Besides Wall-E just being a Pixar masterpiece, the Disney film calls into question some very interesting societal issues. Wall-E highlights the irony of social networking and its ability to “connect” people. Also, The film comments on the nature of our societies’ growing demand for consumption and instant gratification. The “Big and Large” store that is involved in every aspect of life on Earth and in space (as characterized by the advertisement on the moon) is an example of this. However the most prominent issue addressed in Wall-E is that of environmental destruction. The film depicts a future that is the result of years of environmental degradation and thoughtless consumerism.
The most powerful element of film used in the movie was the setting and place. The setting for the first 30 minutes of the movie was a dark and colorless trash ridden city on a silent Earth. Wall-Es interactions are initially only with his environment. The trash is his life: his enemy, and his only friend through his passion for trinkets and old films. The Earth at that point in history is a barren landscape without life. However it is ironic that the only life left, being the humans aboard the Axiom, exists in the hostile and lifeless environment of space. However the human environment aboard the Axiom is more like a virtual resort or rather a survival arc. The environments in which the humans live blind them to the truth of their existence. Both settings of the movie, the destroyed earth and the spaceship, share some commonalities. For example, the earth is lifeless at this point in time, similarly the humans aboard the ship become more and more “lifeless” due to their inability to think independently or relate to others. By this point the robots, designed and programmed by humans, are able to function more independently than their creators.
Jon Arthur
After I watched Wall-E, I start to think what if one day our earth will look like that. Even though there are not many sentences between main characters, we still can feel their emotion by looking the scenes of movie. I deem that the theme of Wall-E is the environment. The director shows what the earth will be if we continue to destroy the environment. I would like to talk about this movie by discussing the vision of movie.
ReplyDeleteThe first scene is dirty sky, the sky is not blue and there is no white cloud on the sky; the only thing you can see is dust. If you take a close look, you will find the difference between those buildings. Wall-E puts trash in his body which is a square. After several second, there is “trash square” come out and then Wall-E puts them in order. It looks like that Wall-E is constructing a tall building, but you cannot figure that out until you look the whole picture. There is an angel showing lots of buildings on the surface of the Earth. If you look carefully, you can find that some of the buildings are made of stone but some of them are made of “trash square”. I think the reason why the director did that way is because he wants us to see the difference. We can also find out that the quantity of “trash building” is greater than regular ones. I think that is because the director wants us to know how awful the earth would be at that time.
The director also talks about the dirty earth on another way. When Eva came to earth, you can see how clean she is. However, after she got back to that big spaceship, clean robot found there is 13% Foreign Contaminant on her skin. And they found 100% foreign Contaminant on Wall-E. In that way, we can know that how dirty is earth as well.
to be continue....
ReplyDeleteThe director also depicts the insistence of Wall-E. There is a scene presenting a lot of broken Wall-Es and Wall-E move by them. Since the director already told us how awful the earth at that time before, we can discover the insistence of Wall-E because he is the only one who survived on earth. I also think that director used this scene to tell us that plantation is more important than diamonds. Nowadays, everyone knows that diamonds are worthy and diamonds are precious for humans. However, when Wall-E grabs the things that he thinks important to his little case, he found a box with diamond inside. He throws the diamond away and keeps the box, taking the plant home. I think that somehow reflect the importance of plant is more than that of diamonds. Since people destroy the environment to get diamond, the director may warn us that we should not continue to do it because diamonds are not worthy than plants.
I also think that Wall-E is more like a human, or we can say that Wall-E has emotion. In the movie, we can know that Wall-E knows how to change apron wheel and he knows how to put the objects in order. There is an example, which shows that Wall-E finds a plastic stuff that can both use as spoon and fork. Wall-E puts that stuff between the Fork and Spoon, therefore, we can know that he can identify object. When he steps on the little insect, his facial emotion embodies that he is very sorry for it. The director wants to tell us that we should take care of things on earth even little thing like an insect.
Another way that director used to show Wall-E has emotion via the feeling that he has for Eva. After Wall- E watched that romantic movie he started to think about Eva. He takes Eva to see the sunset and he does a lot of things for Eva. This scenario indicates the love that Wall-E generates and tells us he is more like human.
