WALL*E (2008) Movie Review

WALL*E: Save The Earth

“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”
-- HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey

“The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago.”
-- Dr. Zaius from Planet Of The Apes (1968)

“And there were blue skies, and there was fresh air... and there were things growing all over the place, not just in some domed enclosures blasted some millions of miles out in to space.”
-- Freeman Lowell from Silent Running

I take Pixar for granted. It is a given they will release a top shelf quality film every time out of the gate. Their animators create the some of the most vivid worlds imaginable. I was blown away by Brad Bird’s The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Speaking of Brad Bird, The Iron Giant was a revelation on many levels. I see his name and I know something magical is going to appear on the screen. I should add Andrew Stanton’s name because he is a Pixar mainstay. He wrote and directed Finding Nemo which may have been one of my favorite films of 2003. I would have never expected that before I saw the film, but I was very moved in ways that even surprised me. Come on, I mean I love blood soaked Yakuza films-- so my admiration of Finding Nemo comes out of left field. Today, while watching Andrew Stanton’s WALL*E, I fell under the spell of the film within minutes. I never thought I would become so emotionally engaged while watching this film. As I said before, I take Pixar for granted. I know that it is going to be a visual feast for the eyes, but today I was truly rocked to my very core. Simply put, WALL*E is magical.

I have always said that David Lean’s Lawrence Of Arabia is the cinematic equivalent of a poem. The same can be said of the first forty minutes of WALL*E. There is hardly any dialogue spoken and there is not a human being in sight for the film’s first act. It is that same silence that beautifully punctuated Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first fifteen minutes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.

The film opens on Earth’s future many centuries from now. We are flies on the wall as we witness a darkly, beautiful post-apocalyptic landscape of vacant skyscrapers in a richly rendered city. There are no humans in this city; there are only the remains of humanity’s footprint-- creation and waste. There are mountains upon mountains of garbage that illuminate the hazy horizon-- this is mankind’s legacy. In this city devoid of any inhabitants, a tireless robot goes about his diligent tasks along with his loyal cockroach sidekick. The robot’s name is WALL*E which is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class. Our robot friend has been doing the same task for hundreds of years-- day in, day out. He has a lot of endurance. From the looks of it, he is the last of his kind. I would also add, not your standard robot either. He is a collector of mementos he finds in the junk. It is not all garbage to him. Some of his keepsakes are Zippo lighters, nuts, bolts and a Rubik’s Cube. One of his greatest treasures is a worn out videotape of Hello Dolly! It is his primer on life. Jerry Herman’s lyrics voiced by Louis Armstrong’s music takes on a new life as we hear the songs from the videotape played against the backdrop of our dark future. WALL*E has a tender regard for the artifacts of this lost civilization. After all, he was created by this civilization. The garbage is his only connection with humanity.

Where did the human race go? To put it simply, we created too much clutter. The human race was consumed by its own garbage. A megastore corporation called BnL (Buy N Large) forced itself on the planet with their megastores and their garbage. The human race was driven off the planet. We did not die out, but our addictive need to manufacture and consume made human life on the planet unsustainable. The BnL Corporation took its most valued consumers and placed them on huge spaceships to the stars planning to return when all of the garbage was done away with by an army of robots like WALL*E. The empty streets of the city bring to mind the empty cities of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (Artificial Intelligence, Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth and Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend. The extinction of humanity was prevalent in those two films as well as several others over the years. While, WALL*E is a G-rated family film, it is also one of the most daring films I have seen in a long time dealing with how our actions will effect the future of life on Earth. WALL*E is evocative of some of the very best science fiction films of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The first half of the film displays a fatalism that I have not seen since the original Planet Of The Apes films. There is an undercurrent of doom and gloom within the film. It has a classic 70’s feel to it. While many have commented that WALL*E seems to be directly influenced by Number 5 in John Badham’s Short Circuit, I say you have to go further back. WALL*E shares a lot of physical traits with Number 5, but he also reminds me a lot of R2-D2 from the Star Wars Saga. Veteran sound designer, Ben Burtt does the voice for WALL*E. Burtt did the landmark sound design for the Star Wars Saga. WALL*E, like that little droid, has more humanity in him than most people. Still, WALL*E reminds me most of the three little robots from Douglas Trumbull’s 1972 film, Silent Running-- Huey, Dewey and Louie. Silent Running took place in a not so distant future where Earth’s plant life had been decimated. The few pieces of flora left are kept in orbital greenhouses in space. At the end of the film, there is only one space greenhouse left. The last of the surviving robots is seen tendering all that is left of Earth’s plant life and of Earth itself. This haunting image of the little robot watering the last garden is what WALL*E evokes in me.. WALL*E is the last steward of the earth. In some ways, he is doing a better job than we ever did. The final images of Hugh Jackman in the clear orb in outer space in Darren Aronofsy’s The Fountain reminded me of the end of Silent Running as well.

