Wall-E review

I found Wall-E to be emotionally manipulative, and I suppose if one is capable, or equipped to manipulate my emotions, given that I essentially have none, Disney Pixar deserves some large amount of credit.

Musical composers, students, and psychologists (often) argue that music, properly wielded, can make person’s mood sunnier, or take a cheery visual overview and make it seem sinister, depending on the sort and tone of what is played. This could actually be called cheating.

Wall-E does not possess much actual dialogue. What remains certainly is the sort that will tug one this way or that. The two primary (robotic) characters communicate mostly in pantomime and situations are set up to provoke reactions, often of pity or sympathy. More importantly we are moved more by character interaction, of sorts, than we are by plot. We are moved more by how the characters react than how we otherwise would or should react. Pop psychology obviously is best not left to me.

Yet here we are on the raggedy edge. Ignore the supposed political overtones (I have). Ignore how uncreative the idea of the super-consumer-driven society run by the uber-monopolistic super-corporation is. Do not attempt to muster the imagination necessary to suspend disbelief to buy that a literal monopoly could form instead of government in today’s political climes, let alone that corporation the government for the world. (Come to think of it, everyone speaks English in Wall-E; how multi-cultural are we in 700 years)?
The point is that the mere tone of voices of Eve and Wall-E, accompanied by the music and atmosphere are set to alter your perceptions and reactions. That is hardly fair. I hate that.

The movie itself is fine. The character arcs of the main characters are about struggles to move beyond their programming. Even the humans exist in this movie to move beyond all expectations, to break from the norm and experience as they willfully must. If anything the message in this movie is anti-collectivist. The protagonists include the two robot characters and the one human leader, the Captain of the Axiom, a ship designed to keep the human society in a sort of unthinking, non-growing stasis. Those are the main characters, aside from one antagonist robot and its servants. John Ratzenberger’s requisite appearance was complete and is more than a cameo.

I do not care for any supposed notions, intentions, or intended agendas regarding green movements and I stopped caring about creators’ political leanings and how they informed author’s intent once I read Joss Whedon saying that Serenity is intended as a critique of the Bush administration, etc, based on Mister Whedon’s left-wing leanings. It does not matter what Joss Whedon believes, Serenity is a movie about space Libertarians, is a movie set from the sociopolitical right pitting its heroes/protagonists against an overbearing and expanding government intent on putting a vision of civilization into the hearts and minds of all denizens and citizens, effectively ending hate. Hmmmm. “Ending hate” sounds familiar. I also wonder where the rape zombies come in for the real-life Bush Administration. So if Pixar and the creators really were trying to make a crack about modern day thinkers and doers, al a Star Trek IV: Save the Whales, it falls on deaf ears for me. I see the message. The message is that right and wrong are not automatically determined simply by what men have traditionally, in society, always done; we need to check the why. There is no scientist of the past whose findings should be accepted a couple hundred years in the future. Do not take an old, unproved conclusion as a standard premise for new theories. Check anew.

Actually that sounds a lot like a “rebel without a cause” message. It even sounds a tad anti-traditional for the sake of being anti-traditional which cannot be my point because I am a staunch traditionalist.
The movie is beautiful to look at, with a mildly clear and barely compelling plot with details that do not quite hold up to scrutiny. More urgently I resent the movie for pulling me along on some of its points. Yet you look into the bright blue and the moving images, you too will enjoy the dance.