2. Wall-E was created by Disney Pixar and was release in 2008. Wall-E is heartwarming film about
a robot that was left on earth with nothing but its decaying remains and a cockroach that that he
kept as his pet after it was determined that earth was no longer livable for humans. Due to its
inability to sustain human life, the humans set off on a 700 yearlong voyage to live in a
spaceship in outer space. In this film Wall-E finds love with a futuristic robot and together they
help the humans fight a battle against evil robots in order for them to finally return home to the
planet earth and create more livable circumstances.
In the beginning of the film we see how the earth is left filled with trash, and Wall-E has the task
of cleaning it up little by little. Each day Wall-E sets out on his routine and wakes up,
compressing all the trash into cubes. Then every night high winds arise which brings more trash
to come to the area. Later in the film Eve is brought to earth. Eve is a robot sent from the space
station in which humans have temporarily been living in. She was sent to find any form of plant
like species, which indicates that earth has become once again suitable for them to live. Once
Eve found a plant she was locked up into a hibernation mode until she was picked up and
returned to space. When this happened, Wall-E became frightened and took care of Eve until
the very end. Wall-E had no idea what was going on, but he knew that he loved Eve and
wouldn’t dare leave her side. Wall-E follows Eve into the space ship and embarks on a journey.
In the end Wall-E and Eve go through a big battle against evil robots who do not wish for the
humans to return to earth and become heroes after defeating them. Wall-E temporarily loses his
memory as he is crushed and broken. Once Eve restores Wall-E and kisses him, he regains his
memory and they both live happily ever after.
3. The main objective and underlying idea that Wall-E tells its
viewers, is that “if we don’t change the way we live, we’ll all
get really fat and destroy the world. There are some major
Major
themes shown in the movie that support this theory.
Environmental Waste-The movie Wall-E sets a huge critique
Themes
on the human population and waste management. The
futuristic animation shows how the world could possibly be
if we do not manage our waste systems and be resourceful.
Wall-E is left to make the earth livable again for the humans
again, showing the severity of waste accumulation.
Technology- The human kind is sent to live their lives on a
space ship until the earth is replenished. The technological
advances shown, exhibit the disconnect from the real world.
The humans travel by personal air shuttles, which in turn
makes the future view of humans obese and inactive, which
is what would logically happen if humans were under the
circumstances.
Christianity- Wall-E and Eve take on the names for more
purpose than its viewers may think. The director of Wall-E
(Stanton) wanted the movie to portray similar story line to
the Old Testament. For example, the story of Noah’s ark is
similar to Eve being the dove that goes back to earth to
know when it is time to come back (Moring, 2008).
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9s7afoYI-M
This short video clip of the movie Wall-E really highlights one of the
major themes, and that is industrialization. As seen in the clip, the
company BuyNLarge rules and has taken over the human mind. As
portrayed in the movie, Technology is shown as a reason for
complete disconnect from reality. In this video clip one of the
humans states after she got off of her cellular device, “ I didn’t know
we had a pool”. This line signifies how out of touch with reality
humans are and will continue to be in our future. Even though this
was not Stantons direct intentions, he gave the audience many
things to ponder about considering human lifestyle. The obesity in
the humans show what would happen if we were to go into space.
We would lose our bone mass and in turn, become obese and lazy.
There are many things that show human lifestyle changes in this
video clip and are essential in realizing and analyzing the major
themes.
6. Meet Wall-E
In the Disney Pixar film Wall-E, Wall-E in the
protagonist. Wall-E is a robot that is left on Earth
after the humans have left the planet due to
unlivable living conditions. Wall-E (Waste
Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is a robot
that not only collects items that are of value to
him, he also takes the waste that has been
accumulating on the planet and crushes it into
large cubes of waste. In the film, after years of
being alone on Earth Wall-E embarks on a
mission to protect Eve, in which he also ends up
helping the humans fight against the bad robots
whom wish for the humans to never return to
Earth. Although Wall-E looks like a dirty beaten
down robot, he has a lot more strength in him
then what meets the eye. Wall-E is a very brave
little robot, who was willing to risk his life to
protect Eve, as well as help the humans in their
journey to return home to planet Earth. There is a
lot more to Wall-E then just being a robot who
recycles trash, and he is indeed a hero in this
film.
7. Eve, whose name stands for Extraterrestrial
Eve
Vegetation Evaluator, is a high tech robot whose
mission was to come to Earth to find any sign of
photosynthesis that would indicate that Earth has
once again become suitable for humans to return
home. At first we see that Eve means strictly business
and had no intentions of becoming close to Wall-E. In
the film we see that although Eve wants to be
successful on her mission, and not become
distracted, Wall-E eventually makes her warm up to
him. Once Eve finds a plant she is put into a
hibernation mode until her time comes to return to
space with the evidence that Earth is safe once again.