Even though this movie does not include many scripts, the director still portrays the emotion and the theme by visual impact. We can see how insistent Wall-E is and how nice he is. This movie also shows how important environment is. I think that the director want to utilize this movie to force people to protect the environment. The contradiction of colors-white and darkness-also makes people understand the distinction between clean and dirty. White means purity and dirt means evil, implying that we should take care of our environment.
I loved WALL-E! I thought that the beginning was particularly thought provoking. The items that WALL-E adored were objects that we would normally consider garbage. It demonstrates that value and worth are purely relative. It wasn’t the ring that WALL-E wanted, but its container. The lack of dialogue focused the viewer’s attention on the environment. Ironically the only “life” that exists on the dreary wasteland that earth had become is a machine. Yet, WALL-E is more human-like than the gelatinous blobs that humans have become. While WALL-E demonstrates the ability to express love, humans are hardly able to overcome their passion with mass consumerism. The opening scenes of Earth are a testament to the detrimental effects of mass consumption and unbridled worship of excess. I also feel that the lack of dialogue shows how basic “human” emotions can be conveyed without actually speaking. While the bright colors inside the ship draw our attention and give us the initial feeling of life and action, it is actually a contrast. The bright and animated colors mask a gray and lifeless society that has lost purpose and is both metaphorically and physically floating through space. It is the brown, dirty hues that coat WALL-E’s exterior that hide his human-like nature. The fact that the majority of shots in film include only WALL-E and Eve highlights the core characteristics of human interaction and, indeed, its necessity.
ReplyDelete- Alex Leeds
WALL-E was pretty fantastic. After I watched it, I started to think about what we had talked about in class before the film (related to 2001.) First of all, I'm not even sure what to call WALL-E! My first instinct would be to call him a robot, but now thinking about it, if (according to the film) people hadn't been living on earth for hundreds, could be thousands, of years, who created WALL-E? I thought that robots had to be made. Second of all, saying that WallE was a robot, then it's very interesting how he developed feelings (human emotions) for Eve. We had touched on this in class for a bit, but can inanimate objects posses human-like characteristics such as emotions? I also found it interesting that the actions WALL-E and Eve would do to show their romantic feelings towards each other were similar to human actions such as holding hands and touching foreheads with an electrical shock for kissing. Focusing on other elements of the film, because I knew ahead of time that there wasn't going to be any dialogue for the first half hour or so of the movie, I really did focus on other things such as the setting, the music, and WALL-E's actions. Compared to 2001, I found that WALL-E was much easier to get into, not only because of the different time periods in which the films were made, but also because there was only one character to focus on in the beginning. With 2001 on the other hand, there were groups of chimps which would then switch to one chimp, and then back to a group of chimps, and then all of a sudden to outer space. I found that WALL-E had a much smoother transition from earth to outer space. Lastly, something that surprised me while watching the movie was the fact that although there were human characters in the movie, I found myself focusing on the robots/WALL-E and seeing what their actions were. I feel like in the other films I've watched where there are both robots and humans, animals and humans, etc. the humans play a large role so that the viewer is constantly watching what the humans will do. In this movie it seemed like the opposite. In fact, at different points I would even forget that there were humans in the movie. I suppose that was the intention of the creators of the film, and I must say that they did a very good job with it.
ReplyDeleteI've already seen WALL-E once before, but watching it this time around I really paid attention to the filming techniques we discussed in class to see which ones best emphasized the movie's message of the problems we face from excessive consumerism and environmental degradation. For me, the word choice in the film was one of the greatest components that communicated the films message. WALL-E is a disney movie for children to enjoy, so rather than discussing the environmental problems we are facing, the film merely shows a future earth that is devoid of all life. One single plant is all that remains after the extensive human consumerism which brought about so much trash that people were forced to leave the earth to live in space! Instead of specifically discussing the issue, the film uses repeated words and puns such as "buy and large" to suggest that the world has become obsessed with mass consumerism. In the space craft, the robots speak solely about material things: beauty, relationships, that "blue is the new red" for space suits, etc. If you watch closely, every billboard, poster and store sign contains the words "large", "big", or "buy". The film includes these words mainly in visual signs that young children may miss, so while the film remains entertaining and fun to younger viewers, older ones can pick up on the underlying message: mass consumerism is using up resources much faster than they can be replaced and producing more trash than the earth can handle; our material obsessions and wasteful habits are destroying the planet.
