I have always been a fan of Pixar, with films like Toy Story and The Incredibles being among my favourite films of my childhood. But Wall.E was different, I remember seeing that film differently to how I had ever watched a film before, and it is one of the most instrumental films in establishing my adoration of the medium and my critical eye. So, buckle up folks, because this is going to be another one of my reviews where I just gush about how great this film is for however long I can.
Originally conceived in the mid 90’s during production of Toy Story, Pixar animator Andrew Stanton wanted to make a film about the last robot left on Earth after humans had abandoned it to go to space. Wall.E then spent the best part of fifteen years in and out of development until its eventual release in 2008, becoming Pixar’s most expensive production up to that point. Now, Wall.E is widely considered one of the studio’s best films, a notable film in the fight against climate change, and one of the greatest films ever made.
The year is 2805 and Wall.E (Ben Burtt) is the last Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class in operation. Day after day Wall.E compacts and stacks garbage left behind by humans from seven hundred years ago, who turned Earth into a toxic and uninhabitable landfill. In this time, he has developed a personality, he collects trinkets he finds to be of particular interest, and watches Hello Dolly! On repeat in an attempt to try and understand human connection.
But when Wall.E meets EVE (Elissa Knight), an Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator from the human colony ship, Axiom, his main directive shifts from compacting garbage to trying to woo and win the affections of EVE. EVE however is far more interested in a plant Wall.E has found in his travels, and so begins an adventure that will take the two of them on a mission to re-settle humanity back on Earth.
Originally conceived in the mid 90’s during production of Toy Story, Pixar animator Andrew Stanton wanted to make a film about the last robot left on Earth after humans had abandoned it to go to space. Wall.E then spent the best part of fifteen years in and out of development until its eventual release in 2008, becoming Pixar’s most expensive production up to that point. Now, Wall.E is widely considered one of the studio’s best films, a notable film in the fight against climate change, and one of the greatest films ever made.
The year is 2805 and Wall.E (Ben Burtt) is the last Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class in operation. Day after day Wall.E compacts and stacks garbage left behind by humans from seven hundred years ago, who turned Earth into a toxic and uninhabitable landfill. In this time, he has developed a personality, he collects trinkets he finds to be of particular interest, and watches Hello Dolly! On repeat in an attempt to try and understand human connection.
But when Wall.E meets EVE (Elissa Knight), an Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator from the human colony ship, Axiom, his main directive shifts from compacting garbage to trying to woo and win the affections of EVE. EVE however is far more interested in a plant Wall.E has found in his travels, and so begins an adventure that will take the two of them on a mission to re-settle humanity back on Earth.
Whilst there was a bit of hesitation when Disney first purchased Pixar about whether they would try and turn one of the industry's best animation houses into a pure money-making machine, I think the one thing people often forget is that both Pixar and Disney have a desire to create magic, not just films, but genuine cinematic magic using the power of animation. Wall.E is truly magical, and I truly mean that.
Despite having the common genre tropes of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy tries to win girl over, boy and girl must save the world; Wall.E manages to be quite unlike anything else I have seen before or since because of the way it presents its world and characters. The first twenty minutes of the film has no dialogue aside from the lyrics to a couple of songs from Hello Dolly!. Even then, Wall.E and EVE, being robots, can only use single words to communicate with each other, and often used in the most literal sense. The vast majority of the dialogue from either of these two characters is one saying the others name, all of their characterisation and their entire relationship is communicated visually by what they do and how they do it. So, despite being two leading characters and have almost no dialogue, they are some of the most detailed and interesting animated characters ever made. You can relate and understand them far more than you can a character like Lightning McQueen for example, with all his backstory dumps and quippy one liners.
The first twenty minutes is spent exclusively with Wall.E roaming the wastelands of Earth, and we learn so much about how the world got this way, what happened to humanity, and of course about Wall.E as a character. Watching this opening for the first time in a number of years I realised two things, firstly just how sad it is, and how crushingly alone Wall.E is; but secondly and most surprisingly is just how scary it is. Don’t get me wrong, Wall.E is no horror film and there’s no nasty imagery of any kind, but the Earth shown in Wall.E is almost entirely devoid of life, aside from the sound of wind whistling past the skyscrapers of garbage it is totally silent, and Thomas Newman’s score has this eerie and haunting vibe to it. Earth has died, we killed her, and we’re looking at her corpse. A bit morbid for a kid's film? With the kind of environmental message Wall.E has, I don’t think so.
