Resolutions 2014: WALL-E

The film resolutions continue! If you’ve missed the series so far, I’ve done reviews on two films, and I’ve also had some great reviews from a couple of awesome guest bloggers. You can view all of these write-ups in the Resolutions 2014 Archives. And now it’s time for yet another awesome guest blogger! Today we get the privilege of hearing from Zoë over at The Sporadic Chronicles of a Beginner Blogger. She got around to watching Wall-E, and thank goodness for that!! If you haven’t paid a visit to Zoë’s site before, please do. She’s got a whole assortment of wonderful content–book reviews, movie reviews, and several fantastic series, including an upcoming series asking for top ten lists that I think is going to be really cool. But enough from me–here’s Zoë!

So Cara is running a resolutions theme, and there are some movies that I have always been meaning to get to and never have. One of those films happened to be WALL-E. Yes, I was one of the very few in the universe that had not seen it. The thing about animations is that I am not a massive fan. I love to watch them if they are on (but then again, this reaches more back to the older ones, such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, etc.), but to get me to put one on free willingly? Wow, I assure you that it rarely happens! But a movie afternoon allowed for my friend to lay down the law. I am not even kidding. She sat me down on the couch, strong-armed me into getting over myself and just shutting up for the film and that it was well worth it. There were arguments that ensued and a lot of huffing and puffing and nothing to blow the house down with because she won. So I watched it and I decided it could be a Resolution after chatting with Cara and Cinema Disco Parrot about it, they had to be proud. Here we go!

“Too much garbage in your face? There’s plenty of space out in space! BnL StarLiners leaving each day. We’ll clean up the mess while you’re away.”
– BnL commerical

In the year 2805, WALL-E (Ben Burtt) is alone on Earth. Humans flocked to space for what was supposed to be five years so that the WALL-E’s were left to clean up the absolute mess and all the garbage that they had left behind, a clean-up operation to make life on Earth viable and sustainable again. Buy ‘n’ Large (BnL) organised the entire operation. WALL-E is ultimately a trash compactor, after seven hundred years alone he has developed sentience. People have been in space for hundreds of years, living on the incredibly luxurious BnL Starliner Axiom. WALL-E, however, has created a sweet but awfully lonely existence on Earth. He has a home and even a pet cockroach that chills with him, and spends his days collecting lots of trinkets and compacting trash to build his own skyscrapers with. Watching his tapes at home every night, seeing the dancing and singing men and women on television and their love stories, he grows lonely. He has nobody in his life to share it with.

One day a spacecraft lands in WALL-E’s environment, and he is curious enough to see what comes out. A droid pops out, and WALL-E is fascinated by the sheer beauty of her. She is sleek, smooth, fast and viciously dangerous, shooting anything that moves. WALL-E follows the droid around like a lost puppy, and eventually introduces himself to her, learning that her name is EVE (Elissa Knight), though he pronounces it Eva. She seems to be on a mission and not remotely interested in him. He plays her his movies and musicals and shows him her home. He also shows her the little plant that he recently discovered in an ancient refrigerator. EVE promptly shuts down and doesn’t move or respond again. Crushed, WALL-E takes her everywhere, creating the relationship he sees on television so much. However, soon the craft is back to collect EVE, and WALL-E is not prepared to let her go, and following EVE finds himself shot into space, to the Axiom where the humans are living.

“Oh, EVA.”

WALL-E begins a totally new adventure in space. He needs to recover EVE, but at the same time discovers that there is a world out there, people, and slowly but surely he starts causing waves when they start looking around them more versus living the commercial little lie the BnL provided for them. The people are vastly overweight and intensely lazy, and WALL-E is upsetting their little useless escapade. The machines on board don’t seem to want the presence of the living plant on board, and stealing it makes it appear that EVE is malfunctioning, and that Earth certainly isn’t life-sustaining as of yet. Captain of the Axiom, McCrea (Jeff Garlin), eventually gets involved, seeing what Earth used to be and yearning to return home, though he, personally, has never been there. WALL-E is going out of his way to express himself to EVE, and she is on nothing further than a mission to complete her directive, no matter what the cost.

“We’ll see who’s powerless now!” –Captain McCrea

Will EVE ever return WALL-E’s feelings? Will the machines aboard Axiom get away with keeping the humans in space forevermore? Will the humans on board ever remember the history as to why they are in space? Will they ever realise that there is more to life than just sitting around, having everything automated?

“Foreign contaminant!” –M-O

WALL-E earns a solid 8/10. I have to say, for a movie I was strapped down onto my couch for (not because it wasn’t expected to be halfway decent, but just because there are so many other dramas and horrors in the world to be watched first), it was really actually a very good one! The animation style was simply stunning and it was incredibly impressive. The world that the creators had put together was amazing. It was vast, detailed and believable. The score and the lighting was pretty cool too, bordering on realism, sci-fi and animation.The film spoke about conservation without necessarily stuffing it down your throat to make you gag. Then there was WALL-E himself. I have always thought him to be damn cute based on the pictures of him that I have seen over the years, but I was in no which way prepared for how adorable he truly is. I was wondering how in the world they were going to pull off a film with such little speech but lo and behold they managed that little hurdle just fine. It was actually refreshing for a change to see little speech in an animation, working solely on surroundings and actions, not childish cheese. Yes, sometimes for me the dialogue can become very cumbersome in an animation. I was horrified when WALL-E arrived in space to see how disgustingly lazy and obese the humans had become. It was a terrible thing to witness! I really liked WALL-E’s character – he was sweet, he was self-sufficient, he was an explorer, and had plenty scenes to make you giggle as well as make you go “awwwwwwwww”. One massively entertaining character for me was M-O (Ben Burtt), the germophobic and obsessive compulsive maintenance/cleaning robot. The fact that he could just not let some dirt go really made me laugh, especially the silly lengths he went to in order to maintain the cleanliness of the Axiom as well as display his distaste towards the ever-filthy WALL-E. This was definitely one of the best animations I have ever seen and it is well worth checking out (especially if you are one of the exceptions like me who has not seen it). This is really not usually the type of film that I watch or review, but this one was definitely the exception for me and I am glad that I did!

Thanks, Zoë, for an excellent review! So very happy you enjoyed this one! Personally, I don’t think you can ever go wrong with a resolution involving Pixar. Also, I’m super excited because I have several reviews just a-waiting for me in my inbox right now. Therefore, expect more guest reviews soon! 🙂