While she is in hibernation mode Wall-E takes care
of her, and follows her to space which is where they
both embark on an unexpected mission. Wall-E and
Eve together have to fight against Auto the antagonist
of the film, who does not want the humans to return
home. Although Eve is a high-tech robot, and Wall-E
is an older not so fancy robot, they both come
together on this quest and work together to fight
against evil in which they are both success in. There
is no doubt that they both make a great team.
8. Auto
Auto is the antagonist of the film, who
is actually the autopilot of the space
station as well. In the film Auto takes
advantage of his authority of being the
autopilot of the space station to keep
the humans from returning home. In the
film we see that Auto tries to keep the
captain from finding out that Eve
returned successfully with a
plant, indicating that it was safe to
return home. In the film, we see that
Auto is the captain’s assistant, but in
order to stop them from returning home
he disobeys the captain and begins to
try to take full control over the space
station.
9. Captain B. McCrea
Captain B. McCrea in the film is not
necessarily a main character, but in the film
we see that at first from being stuck on the
space station for so many years, he has
become lazy and use to Auto assisting him
in everything he does on the space station.
Once the Captain realizes what is going on
he begins to take action because he wants to
return home to Earth, and live the way that
they are meant to. In order to do so he does
what many people on the space station have
not done in years which is to literally stand
up, and turn off the autopilot(Auto), and
begin to take charge as captain once again.
Once he was able to turn off Auto, he takes
control of the ship and returns everyone
home in which he is very excited about.
12. Plastic Island Continued
In the film Wall- E there is a much larger picture to be seen then just a cute child animated Disney
film. The message that we can see in Wall-E is that industrialization and pollution is highly
affecting our planet. In these two additional video clips The Great Plastic Trash Island, and Planet
100: The Pacific Trash Vortex Explained we learn more about how manufactured plastics are
affecting our planet. In these clips we learn that we use two million plastic drink bottles every five
minutes in the United States every day. Isla San Roque has a lot of plastic bottles with bottle caps
that are made with harmful chemicals that cause them to sink in water. After watching these clips
we learn how harmful plastic is for our planet because it is becoming accumulated in certain parts
of our planet, and harming the animals that live in those areas. Such as fish and goose, and several
other animals that are living and consuming the water. In Wall-E we see that there is a lot of waste
that is left and accumulated on Earth, and if we don’t begin to take action about our waste we could
potentially be making our planet no longer suitable for us to live on. According to an article by
Clair Le Guem Lytle in 2008 our world wide estimate of plastic consumption was 260 million tons.
We often don’t realize that one bottle of water that we purchase can cause so much damage to our
planet, but the reality is that we as consumers are purchasing beverages in plastic bottles everyday
that don’t always get recycled. We also often don’t take even a moment to realize that one littered
bottle is actually contributing to a much larger problem.
14. Food Waste Continued
Food waste is another huge issue that is affecting our planet. According to these video clips, the
reason why food waste is such a huge issue is because not only is food being wasted that could
be given to those who are in need of it, but also because when we waste food and it rots it
releases a green house gas called Methane. The reason why the release of this gas is such a
huge issue is because it is twenty one times more harmful than carbon dioxide, which
contributes to the issue of global warming. According to Face the Facts USA in 2010 in
America we wasted 33.79 million tons of food. All of which contributed to harming our planet.
In Wall-E we see that Earth was no longer suitable for humans to live on, and it could all be
because of these reasons. We as humans are constantly using and taking far more then what we
need to survive. If we took initiative to stop wasting so much food we would not only save
money, but it would also help benefit our planet. In the Wall-E film they do not state the exact
reason that Earth was damaged and basically collapsed, but it is easy to see the results in real
life what the possibilities could have been. If we were to try and reduce this problem, we would
save money that goes into having to dispose the food, as well water that is used, and we would
most importantly reduce the amount of Methane that is being released, and increasing the cause
of global warming.
15. Introduction to Film/Text
The Disney Pixar animated film Wall-E was released in 2008 and easily was
able to warm the hearts of many. In the film we see that Wall-E has been left
alone, with no one by his side except for his pet cockroach, on Earth after the
humans evacuated the planet when it became no longer suitable for them to live
on. In the beginning we see that Wall-E is a solar powered robot, which allows
us to see why he can still function without needing any special maintenance.