ReplyDeleteA major theme in Wall-E is the advancement of technology and the reliance they have on it. The film utilizes two different environments, the earth and space, to portray this theme. On Earth, the land is covered in trash and waste. It is occupied by robots such as Wall-E, whose job is to clean up the waste (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class) and Eve, whose job is to find life on earth (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). In the space environment, humans are living on a spacecraft called “The Axiom” because earth is simply inhabitable. Humans are largely overweight and seem focused on nothing but luxury and consumerism. They seemed to have learned nothing from the harm they have caused the earth.
ReplyDeleteI think the dialogue, or lack of it, was crucial to portraying this theme. While Wall-E rarely spoke it was clear that he had developed emotion through his actions. He found value in material things and fell in love with Eve. This shows how technology is becoming so advanced that it may one day develop a mind of its own. On the flip side, the human dialogue showed how they were still reliant on technology, so much so that they barely did anything for themselves.
After reading the article about film review for last class, I paid attention to the details of this movie much more than I would've if I hadn't read the article. I paid attention to all the music and realized there are certain songs playing when certain things happen. There was also a famous waltz in Wall-E, similar to the one in 2001: Space Odyssey. I also appreciated the film's silence. I was a little uneasy at first when I realized there was hardly any dialogue but then I began to appreciate the silence. It get's the message of the movie across much more effectively than any dialogue could. In general I enjoyed the movie and thought Pixar did a great job making a serious issue into a child-appropriate movie.
ReplyDeleteWALL-E WON'T WORK FOR ME... But from what I have heard and read from preceding posts about the movie, I feel like it would be like 2001 in that it will involve space and from watching the trailer I gathered that it is about when humanity no longer exists on earth. I also heard that it does not have dialogue for the first 30 minutes or so and that is similar to the silence in 2001. I feel like it will be a little different in its techniques mostly because it is geared toward children. I doubt it will have awkward transitions from scene to scene like 2001 and I feel like some shots will be very fun considering the audience. The movie also seems to be align with our next paper topic and a social issue...here the social issue seems to be human destruction of the environment? Nevertheless, I am very excited to see it when it works!
ReplyDeleteBesides just loving WALL-E because he's cute and entertaining, this movie brought up so many issues that we have been discussing in class. I liked how WALL-E brought up the same issue of technology's negative affects on human interaction that 2001 did. When two of the people are watching WALL-E and Eve outside of the spaceship, their hands touch. This marks the first human contact of the movie. This moment kind of reminded me of a theme in A Creation Story for Naomi: even though the people here are "social" they end up just being completely isolated and starved for human interaction and contact.
ReplyDeleteI also liked how songs from The Music Man were repeatedly played throughout the movie. This brought a human aspect to the (almost) lifeless earth. WALL-E and Eve both take on human characteristics, especially when they hold hands like the people did in The Music Man. Even robots need face to face interaction.
An aspect of WALL-E that sort of scared me was the helplessness of humans and technology's power of them. The "captain" of the space ship, although in a position of power, had virtually no responsibilities because technology did it all for him. His one responsibility was to make the announcements in the morning, something he insisted on doing to give himself a purpose in life. When the plant specimen from Earth was found and action had to be taken to go back to Earth, the captain could hardly do or think anything independently of the robots. It is scary to think that if our society became this dependent on technology, and something went wrong, we might not be able to fix it by ourselves. In WALL-E, luckily the captain breaks free from technology being the ruler and is able to get the spaceship back to Earth.
A final thing that I observed in WALL-E was how easily the system could be disturbed because it was so highly regulated. Until WALL-E comes, however, no one had even attempted to change the way that they were living because it was so easy. This sounds weird but I don't think people can truly be happy in a world where there is no violence or struggle. Without true emotions and problems such as these, it is very hard to care for or love someone fully. WALL-E and Eve, seemingly the only two beings with genuine feelings for each other, are the only ones who are perceived as violent on the space ship.
Wall-E definitely brought to mind the discussion we had in-class about what makes humans human.
ReplyDeleteThe film seems to conclude that certain traits/emotions that we thought only belonged to humanity--love, for example--are, in fact, universal, as we see these things displayed in Wall-E's character.
