Commentary Track
Is Wall-E This Year’s Inconvenient Truth?
Posted by Cole Abaius (cole.abaius@filmschoolrejects.com) on March 15, 2008
Hidden among the adventurous archaeologists and the caped crusaders is another highly anticipated hero coming to the big screen in the summer: a tiny cleaning robot that looks like Johnny Five’s nephew and goes by the name Wall-E.
It seems almost automatic that audience excitement follows anything released by the geniuses at Pixar, and certainly a precious hunk of metal with a personality is worthy of Nemo’s and The Incredibles‘ legacy, but writer Jim Hill has exposed what might be a far less fuzzy, lovable side to the feature.
Hill points out that, despite the sugar-coated trailer that’s hit the web recently for Wall-E, the main premise of the film is a strong indictment of American society – a population of obese humans have trashed and polluted their planet beyond inhabitability, leaving a small robot to clean up their mess.
All the elements are there: a gluttonous, mass consumerist society. Wastefulness that leads to the destruction of the planet. The laziness that comes with pushing our problems on poor, precocious worker robots just looking for love.
Hill points out, rightly, that Disney’s Ad Wizards are leaving out those details in an effort to get you at the ticket counter in July. It’s tough to sell the masses a ten dollar movie ticket while deriding them for being consumers.
Whether or not the message is really driven home by the movie will have to wait until it’s released (or at least until the press screenings). It might be a tragic background or it might get hammered in throughout the film. Plus, Hill might be at least a little guilty of finding a darker side because he’s looking for it. Or at least guilty of seeing it as darkly as he does. As with any social commentary, the audience will get to paint in its own shades of gray.
His contacts at the Mouse’s PR department have revealed their concern to him over how audiences will react to the fat, lazy, earth destroying mass that humans of the future have become. They really don’t have anything to worry about. I may sound more cynical than Hill here, but I doubt that the typical audience is going to think twice about the social message. There’s going to be groups of people who already recycle and love Al Gore that will find resonance in the satire. Most, however, will probably sip the extra-gigantic cola and popcorn that Hill warns us against buying without batting an eye. If they feel their heart tingling, they’ll think its Disney magic before they think its arrhythmia.
So is Jim Hill right? Of course – he’s only echoing the concerns of the marketing team that wants to illustrate how lovable the robotic hero is over how fat and lazy the humans are. But I just don’t see this film having that subversive a core unless you’re looking for it. After all, these are humans of the future! It’s not like we’re fat and lazy and destructive and obsessed with materials, right? Unless you already believe that, you’re probably not going to walk out of Wall-E enlightened.
Who knows? I might be wrong. Scores of heavyset, reality-television-addicted, mass consumers may write off the film as reactionary, as insultingly cautionary, as Inconvenient. The Fat Guys at the Movies may even be leading the charge. But I doubt it. People don’t tend to see themselves as the bad guy in films, especially when the hero is such a lovable pile of sentient metal. Kudos though, Jim, for opening our eyes to another dimension to what might have been glossed over as yet another (jumbo) popcorn movie.
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7 Comments
March 15th, 2008 at 4:56 am
I think this will be similar to An Inconvenient Truth in that they’re both fiction.
ZING
Although Wall-E looks to be way better and more accurate in terms of what will happen to the earth. So Pixar for Nobel Prize?
March 16th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Wall-E is Pixar’s attempt at breaking critic’s opinions that Pixar movies give the same old morals. It’s probably going to be more of the same. It’s not like their last two pics bombed.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:12 am
From what I have read, the plot for the film does sound like its going to be an interesting take on the future that hasn’t been done before.. but at the same time I want to wait and reserve my judgement of the film until after someone has actually seen it and its not all just speculation based on someone’s “sources” .. The trailer does look magnificent ..
March 17th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Waiting to see a movie before forming an opinion of it? Blasphemy!
March 19th, 2008 at 3:06 am
what a shock that you Americans think it’s okay to gorge yourself and use up all the planet’s resources. watch more movies to distract yourself from any contemplation of what’s going on.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Why are you even repeating the bs jim hill spews? He’s a hack–mostly wrong, and always badly written. He’s reviled in the animation and Disney community–especially by fans.
April 26th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Seriously I have no problem with the idea of humans becoming so dependent upon their robot underlings that they slowly devolve into an obese race. I mean seriously, think about it - what’s wrong with a movie that points out that a majority of American’s are becoming shut-ins who do not venture outside?
A new generation of children right now are weaker than the previous generation, why? Because they don’t do anything, except spend their time inside playing video games and watching television. What’s wrong with going out and getting a little exercise? People that are offended by a movie pointing out the danger of being so side tracked in the little things, that they lose touch with a healthy lifestyle, is just silly.
Look I know there are people that are overweight, who are very outgoing and active and particularly good role models. But this movie, like all forms of theme based stories is taking the extreme cases that sadly is becoming more common everyday. Selfishness and single-minded interest is what will destroy us, Wall-e is a curious robot, he’s curious about the world around him and through this curiosity he learns to care for the world. In the movie the people have lost their curiosity, the sense of wonder, and they fall back on the ‘well nothing to do but indulge’ and stop accomplishing anything.
To think that this movie is supposed to blame fat people for all the problems in the world is to be blind to what the message is really being presented. For those that think, ‘This movie says fat people are the reason for the destruction of the human race’ really need to look around at the world. It isn’t that lazy fat people are the destruction of the world, but the fact that humans selfishness can result in the destruction of the world as well as what it is to be human.