A Soul. This isn't ingrained in his circuitry, It's something far greater than that. I am very happy with the Kiss from EVE jump-starting his soul back in action, because it is pretty much exactly what you are saying. The Kiss was extremely significant, i think, as the real embodiment of what the personality-ized wall-e wanted and needed, and all of a sudden, it brought it back within him.

Personally I think movie-miracles are a million times more effective when they occur through clever and plausible(and unlikely and miraculous) means, but if you think ending it with the old "love is magic" fix-it in the same old way lesser movies like this always do things, including Matthew Broderick's Inspector Gadget in a pretty much identical scene that still felt like a cheat when I was 9, works better, then that's a difference of opinion. I wanted something more. Even if it was that, I wanted it done like I'd never seen it before.

As for the motivation of Humanity, I believe this film is showing that the general purpose of our entire species has always been to change, and that they had been unfortunately thrown off-track for 700 years by convenience and a complete lack of knowledge of what they are and what they can do. In the end, the people decide to change...

I think it's unfair in a story like this for that kind of decision to speak for itself. It's kind of a catch-22, anyway. The general purpose of our species is to change, so it's very easy for a change that huge to happen overnight with no resistence or hesitation. If it's very easy for a change that huge to happen overnight, why has there been no change at all of any kind for seven hundred years?

And I still think whether or not we desire change, having a few billion obese humans who have also never had to walk or feed themselves and have even lost bone and muscle matter from low-Gs just suddenly jump up and happily push that plow in the hot sun all day is ridiculous stuff, far below what Disney/Pixar usually treats us too.

And I think that Grocer Man's right in the fact that not everyone would have changed, but since that wasn't the central focus of the movie, it would have distracted from the relationship that this film is founded on.

Again, I think they'd already focused too much on the humans not to resolve that. Point-of-no-return kind of thing.

In the end, it is in our nature to want something better. Subsequently the film is commenting on the fact that this is why we should avoid this future altogether and change now. I think any more concentration on it would have been detrimental to the film and outright preachy.

It didn't need to be focused on more, it needed to either be focused on in a greater and more complex way the way Dis/Pix usually does, or side-stepped completely for a much more robot-and-bug heavy screenshow, which I think I would've preferred anyway.

The big thing I agree about is that they shouldn't have gone with a live action Fred Willard. 700 years, or 7 Billion years, Humanity wouldn't evolve into looking like stylized charactitures.

Cool. I still don't get why they went with that. The whole legacy is that they were the first to do a movie entirely in CGI. It's got to be the most bizarre choice in a movie I've seen this year.

 

[Ultimate Houde]

I liked it.

A kid started bawling and screaming Wall E! when the robot got squished, and Eve was flipping out. It was so gut wrenching to hear this kid cry at the top of his lungs.

Then when Eve rebuilt Wall E and he acted like a simple robot, same thing happened, the kid started to cry again.

I liked the movie though. Good film.

 

[E]

A kid started bawling and screaming Wall E! when the robot got squished, and Eve was flipping out. It was so gut wrenching to hear this kid cry at the top of his lungs.

Dude. You so want kids.

 

[Ultimate Houde]

Dude. You so want kids.

Well, right now I so want to punch you in the face.

 

[Bass]

One of the greatest films I have ever seen.

 

[ultimatedjf]

So, starting this week, I've decided I'm going to take a different girl to see "WALL-E" every week, and see if anything good comes from any one of the excursions. I've got three women lined up so far who want to go see it with me, which is unusual; I haven't gone to the movies with a gal since my Sophomore year of High School, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience 'cuz I was holding in a big-*** **** for half the film.

Sorry, too much info.

 

[ProjectX2]

So I was going to go see this on Friday with my mother and sister but was wondering why the times weren't listed anywhere... so I look at IMDB.

The release date?

The 18TH OF ****ING SEPTEMBER?!

 

[Ultimate Houde]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

 

[Victor Von Doom]

One of the greatest films I have ever seen.

My sentiments exactly.

My brother, his girlfriend and their kids didn't like it.




I told them all they have no soul whatsoever.


But in retrospect I think the film was too deep for kids to really understand.

 

[ShaggyMarco]

After going to see this film I felt like I was raped by a cute robot's liberal agenda.

The fact that they make all of the perceived evils of the world completely morally equivalent did not sit right with me.

As far as Disney is concerned, Capitalism=Environmental Pollution=Overweight People=Obsessed with Technology=Disconnected from the World=Clueless=Sheep-like enslavement to advertising and media.

These are not all the same social issue, and in fact, I think our society makes a much bigger deal about some of these things than should be made. The idea that all of these things are basically the same big problem makes me want to vomit.

Just because I am overweight, beleive in capitalism, and enjoy technology doesn't mean I'll be an blimp-like imbelcile who disregards his environment and does what he's told before I know it! Had they decided to tackled one or two issues in an honest and meaning ful manner, I'd have liked this film. The fact that they use over-the-top generalizations in the most judgemental ways possible makes this film, for me, the liberal equivalent of a Bible-beating televangalist.

I liked the short with the Rabbit way more.

 

[Dr.Strangefate]

I felt like it was more about human apathy than anti-captolist.

 

[ShaggyMarco]

The images of Buy-n-Large first becoming the economic superpower then taking ove rthe government, then, finally creating the human apathy machine certainly points to capitalism as the root of human apathy.

 

[E]

God, you guys sound like Rush Limbaugh.

 

[Hellsbuttmonkey]

Saw this today. It was good. Not amazing, but pretty damn good. I wanted more made of the retarded robot gang that WALL-E liberated.

Kung Fu Panda wins my favourite animated film of the year though.