Once EVE shows up, we spend around ten minutes getting to know her whilst Wall.E follows her everywhere, trying to communicate with her, and showing her trinkets he has collected in an attempt to impress her. Personally, I think this is one of the best scenes in cinematic history, because with only a couple of words we see such a beautiful relationship blossom. It’s incredibly funny, deeply moving, and just so heartwarming to watch.
From here the pace picks up significantly and the story shifts to EVE reporting the plant discovery to the Captain (Jeff Garlin) of the Axiom. We’re treated to some mesmerising space sections, and shown what has become of humanity after seven hundred years in space. We see first-hand the kind of society that destroyed Earth, and how lost they have become. It’s presented in a humorous was of course, humans being reduced to big babies that live in floating chairs being handed anything they want by machines. Again, it’s scary to see this as an adult, I mean, it’s funny, but it is also kind of unsettling.
The plant means that Earth is capable of sustaining life once more, and that humanity can return to Earth. But as we learn later in the story, this isn’t as straight forward as one would seem. I won’t divulge the late story twists here, but for the cine-literate think along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey and you’ll know what to expect. It’s not the story’s strongest moment, I feel like they could have leaned more into an environmental angle for it, but I think for the sake of keeping the story simple enough for children to understand and enjoy it works well enough.
Throughout all this Wall.E’s one desire to hold EVE’s hand is the driving force of the action. He doesn't understand what’s happening around him, he just wants to be with her and be as happy as the people he sees in Hello Dolly! And it’s the single purest thing in any Pixar film.
Despite having the common genre tropes of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy tries to win girl over, boy and girl must save the world; Wall.E manages to be quite unlike anything else I have seen before or since because of the way it presents its world and characters. The first twenty minutes of the film has no dialogue aside from the lyrics to a couple of songs from Hello Dolly!. Even then, Wall.E and EVE, being robots, can only use single words to communicate with each other, and often used in the most literal sense. The vast majority of the dialogue from either of these two characters is one saying the others name, all of their characterisation and their entire relationship is communicated visually by what they do and how they do it. So, despite being two leading characters and have almost no dialogue, they are some of the most detailed and interesting animated characters ever made. You can relate and understand them far more than you can a character like Lightning McQueen for example, with all his backstory dumps and quippy one liners.
The first twenty minutes is spent exclusively with Wall.E roaming the wastelands of Earth, and we learn so much about how the world got this way, what happened to humanity, and of course about Wall.E as a character. Watching this opening for the first time in a number of years I realised two things, firstly just how sad it is, and how crushingly alone Wall.E is; but secondly and most surprisingly is just how scary it is. Don’t get me wrong, Wall.E is no horror film and there’s no nasty imagery of any kind, but the Earth shown in Wall.E is almost entirely devoid of life, aside from the sound of wind whistling past the skyscrapers of garbage it is totally silent, and Thomas Newman’s score has this eerie and haunting vibe to it. Earth has died, we killed her, and we’re looking at her corpse. A bit morbid for a kid's film? With the kind of environmental message Wall.E has, I don’t think so.
Once EVE shows up, we spend around ten minutes getting to know her whilst Wall.E follows her everywhere, trying to communicate with her, and showing her trinkets he has collected in an attempt to impress her. Personally, I think this is one of the best scenes in cinematic history, because with only a couple of words we see such a beautiful relationship blossom. It’s incredibly funny, deeply moving, and just so heartwarming to watch.
From here the pace picks up significantly and the story shifts to EVE reporting the plant discovery to the Captain (Jeff Garlin) of the Axiom. We’re treated to some mesmerising space sections, and shown what has become of humanity after seven hundred years in space. We see first-hand the kind of society that destroyed Earth, and how lost they have become. It’s presented in a humorous was of course, humans being reduced to big babies that live in floating chairs being handed anything they want by machines. Again, it’s scary to see this as an adult, I mean, it’s funny, but it is also kind of unsettling.
The plant means that Earth is capable of sustaining life once more, and that humanity can return to Earth. But as we learn later in the story, this isn’t as straight forward as one would seem. I won’t divulge the late story twists here, but for the cine-literate think along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey and you’ll know what to expect. It’s not the story’s strongest moment, I feel like they could have leaned more into an environmental angle for it, but I think for the sake of keeping the story simple enough for children to understand and enjoy it works well enough.
