Why I'm Excited About Wall-E

Similar to my Speed Racer entry, this entry is going to look at some of the videos I've found on YouTube that have got me excited about Wall-E.

The first thing I'm going to show you isn't the movie's trailer, but rather an advertisement for Wall-E itself as an actual robotic product you can purchase, which I believe would have been a great teaser trailer.



The Buy-N-Large website is a real site. It's used as a kind of viral marketing tactic that fans of Cloverfield know about already. Trolling the site will lead you to the back story of Wall-E's universe, which is Pixar once again giving a very blatant political message behind their intended story.

Back in Monsters Inc., there was a plot element that was read more like a pop culture jab than an actual public service announcement. It was the fact that Monstrapolis was under rolling blackouts due to an energy crisis. They book end this message when they discover a new and better alternative fuel source. 'Nuff said there.

In Wall-E, the underlying message is gross consumerism. The Buy-N-Large website and all the trailers that have been release show Earth as a giant landfill, a victim of our over-spending and mass production. It is Wall-E's job to clean all that up for us so that plants could grow and human life can return. There's no indication of any other life outside of some birds and a roach that Wall-E keeps as a pet. It's rather disturbing, really. Even more so when you notice the different areas Buy-N-Large has under their company name like the government and the media. All the press I've read about the movie indicate the first third of the movie takes place in this very setting... and remember, this is a family movie! Now, I'm not saying that every family going to see this movie has done the same kind of fanatical digging like I have, but there were visual indications that the press picked up in preview screens that point out this very back story while a song from Hello Dolly! plays over the montage. Clearly, Pixar is not going to try and sugar coat this message, or even hide it like they did with Monsters Inc.

But that isn't the focal point of the film. The film is actually designed for two things. On Pixar's side of the fence, they are significantly upgrading their technology by recalculating all their math in their camera engine. What this means is that their computer camera will end up acting like a live-action camera. They've hired cinematographers to help point out to their techs things that were missing from all their previous films like realistic lens flares and barrel focusing blurs. As a result, they got a near photo-realistic cut of every scene that takes place on Earth. It's an aesthetic that works well in drawing you into the film, as everything will look familiar to you even if Wall-E looks rather cartoonish in design.

The second point that this film is trying to do is show that you don't need dialogue. You can get a lot of emotion and context based on body language alone. This is where I have to applaud the animators of Pixar. They are taking what they did in Luxo Jr. way back in 1986 and bringing it to a new character. One interview I read with the director says that Wall-E essentially gives humanity a reboot simple because he acts more human than a robot should.

There have been several vignettes that have been released displaying this. Possibly as just tests that the animators did to see if that was the kind of humor they should be aiming for or if Wall-E could behave in the way they wanted him to. Most of these have been released on YouTube. Here are the ones I've found.









Though the formula is the same (Wall-E finds an object he's not familiar with, checks it out, hilarity ensues), you can still get a good idea of what's going through Wall-E's mind with how he simply reacts or interacts with the objects. There is so much personality, that I promise you people are going to leave the theatres practically in love with this little trash compactor of a robot. You'd have to be a fool to bet against that.

Like I told one of my co-workers, I go to Pixar movies initially for the technical advances. I leave feeling attached to the characters and stories. So far, I have not left a Pixar film unsatisfied, and from these vignettes I know I won't be disappointed with Wall-E.

Now, if only Disney would get on the ball and use this character for a PSA involving recycling...