Wall-E
dir. Andrew Stanton (Pixar)
2008

"Here's how it is: the Earth got used up."
- Mal, Firefly

"The only thing we've found to make the emptiness bearable...is each other"
- Alien, Contact

"Lack of respect, wrong attitude, failure to obey authority. Farm, immediately."
- Lou, A Boy and His Dog


One of my earliest and most distinct childhood memories is the resignation of Richard Nixon. I remember being baffled that anyone would want to quit being president.

As I watched him sitting there behind the big, important-looking desk, flanked by flags and the artifice of state, it occurred to me for the first time that there was something deeply wrong with the adult world, a suspicion that was confirmed more often than refuted in the subsequent 34 years.

Wall-E inhabits an apocalyptic future that is the logical conclusion of this dysfunction. It's not the post-nuclear-holocaust world destroyed by a few madmen with too much power. It's a toxic, over consumed slag heap of decaying, cast-off obsolescence. A victim of neglect, not assault. A product of our indifference, not our passion, our ignorance, not our ideology.

This is the world the meek Wall-E and his cockroach friend have inherited. Wall-E's mission is to clean up the mess left by humanity.

Children's movies are, in part, developmental morality tales. From Bambi we learn that we may lose the ones we love but that life will go on and take us with it. From Dumbo we learn to know and to trust in ourselves. From Pinocchio, we learn the value of honesty and integrity.

The lesson of Wall-E seems to be that there's no mess too big for us to clean up if we wake up and smell it. A timely lesson for the generations of peak oil and global climate change.

The first part of the story takes place on Earth, where Wall-E spends his time compacting garbage and collecting knick knacks for himself. Wall-E goes about his humdrum life, diligently attending to his absurdly out-sized task until, one day, he is visited by the enigmatic EVE, an advanced probe droid.

In contrast to Wall-E's rough, mechanical appearance, EVE is smooth and slick with a spotless alabaster white surface. Side by side, they resemble John Hodgman and Justin Long from the "PC and Mac" commercials.

Like the beginning of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, this segment is practically silent. Exposition is provided by commercials and news programs played on dilapitated viewscreens.

This is the best and most interesting part of Wall-E. To date, digitally animated films have always given themselves the crutch of celebrity voices and rapid jokes to prop up their entertainment value. Mike Meyers and Eddie Murphy can be relied on to make a film fun even if the projector bulb burns out.

Wall-E, to its great credit, casts this crutch aside and relies on craft to deliver the drama and connect with the audience. In this way, Wall-E represents a high water mark for digital filmmaking.

As the story progresses, Wall-E and EVE find themselves on a starliner inhabited by the remnants of humanity, who live their lives in group isolation, bound to hover chairs, lounging day after day by the Lido deck, text messaging each other from inches away and taking all their meals in Slurpee form.

Like Wall-E and EVE, the humans are cut off from one another. The simple contact of holding hands is a revelation.

These are star children, latter-day Dave Bowmans, robbed by their technology of any sense of a future, any sense that there should even be a future. Their red-eyed ship's computer is no HAL, no murderous psychopath, but rather an insistently overprotective parent, bent only on humanity's survival, not growth.

This section of the film is less successful, falling back on overlong chase sequences to prop up the thin story. While the interplay between Wall-E, EVE, the ship's computer and the captain has its moments, there's nothing there remotely as engaging as The Incredibles.

In the end, Wall-E is about the struggle to live, for which survival is necessary but far, far from sufficient. For a generation of children born into a bleary-eyed, war-weary, detached yet over-stimulated culture, the lesson is that we must learn to stand and walk again.

Three stars. Captain Jason says, give me your hand.