Throughout all this Wall.E’s one desire to hold EVE’s hand is the driving force of the action. He doesn't understand what’s happening around him, he just wants to be with her and be as happy as the people he sees in Hello Dolly! And it’s the single purest thing in any Pixar film.
Pixar have always prided themselves on being technological innovators and whilst Wall.E don’t push the same kind of boundaries as other Pixar movies in terms of visual fidelity or fluidity of animation, the focus here really is on character expression and scale. The scale of Wall.E is massive, yet it's presented in a very personal way by focusing on how a single character interprets the world around him. The environments and objects seen in Wall.E are some of the largest Pixar has ever had to create, and aboard the Axiom some of the most complex too. But to communicate the scale and complexity so effectively, it really all comes down to the characters. As previously established Wall.E and EVE don’t really speak much, so everything they think and feel needs to be communicated by actions. Wall.E is perhaps the most animated Pixar character thus far, and by that, I mean he has the broadest range of emotions and ways of communicating them by way of action. Subtle eye movements, the way he holds his arms, how fast he moves, his battery indicator; for a cube with wheels and arms Wall.E is incredibly expressive. EVE similarly expresses her feelings through action, and factoring her minimalist egg-shaped design it was arguably even harder with her than with Wall.E. Despite these limitations, Wall.E and EVE are two of Pixar’s most expressive characters, and despite the lack of dialogue you always know exactly what they're feeling and thinking. This then effectively communicates the scale of the situation, because you can understand the characters so well.
Newman’s score also does a lot of the heavy lifting. In fact, I would argue that the entire film’s success leaned on Newman’s score more than most films rely on scores to deliver emotion to an audience. The music really tells a story, and communicates on behalf of Wall.E and EVE. It can be haunting, it can be exciting, it can be lonely, and it can be celebratory. It’s one of my all-time favourite film scores and I can’t imagine what the film would be like if you stripped it away, it would just be so hollow, because the score brings so much meaning and context to the visuals.
Wall.E enjoys a space in my list of my all-time favourite films, and I think it really is essential viewing. Adults and children alike can appreciate Wall.E for different reasons, and it’s a film that you’ll grow to love in different ways the older you get. I remember how I felt about the film when I watched it at the cinema in my early teens, and I remember how it made me feel in my late teens and early twenties, and now in my late twenties I feel different again. But crucially I’ve come to appreciate it more with each subsequent viewing, peeling back the layers of subtext and intricacies of how the story is being communicated.
Wall.E is a film that every time I watch it re-affirms my love of film and the way it can make us feel. It also has an extremely important message about looking after our planet, a message that is more important now than ever before. But crucially, it’s incredibly entertaining. You will laugh and cry, you will be thrilled and you will be moved. Wall.E is deserving of its title as one of the greatest films of all time, and it is something that everyone of any age should experience.
Newman’s score also does a lot of the heavy lifting. In fact, I would argue that the entire film’s success leaned on Newman’s score more than most films rely on scores to deliver emotion to an audience. The music really tells a story, and communicates on behalf of Wall.E and EVE. It can be haunting, it can be exciting, it can be lonely, and it can be celebratory. It’s one of my all-time favourite film scores and I can’t imagine what the film would be like if you stripped it away, it would just be so hollow, because the score brings so much meaning and context to the visuals.
Wall.E enjoys a space in my list of my all-time favourite films, and I think it really is essential viewing. Adults and children alike can appreciate Wall.E for different reasons, and it’s a film that you’ll grow to love in different ways the older you get. I remember how I felt about the film when I watched it at the cinema in my early teens, and I remember how it made me feel in my late teens and early twenties, and now in my late twenties I feel different again. But crucially I’ve come to appreciate it more with each subsequent viewing, peeling back the layers of subtext and intricacies of how the story is being communicated.
Wall.E is a film that every time I watch it re-affirms my love of film and the way it can make us feel. It also has an extremely important message about looking after our planet, a message that is more important now than ever before. But crucially, it’s incredibly entertaining. You will laugh and cry, you will be thrilled and you will be moved. Wall.E is deserving of its title as one of the greatest films of all time, and it is something that everyone of any age should experience.