Nov 21 2008
Off to the movies: Wall*E: Awareness, indoctrination or just a cute story?
I rarely go to theaters. It’s not the prices necessarily, though 5 bucks for popcorn is still shocking. It is more that I enjoy being comfortable at home watching it. So usually when a big hit comes out, my particular take on it is about six months late when the DVD releases.
And occasionally the movie in question has generated a stir of complaints and controversies that I hear about in depth before I even have a chance to see for myself what the fuss was all about.
Such was the case with Disney/Pixar’s Wall*E.
I heard in nauseating detail about the leftist indoctrinations, the insults and insensitivity to the obese and a few other complaints.
I was prepared to not like it, as I tend to dislike paying money to be preached at.
I was wrong. I loved it.
First, the actual story. The setting: Earth in the 29th century. The world has become overtaken by a global corporation (BnL or Buy n Large) and for 700 years has been completely depopulated. The world has become a scrap heap of trash, with only clean up robots left to perform a seemingly endless task of providing trash compacted order out of chaos. Life is apparently limited to a bug, who is our hero’s pet.
(Keep in mind this is Disney no matter how slick and amazing the CGI is. Disney has always been the master of projecting humanity to non human subjects, be it animals, cars or plants. And now robots.)
Our Hero is WALL*E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class) a self aware clean up bot reminiscent of a cross between Short Circuit’s Johnny 5 and ET. Our story is limited to the one unidentified city, but the implication is that he is alone after centuries of tireless toiling.
Wall*E is a collector of Humanities oddities: A spork, a Rubiks cube, a Zippo lighter and even a dented hub cap are fascinating. He toils the day away, watches show tunes at home and then turns in to restart his Herculean task all over again, after a morning’s breakfast (solar charge). He is dented, rusted, living on spare parts but loveable and appealing.



