Trying out a new reaction thread for our recent theater watchings. Post reactions, highlights, drawbacks, best/worst moments, or whatever else you feel needs saying.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Reactions to Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
Trying out a new reaction thread for our recent theater watchings. Post reactions, highlights, drawbacks, best/worst moments, or whatever else you feel needs saying.
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5 comments:
Simply perfect...I don't have any complaints about this film, or rather so much more than a film, it transcends the animated genre to be a work of art any one of any race, religion, gender, age could love.
Best moments (can I say the whole movie)
-When Wall-E is trying to revive Eve. It was heartbreaking. Also great scene when we see her reaction to him trying to save her in the security camera video. I know I was in tears.
-the credits. Not the Peter Gabriel song, but the wonderful animation that tells the remaining story as man rebuilds. Using a timeline of art from prehistoric to Renaissance was a stroke of genius.
-When Wall-E brings Eve back to his home and shows her Hello Dolly, Rubiks cube, Twinkies, etc.
-Seeing the interior of the Axiom. My God that was such a beautiful creative world they made.
-Wall-E's reaction after being "kissed" the first time
-the flood of fat people all piling up had me rolling.
-finally (I'll let some other people post before I take them all), when they finally hold hands. Two robots had more chemistry and sincerity than nearly any other romance I've ever seen. Suck on that English Patient.
Worst moments
-watching it with one of my Geek Squad friends who pointed out that Wall-E's fully charged sound was that of a Mac. I just hated him pointing it out constantly. Who cares, it was a nice in-joke. He thinks Steve Jobs was like doing some subliminal messaging or something.
Last thing I want to say (not really Wall-E related, but it was the attached trailer to the film)...Any one else think that the hamster in "Bolt" is going to be the craziest funniest damn thing this fall when it comes out. Didn't really care for the film, but damn that hamster had in hysterics.
Also I predict a pun as we will see John Tra-Bolt-a pop up in a review or two for the film.
If I had to go back and redo my “Film Script Top 7 – Animated Films (Contemporary),” I would now have to bump Ratatouille off the list in favor of Wall-E and Eve. I would say hesitantly, but parts of Wall-E are some of the best storytelling I’ve seen all year, and amongst the best animated moments I’ve ever seen… so it’s really not that close.
Wall-E also manages to easily climb in next to Toy Story and Finding Nemo as one of my favorite films from Pixar.
It’s a great film, one that proves that Andrew Stanton is every bit as talented as the much-heralded wunderkind Brad Bird (and in my mind even more so). So I’m largely in agreement with you Ty… I’m just even more in agreement with the “Filmspotting” crew.
The first half of this film is pure bliss. The silent storytelling. The Chaplin-esque focus on pratfalls in the name of love. I could’ve watched Wall-E on the savaged Earth, alone or pining after Eve, for hours.
I do have some issues with the film once it gets to the Axiom though and, literally, the largest problem is the humans. They’re over-generalized. Everyone is exactly the same. The same weight, the same clothes, the same Slurpee drink.
And yes, I understand that’s the point.
It’s a cautionary tale about the wasteful nature of human beings. They want to show that by adopting everything that the television is selling us and through our desperation to have things faster and easier, we’ve taken all the work and thought out of life… where we could somehow miss the entire world around us because we’re so focused in on ourselves and our gadgets. We have removed any sort of human interaction. I get it.
But by doing so, they also removed a large part of the sympathy and interest from those characters. They’re bland. Lifeless masses.
But luckily (and brilliantly), Wall-E is more human than any of them. His sound recorder & player. His shifty binocular-like eyes. His penchant for saving trinkets out of the garbage piles he stacks each day. His recognition of something new and beautiful, both in Eve and in the first plant he finds on Earth.
There are genuine moments of heartbreak. As you said, when Eve sees the lengths to which Wall-E protected her during her comatose state. Or when Wall-E’s memory card is fried and he can no longer remember Eve, and starts to compact his own prized possessions.
I still don’t know how Wall-E got his memory back, but I’m willing to go with it. Wall-E is so human, maybe his specific parts don’t matter, it’s the whole of him that makes him live and allows him to remember.
Other moments that hit me:
Wall-E taking the treads off a no-longer-functioning other version of himself. Reminded me of a war film and how soldiers would take the boots off the fallen.
The wasteland of discarded Wall-E models that didn’t survive (yeah, the movie is a bit bleak).
Wall-E’s love for Hello, Dolly! and his entire dwelling-space.
How Pixar can somehow make me feel for a cockroach.
The moment Wall-E clings to the spaceship and flies off into outer space. There is an authentic sense of wonder about the story Pixar is presenting here, something that never filters into the rush jobs of DreamWorks or Fox Animation.
And finally, pretty much any moment between Wall-E and Eve. This is the best love story of 2008 thus far. Bravo.
Perfection....need I say more?
I loved that movie. I'm a 40 year old male, and parts had my eyes welling up. It's the full range of emotion that makes it such great storytelling. The fairly small amount of actual dialogue from the robots just goes to show that with perfect cinematography such as this, dialogue isn't even very necessary.
Favourite scenes for me, not already mentioned above, would be;
- The flight sequences, especially when we first meet Eve. She glances up to the departing spaceship and it's as if she's thinking "Okay the boss has gone, nobody's looking" and she spreads her wings and takes to the air. Beautifully done, especially with Thomas Newman's musical composition. I could watch it over and over.
- Wall-E and Eve's first proper exchange of dialogue, telling each other their names. Wall-E struggles with Eve's name "Eve-ahh". Absolutely charming.
It's hard to say where I'd rank it compared to my top favourite animated movies; Toy Story 1,2 and Finding Nemo. All of them are great pieces of story-telling, but I think Wall-E's simple tale of true love conquering all and saving the planet, as well as the stunningly realistic art, puts it in a class of it's own. It certainly deserves to be an enduring classic.
Wall-E is the best. I am seriously obsessed like you wouldn't believe. Not obsessed like I have a gazillion items of merchandise, I mean obsessed like Wall-E and Eve are the only ones I see. Everywhere. And yes, I'm dead serious. I can't help but smile when I think of something so romantic...need I say more?
Wow...I need to see a sequel, I swear. I'm in the process of writing one (or maybe a couple drafts), though I doubt it would be as beautiful and dazzling as this lovely and remarkable film.
I think I've gone insane.
But hey, who hasn't? ;)
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