Actually, Wall-E is more human than the humans themselves, who have lost all emotion and motivation, and simply sit like blobs in their chairs, their entire lives being dictated to them by, ironically, robots.
This is the theme that stands out to me most in Wall-E, though, of course, many like to mention the environmental theme that seems prominent too (i.e. the entire earth being covered by trash). I read an interview with the director, and, interestingly, he denies any environmental symbolism, at all. Even more interesting is the fact that he is apparently a devout Christian.
Anyway, I don't know if he was simply playing coy and not wanting to alienate potential viewers of a certain political swing, or if, in reality, Wall-E is simply a wacky love story and nothing more.
Zoya Mufti
ReplyDeleteWall-E was such a good movie, I really enjoyed watching it! One of the things that impressed me the most was how some serious topics were touched upon in a comical way by the movie. The way the audience was introduced to an image of earth that was completed destroyed by pollution and overconsumption and this really accurately hit on the fact that this is the potential our actions now a days could result in. But my favorite interpretation that the film made about what our world was becoming was its image of what will happen to society. Humans were portrayed in a light that could be so true if society keeps acting the way it does. Obviously it would not happen to such a comical extreme.
I had forgotten how great this film is. But right from the opening credits I remembered why I loved it so much and I think the beginning really starts off the use of Music in the movie. The opening song, "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello Dolly is repeated multiple times throughout the movie as well as "It Only Takes A Moment." These two songs become a part of Wall-e as well as an important feature throughout the movie. After discussing music so much in 2001 I payed a lot of attention in this film to the different music used, especially sing the first 30 minutes is only music. The two songs from Hello Dolly are the only songs used with lyrics besides them there is a constant score that keeps in time with the plot. Specifically when the space ship lands with Eva, the music becomes very rushed as Well-e rushes around in panic. This is an example of how music dictates plot and how the music can almost become a character.
ReplyDeleteThe two songs from Hello Dolly seem to be character-like to me. They are a reminder of what earth used to be like before all of the pollution, before consumerism and technology. I think it is interesting that those were the two songs chosen but I think they fit the message perfectly. Even the captain of the Axium recognizes "Sunday Clothes" when Wall-e plays it and yet he doesn't even know what soil is, almost as if he remembers that time before the Axium. The music in this movie is an example of how music or a song can recall memories, or incite feelings as in the case of Wall-e and Eva.
On the surface, WALL-E is a movie about a trash compacting robot that spontaneously develops sentience and the various adventures that he has. Underlying this visible plot is the deeper message which is a message against consumerism and pollution. Although simple in theory, the idea that the Earth is not limitless is a difficult one to truly internalize and believe in. Created by Pixar, a maker of children’s’ cartoons, the intended audience is most likely children as well. Because of the relatively complex nature of the moral imbedded in WALL-E the director, Andrew Stanton, had to use special techniques to reach children.
ReplyDeleteInstead of using complex dialogue, Stanton decided to limit WALL-E to making very few sounds. This is an interesting technique considering how many other sounds were used to color the rest of the film. It becomes easier for children to understand when they do not have to dissect complicated dialogue. Some sound samples are provided like the waltz from 2001: A Space Odyssey to add humor to the movie. This waltz is very famous in popular culture even though the generation watching WALL-E has probably not seen the movie in which it was first included. There have been so many successive samples of that song in film that even young generations today are familiar with it.
Wall-E Reflection
ReplyDeleteOne of the main things I noticed while watching Wall-E was the theme of the destruction of Earth. It definitely connected to the theory of deep ecology. In the movie the humans were a form of parasites to the earth. The movie was obviously implying that over the years humans have single handedly destroyed the planet with waste. So much so that the environment could not maintain human life.
The visual elements of the film are what really captured the idea of the destroyed earth. The opening twenty minutes that captured Wall-E traveling earth really showed how bad the planet really was. You could see piles and piles of trash around the planet. I really liked the premise of the film, which was to keep the plant alive and return the humans to earth. I though it was really funny how in the future all the humans were very overweight and were transported by moving chairs. I believe in the movie it said that their bones decayed over time.
