WALL-E (finally)

[cmdr_zoom]

Loved it, as you might expect.


The principals were adorable, but that's to be expected.
John was great, as usual, and it was cute they actually called him "John" this time.

The captain surprised and impressed me; I expected him to be a complete buffoon, but the first time in his life that he actually had to take command, he rose (heh) to the challenge. "Never give up, never surrender!" I was also quite amused that he got sucked into wikipedia for most of a day. (What's the shortest series of wiki-links from "Earth" to "hoedown"?)
AUTO was nicely HAL-like, yet more menacing. I'd have to see it again to be sure, but it seemed to me that when the captain was looking at the portraits of his predecessors, AUTO got larger/more prominent over time - less a part of the background, more the real power behind the throne (or captain's chair). I might be just imagining it, though.

The end... wow. I figured they'd never go through with it, not in a Disney/Pixar movie, but what little we got was heartbreaking. A "living" example of the Grandfather's Axe problem - if you replace all the pieces, is it still the same axe?
Talking to a recently mem-wiped droid is like talking to an appliance... that might have been, until a couple of hours ago, a person. Before the lobotomy.
(There's also a line from one of the X-wing novels about how the list of thousands of R2 parts in the Industrial Automaton catalog has none labeled a "soul", and yet...)

Comments

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

My response?

Well played Pixar... well played...

[messy-hair-girl.livejournal.com]

I was quite pleased with the end credit animation. One supposes that seeing Eve and Wall-e depicted in art throughout the ages is an indication that society was reborn and redeveloped on earth -- only to meet the same fate again.

I suppose having them start out in cave drawings and hyroglyphs also begs the question of what happens post technology. It's the same problem team Battle Star Galactica faces if they don't find a relatively advanced earth. Knowlege dissapears too quickly without infastructure and the whole thing has to start over from scratch.

Captain's best line: "I don't want to survive, I want to live." Somewhere before that line was a bit where he learned about whiskey and ciagarettes -- it will turn up in the director's cut.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

I suppose having them start out in cave drawings and hyroglyphs also begs the question of what happens post technology.

I dunno, you may be reading a little too much into that; after all, they aren't really post-technology. They still have the robots and the Axiom. Note how, in the various paintings, humans and robots are shown working together throughout. The technology base is undoubtedly different than it would otherwise have been, but we're clearly not talking about a Canticle for Leibowitz regression-to-the-Dark Ages sort of situation. If nothing else, they still have historical continuity thanks to the databanks on the Axiom.

Personally, I think it's much more likely that the animators simply thought periodically updating the art style for the closing montage was cute.

Me? I want to play the NES WALL-E game those 8-bit sprites in the credits roll implied. :)

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I liked the implication that some of the Axium robots got repurposed.

[cathaus.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure AUTO did get bigger in the portrait backgrounds.

As for the art through the ages - aside from being cute, if a bunch of people who had no idea how to do anything themselves, and lacked the muscles/bones/etc, attmepted to make art by hand because it's a fun and human thing to do - the cave paintings would be their advanced stuff.