Wall-E is kinda depressing, but very heartwarming.
Posted on 18th July 2008 by antuan goodwin
Okay, so I’ve seen Wall-E twice now and I’m not sure how I feel about it. A part of me thinks this is an incredibly depressing film. Yet another part of me thinks Wall-E is incredibly heartwarming. The only thing I am sure of is that this is that the trained monkeys at Disney/Pixar have done it again and created an incredibly brilliant movie.
The trailers paint this film as a fun filled romp in the future starring our Johnny 5-esque hero Wall-E, the trash compacting robot. And to some degree, it is just that. But like all of the good Pixar movies (with the obvious exception of Cars), Wall-E is so much more.
Our story takes place in a dystopian future, where a corporate-controlled mankind has trashed the earth to a point of being uninhabitable and subsequently abandoned it to be cleaned by an army of robots. Wall-E is the last functioning of these machines and has developed a curiosity about (and a huge collection of) the junk he’s been charged to compact. One day a ship lands and a new, superior robot appears. Her name is Eve. While there are plenty of cute moments involving Wall-E finding various common items and not knowing what to make of them, and his obvious obsolescence when compared to Eve (especially funny is Wall-E’s old school Mac boot sound when done recharging). However, underlying the story is a palpable sadness.
Wall-E is clearly lonely, being the last of his kind and longingly watching romantic musicals at night. His loneliness is only highlighted by the appearance of and his interactions with Eve. But the story of Wall-E and Eve is a cute one, the real element of this film that got me depressed was the state humanity left the world in and the state of humanity itself. I don’t want to spoil too much, but at some point near the middle of the film, mankind shows up and boy are they in a bad shape.
Like I said, I’m not going to give too many spoilers, so I won’t go into too much detail about the human condition. I will say that once the action kicks in there’s not much time to spend feeling sorry for the characters. It’s quite a roller coaster ride. Of interesting note, I actually forgot that I was watching an animated film until the humans showed up. The transition was a bit jarring.
Overall, even though the story is quite melancholy at parts it manages to tug the heartstrings with a genuinely heartwarming set of main characters and beautiful (if not a bit eco-preachy) ending. I don’t know how they manange to do it, but Pixar has made me tear up at the ending of almost every one of their films (particularly Monsters, Inc., Ratatoullie, Finding Nemo and now Wall-E). Overall, Pixar’s incredible work will not disappoint. Wall-E is a must see film.
Wall-E totally looks like the robot from “Short Circuit”… minus the cheesy 80’s style of course
Why depressing? I think there is much hope in this movie.
Very good work. Pixar made another one great film.
