11. Wall-E

DIRECTED BY ANDREW STANTON

WRITTEN BY ANDREW STANTON & JIM REARDON

STARRING BY: BEN BURTT, ELISSA KNIGHT, JEFF GARLIN, JOHN RATZENBERG, KATHY NAJIMY & SIGOURNEY WEAVER

RELEASE DATE: JUNE 23, 2008

AGE RECOMMENDED: 5 & UP 

Wall-E is one of the most complex movies form Pixar. The movie is a “futuristic” love story and with a theme kind of, dystopia . That had divided the public of the movie, I know several people who don’t like the movie because the silence and the darkness of the subject make the uncomfortable.

The first 40 movies of the movie are almost silent and in some way posses a Chaplin quality on it.  Also poses a cuteness in the way Wall-e keep certain mementos of human civilization. Wall-e is a story of love (the underdog and the supermodel) and a story of re-vindication, the human kind. The movie is perfect, and Time Magazine also thought so raking it fist as the best movie of the decade.

The movie was paired with one of the best (if not the best) Pixar’s short, Presto.  With a story of a conflict between a magician and a rabbit for a carrot.

PLOT

In 2805, seven hundred years after mass consumerism facilitated by the megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL), Earth is shown to be an abandoned planet covered in trash. Giving up on restoring Earth’s ecosystem, BnL instead evacuated Earth’s population into space on fully automated starliners, leaving behind an army of trash compactor robots called “WALL-E” (Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth) to clean up. After five years, however, the planet was deemed too toxic to sustain life, forcing humanity to remain in space. By the start of the film, only one WALL-E unit remains active and has developed sentience, as he is shown collecting various keepsakes and knickknacks from the trash.

One day, WALL-E discovers a seedling growing among the trash and brings it to his home inside a truck. Later, a spaceship lands and deploys EVE, an advanced robot sent from the BnL starliner Axiom with the directive of searching for signs of life on Earth. WALL-E falls in love with the initially cold and hostile EVE, who gradually softens and befriends him. When WALL-E brings EVE to his truck to show her the plant, she automatically stores it, goes into standby mode and sends a retrieval signal. EVE’s ship returns to collect her with WALL-E clinging to its hull as it returns to the Axiom.

On the Axiom, the ship’s human passengers are shown to have suffered from severe bone loss and become morbidly obese after seven hundred years of living in microgravity and relying on the ship’s automated systems. The captain himself does little, leaving control of theAxiom to its robotic autopilot, Auto. WALL-E follows EVE to the bridge of the Axiom where the captain learns that by scanning EVE’s plant sample with the ship’s holo-detector as a sign of Earth being habitable again, the Axiom will make a hyperjump to Earth and allow its passengers to recolonize. However, Auto secretly has the plant stolen by the captain’s robotic assistant GO-4 as part of a classified final directive given to keep humanity away from Earth as life was wrongly deemed unsustainable seven hundred years ago.

With the plant now missing, EVE is considered defective and taken to the repair ward along with WALL-E for cleanup. WALL-E mistakes EVE’s inspection for torture and tries to save her, accidentally releasing a horde of malfunctioning robots, getting himself and EVE designated as rogue robots. Angry with WALL-E’s disruptive influence, EVE brings him to theescape pod bay to send him back to Earth. There they witness GO-4 place the missing plant inside one of the pods, which is launched and set to self-destruct with WALL-E inside. WALL-E escapes unharmed with the plant and reconciles with EVE, celebrating with a dance outside the Axiom.

The plant is brought to the captain, who surveys EVE’s recordings of the devastated Earth and realizes that humanity must return to restore the planet. However, Auto reveals his directive to prevent their return, stages a mutiny, and tasers WALL-E while he tries to protect the plant. EVE realizes the only parts capable of repairing a severely damaged WALL-E are in his truck on Earth and helps him bring the plant to the holo-detector to activate the Axiom‘s hyperjump back to Earth, rallying the help of the malfunctioning robots on the ship. The captain opens the holo-detector while fighting over control of the Axiom against Auto, who closes the holo-detector on WALL-E and crushes him as he tries to hold it open. The captain deactivates Auto and EVE places the plant in the holo-detector, releasing WALL-E and sending the Axiom back to Earth.

EVE brings WALL-E’s body back to his home where she successfully repairs and reactivates him. Unfortunately, WALL-E’s memory is erased and he reverts to his original trash compactor programming. Heartbroken, EVE gives WALL-E a farewell “kiss” which causes an electric spark that restores WALL-E’s memory, returning him to his usual self. WALL-E and EVE happily reunite and join the Axiom‘s human and robot passengers in restoring Earth’s environment.