rawlinson
Posts: 40194
Joined: 13/6/2008
From: Timbuktu. Chinese or Fictional.
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1. Wall-E
2008
Director: Andrew Stanton
In the future Earth has been overtaken by consumerism. Something that leads to the entire planet being covered in rubbish and the earth itself becoming too toxic to support life. The population is sent to live on spaceships, while an army of robots are set to work cleaning up the planet. The planet however has become far too toxic and humanity has become doomed to remain in space indefinitely. Hundreds of years later, only one of the robots, a Wall-E, still functions. This Wall-E has gone a little odd. He's developed sentience and emotions, he's a fan of showtunes, he has a pet cockroach and he collects items he likes from the rubbish he cleans. One day a spaceship lands, deploying a probe robot named EVE to search for life on the planet, and the lonely Wall-E immediately falls in love with the newcomer.
There's two important plot strands to Wall-E. Most reviews seem to focus on the ecological story and the attack on consumer culture in the film. The Earth is run by a corporation whose relentless desire for profit has destroyed the planet. The human race have become so reliant on technology that they're no longer able to take care of the most menial of tasks for themselves, they've even lost so much bone mass that they're unable to walk. Wall-E is a film with a message, do something now or this is how humanity could turn out. One of the criticisms often aimed at Wall-E is that the sections that focus more on the human characters is too broad. But I think it's being overlooked that this is a film aimed mainly at children and I think it does a good job at walking the line between delivering slapstick laughs to younger children and hopefully getting a message across to them at the same time. If the film had turned into a didactic lecture whenever the humans came on screen then it would have lost its core audience. I think it actually speaks volumes about the intelligent nature of this film that so many people expect something more serious from it in those sections. But as relevant as the ecological message is, I think the central love story is by far the most important plotline and it's the one that makes the film as heartfelt and as wonderful as it is.
Wall-E is one of cinema's great innocents and his love for EVE is pure and untainted. Wall-E is the hero of the day when he presents EVE with a plant he's found growing on the planet, something that fulfills her mission, but he's an unwitting hero. He saves the day over and over again, but his only desire is to be with EVE and most of his heroics come as a result of that. Wall-E's need for love defeats his programming and EVE's reciprocation of that love defeats hers. The film's ecological message is an incredibly important one, but I think that it's second to the film's message of hope. The hope that we can repair the damage to the environment, the hope that love does indeed conquer all. The film is romantic, touching and funny in the way that the vast majority of modern romantic comedies aren't. Wall-E learns about love from films, from a videotape he's found in the rubbish and watched over and over. and it's fitting that his love is a great, selfless, cinematic love. He protects EVE when she's shut down and waiting for her ship, they take an enchanting spacewalk together, and they fight against all the odds to save each other. It may be formulaic at times but that's because so much great romantic cinema is. And despite the fact that this is a film about two robots, it is great romantic cinema.
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ORIGINAL: matty_b
I would plough my way through MonsterCat 
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ORIGINAL: matty_b
I desire MonsterCat to go down on me.
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