The film goes in a different direction in the second act as a spaceship lands amidst the battered urban landscape. A robot probe is sent out from the spaceship. This research probe is a sleek and far more sophisticated machine than WALL*E. The research probe’s name is EVE. She is sent out to find any life on earth. Needless to say, WALL*E falls in love with the new robot. He is a an old school Commodore 64 to her latest and greatest iPod or the latest Steve Jobs state of the art must have device. Their budding relationship is the stuff that every romantic comedy should strive for, but rarely does. This part of the film is magical. Their budding friendship mirrors the friendship between Elliott and E.T. from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial; especially, when WALL*E shows EVE all of his treasures in his room. This part of the film is filled with precious moments. WALL*E and EVE have more heart and soul than most of their human counterparts in recent romantic comedies.

One of the greatest strengths of Andrew Stanton’s film is that he never turns this into a preachy lecture. For such a cataclysmic story, the film never talks down to the audience. Instead, in the third act, Stanton’s shows us the future of the human race head on. In space, in the giant spaceships that resemble huge orbital malls with cruise ship features, mankind has come full circle. Humanity has become prisoners of it own technology. The human race has created machines that do everything for them-- EVERYTHING! The humans onboard the ship have been out in space for hundreds of years on a permanent spring break vacation. Since humans do not do move anymore, they have devolved into giant, obese infants that move around on electronic chain lounges. It is a dystopian mess of epic proportions. It is the triumph of the machines by our own laziness. It is the bloodless version of Skynet’s victory in the Terminator films. It is the same as the servant apes turning on their human masters, but without the violent revolt as in Conquest Of The Planet Apes. The captain of the spaceship is voiced by Jeff Garlin. What we learn here in the third act is something we have suspected all along-- WALL*E is the most human character in the film followed by EVE and his cockroach companion. The machines on the ship are modeled after HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey-- right down to his iconic red eye. When there is a reason to go back to Earth, the ship’s machines will not hear of it. They want to keep control of humanity right where they have them. The machines want to stay the course just like humanity wanted to stay the course for so many years on Earth. Well, you saw where that got them.

WALL*E is nothing short of a masterpiece of filmmaking. It is brilliant. I have not seen a film deal with such complex issues as humanity’s existence and the fate of the planet in such a deep and beautiful way. The last film that did this right was Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys-- a brilliant throwback to 70’s era science fiction cinema. Gilliam’s film worked on a lot of levels-- satire, cautionary tale, science fiction and mystery. The film dealt with a disease that wiped out most of the human population and a convict sent back in time to find out the cause. The fatalism of that film reminded me of WALL*E, not so much because WALL*E is all fatalism, but because WALL*E is so fucking perfect a film. WALL*E, like Twelve Monkeys and the original Planet Of The Apes, works so well because it works on every level. As I said, I take Pixar for granted every time. Yet, I am astounded by how much I enjoyed this film. For an animated film, I felt like I was watching flesh and blood images on the screen. No, I am not talking about the video screen sequences of Fred Willard’s Shelby Forthright, BnL’s CEO, but of the film itself. The film is very much alive; it has an organic pulse not found in many live action releases. I expected a great film, but I did not expect a masterpiece. Andrew Stanton, like Brad Bird before him, can do no wrong in my book. Andrew Stanton’s adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter Of Mars cannot arrive soon enough.