A Look At Wall-E

You know what? Screw some people. There’s shit out there that just makes me want to bang my head against my table. I usually don’t let these thing get to me, I try and brush them off, but then something will come along and set me off... make me retreat into that dark place in my mind I try to ignore....

You know, the one bit that tells me sometimes.... just sometimes... it’s okay to eat people.

First, I’ll tell you what set me off.

Did anybody here see Wall-E? I’m gonna assume yes, cause we are whores for family friendly films. Well it seems the writing team got the Humanitas Prize. What is the prize? A film maker gets it when they “affirm the dignity of the human person, probe the meaning of life, and enlighten the use of human freedom. The stories reveal common humanity, so that love may come to permeate the human family and help liberate, enrich and unify society”.

Now you might be wondering why this has... Hmmm... Tickled me the wrong way. I’ll tell you reader, but strap your helmet on, cause I might blow your mind.

Exploring the ideas of what it is to be a human is not something so rare you have to give prizes out, Its a F***ing genre, one for some people isn’t that hard to do. Writers and poets have been doing it for all of time! Now I’ll admit, perhaps if your really good... really really good you deserve to be recognised for that.

Wall-E does not deserve that sort of praise. It is a good “family” film, it is not a good philosophical film. See now this is interesting actually because Wall-E and Braid are good examples of opposite sides of the spectrum. Wall-E is too obvious and Braid is not obvious enough. Spoilers ahead me guess:

Now I did actually look up the whole deeper meaning the creators had put into braid, and it is very clever how they did it. But. I am reminded of its review by zero punctuation when he said it’s like a joke nobody gets, you explain it them and their like “Oh that’s clever” but no will laugh because you had to explain it.

While on the other hand Wall-E does this: OMG! WE ARE FAT AND LAZY IN THE FUTURE!

This is not stellar writing people. The problem with a message that’s right in your face is the fact that very quickly it’ll fly right past you. Oh sure you’ll spar it a passing thought after the film is done, but at the end of the day you’ll just forget its lessons and carry on with your life unchanged. I think the main problem is the film has a happy ending, basically teaching you “It’s ok if we become fat and useless, because like always we’ll pull it together and get the job done... So I wouldn’t worry about it”.

You know what would have made a much better impact? If everyone on that ship was dead.

Now I know that would have gone against the whole family friendly thing they were going for, but in all seriousness you can’t actually teach children captain planet logic and expect them to hold to those ideals when their adults. When people grow up they then realise that stuff was a bunch of bullshit and will just add themselves rather willingly to the cog of industry. Even worse trying to make adults swallow that kind of logic will not work, because they can actively call you on your bullshit.

Now imagine instead when those robots reached the big ship colony there was nothing going on. The robots carried on their chores, they dusted and scraped away the dirt, but for the most part they were all not doing anything. Stanger yet the other robots will barely recognise little wall-E’s existence, and a terrible sense of isolation falls on him again... but this time it’s even worse than when he was actually alone on earth. Finally after wondering to the top of the ship Wall-E finds the captains log that tells a sad tale...

With nothing to do the people just sat around doing nothing, oh they ate and drank, but that was about it. Finally the last log is of a captain with a breathing apparatus strapped to his face, and he slowly wheezes... and moves no more. Everyone on the ship is dead... and the program that returns the ship to earth and starts the reconstruction process needs a human voice to activate it...

Now that. That is how you make your audience feel guilty for being fat lazy slobs, you don’t tell them everything’s going to be alright... You tell them that if humanity carries on the way it is we are going to f*** up big time and die! Notice the message wasn’t slapped in your face half way through... The message hits you at the end and the emotional pinnacle of the film... the only time it could ever possibly penetrate the average audiences mind.

But James? These may be valid points against the films message... but you’ve just basically completely ignored what the award is for? It’s about showing that people can be good and stuff? Now reader, go back and read it again, take notes if you must.






Did you do it?





Sounds alot like the synopsis of the f***ing teletubbies to me. I didn’t realise they were the pinnacle of human understanding.