I also really liked the idea of love that was portrayed in the movie. They really humanized the robots by giving them emotion. I can honestly say that I have never felt more of an emotional attachment between two fictional characters. I think that says a lot because they were not even human. They also portrayed the common fear that robots are going to take over. There was that one point on the ship when the captain finds out that he was never really in control, the robot was the real captain of the ship. I think this is another prevalent theme throughout the movie about how technology is going to be the death of mankind. This is also showed when the humans are all overweight do to the fact that all meals now come in drinkable portions.
I had always meant to see WALL-E but hadn't until now. I actually really loved it. My favorite type of movie is one in which the director has created a world completely different from ours today; different rules, different customs, different values. The world in the spaceship was hysterical; at the same time so depressing. It was easy to see how we are headed in the direction of food drunk from fast food cups, seats you never have to get out of, communication through only virtual medians. As Katrina said, towards during the introduction to this space world, WALL-E did seem to be more human than the humans. However, as the movie developed, the emotional traits came back to the humans as they began to take their eyes off their computer screens and look back at the world from which they came.
ReplyDeleteVery similarly to 2001: A Space Odyssey, I thought it brought up an interesting view of the future of the relationship between technology (tool) and humans. In both examples, the tool seems to have negative affects on the people, essentially dehumanizing them. From here, the films took different paths. 2001 seemed to view the tool as dehumanizing the people permanently, setting Dave off into a future with new dimensions beyond that which we see now. In contrast, in WALL-E, the tool brought the humans back to the earth, perhaps with a new view of how to perceive and treat it. It bring up an interesting split. If the time does come, or seems to be heading in the direction of tools taking over humanity, what path will we take?
Wall-E explicitly makes the case that humans are too anthropocentric and that increased globalization will eventually lead to our devolution. It uses the environment of a world dictated by mass production and consumerism and conveys this message through setting. Wall-E establishes a setting that ominously purports where humans could be moving towards with our current capitalist society. Beginning now, humans are just realizing that the earth is being affected severely by our resource exploitation. The first scene in the movie sets the tone for the entire film. By depicting the skyscrapers as towers of trash and the atmosphere laden with satellites, the movie subtly argues that if we continue to build and consume we will eventually overrun our world with pollutants. Buy n’ Large is a social critique on Wal-Mart and cleverly points out the flaws with human acceptance of letting advertising and totalitarian suppliers run rampant in our world. Instead of putting in the extra effort to benefit the world’s health as well as our own, we allow stores like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco to provide us with unnecessary goods at unrealistic prices. Wall-E powerfully exploits this view by showing an advertising billboard on the moon.
ReplyDeleteZoya Mufti
ReplyDeleteWall-E became one of my favorite films as I watched it. The general theme created by the director of a Earth full of pollution and overconsumption comically falls into what lies ahead for Earth and humankind in reality. Although, some could argue that the film is mainly focused on a lovable robot named Wall-E and is desire to hold another robots hand, there is so much more around that romantic comedy theme that relates to current global issues. Obesity, mass consumerism, our reliance on technology, pollution, and general ignorance to these issues are just to name a few.
One of the best filming techniques used in Wall-E was the directors decision to not use dialogue for the first forty minutes of the movie. The story is initially told through a series of music and the emotions portrayed by this lonely robot that seems to be the only living thing left on earth. As you watch the movie there is never a feeling that something is missing with the lack of dialogue or the feeling that adding dialogue could enhance the movie. The lack of dialogue is what helps get across the imagery of the rotting earth.
It is also interesting to interpret the environment of the movie. As I watched the film, I understood it as having two environments. First, the environment we are shown is one of the Earth that has just been plunged into its doom. Second, we are introduced to a spacecraft titled Axiom. This spacecraft is the complete opposite of Earth. It is completely modern and full of modern day advances and consumerism at its peak. All the people living in Axiom are obese, absorbed in their technology and are so lazy that they are transported around the spacecraft and basically spend their lives in these hovering chairs.
I really enjoyed the film Wall-E. It encompassed complex ideas and deals with environmental issues more particularly the attitudes of human regarding the environment. In the film, the human race has left the balance as a result of extensive pollution and has chosen to run rather than face the consequences of its actions. They rely on machines to clean up their mess while they take an extended vacation in space. The turning point in this movie for me is when the captain exclaims that it is not enough to survive, but there is a need to live. He has come to the realization that floating in space is not enough to constitute a meaningful life, but instead it is necessary to return to earth and remedy the problem.
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