WALL-E

WALL-E – 2008, Andrew Stanton

WALL-E is timeless. It is timeless because the animation and the story will never become dated. Modern 3D animation when viewed in high definition looks incredible, particularly when done on the scale of WALL-E. The first big Pixar films; Toy Story and A Bugs Life were about our world viewed from the perspective of tiny little toys and insects. This world view translated very well into 3D animation because animators could create models of characters and landscapes and show them in perfect scale with each other at all times. The tiny/giant world Pixar created looked amazing, so amazing that Pixar seemed tentative to set a film in the ‘real world’. Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles take place in a world more like reality but they do not try to appear at all realistic, they are very cartoon like. WALL-E is set in our reality, it even has some live footage of humans in it, but the world has changed enough for it to still be a complete fantasy.

As awesome as this film and almost all of the other Pixar films are, they still seems to be following in the footsteps of Aardman for the slapstick and Myazaki for the ‘there’s a meaasage here’ stuff. WALL-E has been described as ‘dark and cynical’ with an environmental message, but it’s not exactly Princess Mononoke. Even if it wasn’t a direct inspiration, the social and political commentary in WALL-E is very similar to Belleville Rendezvous (aka The Triplets of Bellville). I suppose that WALL-E’s greatest achievement is to create a serious and relevant subtext to a kids film that viewers of all ages can understand.

I’d love to see Pixar make an ‘adult’ film, something along the lines of Ghost in the Shell...?