Everyday Wall-E wakes up and collects the trash that has been left behind by
humans and crushes it into cubes, and collects items that he find interesting.
Wall-E seemed to be living a daily routine until one day Eve is brought to Earth
to find any sign of photosynthesis that would indicate that Earth is safe once
again. Eve and Wall-E end up having to fight against evil robots whom wish for
the humans not to return home. This film does not only provide its audience with
entertainment it also provides us with a much larger message, that
industrialization and pollution is highly affecting our planet.
16. Technical Aspects of Animation
Wall-E is a computer-animated science-fiction romantic comedy. The idea
to create Wall-E was inspired after the success of Pixar's Finding
Nemo, Pixar felt that after creating an entirety of an underwater world the
creating a story set in space would be nothing. It was however the most
complex film Pixar created since Monster's Inc. On average a Pixar film
has about 75,000 story boards, while Wall-E on the other hand had
125,000.
A fun fact about the creation of the character Eve during Animation: Pixar
asked Apple iPod designer Jonathan Ive to inspect the character. Pixar
wanted her to be on the high end of the technology spectrum, and who
better to ask than Apple.
Animators watched a lot of black and white silent films during the
animation process to study the way that all sorts of emotions could be
displayed without sound. This helped to create characters that could be
easily understand regardless of their lack of verbal communication skills. It
definitely worked, because the story was able to flow endlessly without any
issues.
17. Filming
There were a lot of interesting shots and stylistic spectrums in the filming
of Wall-E. From the dynamic way the animators created a flow to the
simple aspects of fading and changing focus. One of the more interesting
aspects of filming Wall-E was the director's desire for a lighting
scheme. During the first third of the movie, the lighting is romantic,
overexposed, almost ethereal. Then the second act, the part primarily in
space and on the ship is cold and sterile feeling. Very uninviting. But
towards the end of the film, when Wall-E and Eve's love is bringing a rise
back to Humanity, things change and the light returns to its original
ethereal state.
To make the story seem more realistic, Pixar wanted to create a feeling of
an old Science Fiction movie filmed using 70mm film with flares and barrel
distortion. There was a lot of focus put on creating this atmosphere
through camera angles and advanced animation. They chose to use a lot
of angles on the virtual set that would be used during a live-action film
shoot to help create this illusion.
Whilst inside the Axiom spaceship, virtual camera angles were kept very
close to the movement of the subject to mimic the feel of a
steadicam. This helped viewers to feel apart of the ride as the characters
zoomed through the ship.
18. Cultural Aspects
Wall-E was created with an idea of showing what our world may be like several
years down the road. The purpose of the film was to create a sense of urgency to
clean up our act and try find a better way to go about living our daily lives so as not
to live in a future full of unending waste. This is a huge cultural aspect of the film
because it plays off the way that American's especially live so frivolously without any
real cause for taking care of our planet's future.
The other huge cultural aspect of this film that stood out, was the way that the
humans were depicted once aboard the Axiom spaceship. Everything was only a
button away and the world they lived in was built purely out of convenience. No one
had to work for what they had and the could literally glide through life without lifting
a finger. This illustrated to me the growing issues with obesity and laziness due to
the rise of technology that we see everyday.
Finally a cultural aspect that was brought about in this film is the so-called "fear of
the machine". With our steady use of technology there will always be speculation
about the computers one day speaking for themselves, and I think that this film did
a good job of illustrating this, especially through the protagonist character Auto. It
gives us, the viewers, something to think about and reflect on as we continue to rely
on technology for more and more aspects of our life.
19. Sources
Corliss, Richard. "Wall-E: Pixar's Biggest Gamble." Time 12 June 2008: n. pag. Web.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1813964,00.html
Engber, Daniel. "Fat-E." Slate. N.p., 10 July 2008.
Web.<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2008/07/fate.html
Johnson, Mitchell. "The Re(f)use City and WALL-E." Solutions 1.1 (2009): 22-23. Print
Sunde, Joseph. "Wall-E vs the Jetsons: Materialism and Technological Progress." Web log post.
Remnant Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://remnantculture.com/?p=2951>
"The Little Robot That Could." Interview by Mark Moring. Christianity Today. N.p., 24June 2008. Web.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080731105235/http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/andre
wstanton.html
Variano, Dana. "Wall-E and the Consumerism of Environmental Movement." Web log post. Philanthro
Media. N.p., 14 July 2008. Web
Wall E is jus too good. 8 Aug. 2008. YouTube. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoa25BjRP-I
Wall-E… the sad future of human kind. 5 Nov. 2008. YouTube. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9s7afoYI-M
