WALL-EProduced by Andrew Stanton

Industrialization and Pollution

Project By: Brittany Hendrickson, Blanca Fornos, Ryann Jack

Wall-E was created by Disney Pixar and was release in 2008. Wall-E is heartwarming film about a robot that was left on earth with nothing but its decaying remains and a cockroach that that he kept as his pet after it was determined that earth was no longer livable for humans. Due to its inability to sustain human life, the humans set off on a 700 yearlong voyage to live in a spaceship in outer space. In this film Wall-E finds love with a futuristic robot and together they help the humans fight a battle against evil robots in order for them to finally return home to the planet earth and create more livable circumstances.In the beginning of the film we see how the earth is left filled with trash, and Wall-E has the task of cleaning it up little by little. Each day Wall-E sets out on his routine and wakes up, compressing all the trash into cubes. Then every night high winds arise which brings more trash to come to the area. Later in the film Eve is brought to earth. Eve is a robot sent from the space station in which humans have temporarily been living in. She was sent to find any form of plant like species, which indicates that earth has become once again suitable for them to live. Once Eve found a plant she was locked up into a hibernation mode until she was picked up and returned to space. When this happened, Wall-E became frightened and took care of Eve until the very end. Wall-E had no idea what was going on, but he knew that he loved Eve and wouldn’t dare leave her side. Wall-E follows Eve into the space ship and embarks on a journey. In the end Wall-E and Eve go through a big battle against evil robots who do not wish for the humans to return to earth and become heroes after defeating them. Wall-E temporarily loses his memory as he is crushed and broken. Once Eve restores Wall-E and kisses him, he regains his memory and they both live happily ever after.

Major Themes

The main objective and underlying idea that Wall-E tells its viewers, is that “if we don’t change the way we live, we’ll all get really fat and destroy the world. There are some major themes shown in the movie that support this theory.

Environmental Waste-The movie Wall-E sets a huge critique on the human population and waste management. The futuristic animation shows how the world could possibly be if we do not manage our waste systems and be resourceful. Wall-E is left to make the earth livable again for the humans again, showing the severity of waste accumulation.

Technology- The human kind is sent to live their lives on a space ship until the earth is replenished. The technological advances shown, exhibit the disconnect from the real world. The humans travel by personal air shuttles, which in turn makes the future view of humans obese and inactive, which is what would logically happen if humans were under the circumstances.

Christianity- Wall-E and Eve take on the names for more purpose than its viewers may think. The director of Wall-E (Stanton) wanted the movie to portray similar story line to the Old Testament. For example, the story of Noah’s ark is similar to Eve being the dove that goes back to earth to know when it is time to come back (Moring, 2008).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9s7afoYI-M

This short video clip of the movie Wall-E really highlights one of the major themes, and that is industrialization. As seen in the clip, the company BuyNLarge rules and has taken over the human mind. As portrayed in the movie, Technology is shown as a reason for complete disconnect from reality. In this video clip one of the humans states after she got off of her cellular device, “ I didn’t know we had a pool”. This line signifies how out of touch with reality humans are and will continue to be in our future. Even though this was not Stantons direct intentions, he gave the audience many things to ponder about considering human lifestyle. The obesity in the humans show what would happen if we were to go into space. We would lose our bone mass and in turn, become obese and lazy. There are many things that show human lifestyle changes in this video clip and are essential in realizing and analyzing the major themes.

Characters

Meet Wall-EIn the Disney Pixar film Wall-E, Wall-E in the protagonist. Wall-E is a robot that is left on Earth after the humans have left the planet due to unlivable living conditions. Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is a robot that not only collects items that are of value to him, he also takes the waste that has been accumulating on the planet and crushes it into large cubes of waste. In the film, after years of being alone on Earth Wall-E embarks on a mission to protect Eve, in which he also ends up helping the humans fight against the bad robots whom wish for the humans to never return to Earth. Although Wall-E looks like a dirty beaten down robot, he has a lot more strength in him then what meets the eye. Wall-E is a very brave little robot, who was willing to risk his life to protect Eve, as well as help the humans in their journey to return home to planet Earth. There is a lot more to Wall-E then just being a robot who recycles trash, and he is indeed a hero in this film.

EveEve, whose name stands for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, is a high tech robot whose mission was to come to Earth to find any sign of photosynthesis that would indicate that Earth has once again become suitable for humans to return home. At first we see that Eve means strictly business and had no intentions of becoming close to Wall-E. In the film we see that although Eve wants to be successful on her mission, and not become distracted, Wall-E eventually makes her warm up to him. Once Eve finds a plant she is put into a hibernation mode until her time comes to return to space with the evidence that Earth is safe once again. While she is in hibernation mode Wall-E takes care of her, and follows her to space which is where they both embark on an unexpected mission. Wall-E and Eve together have to fight against Auto the antagonist of the film, who does not want the humans to return home. Although Eve is a high-tech robot, and Wall-E is an older not so fancy robot, they both come together on this quest and work together to fight against evil in which they are both success in. There is no doubt that they both make a great team.

AutoAuto is the antagonist of the film, who is actually the autopilot of the space station as well. In the film Auto takes advantage of his authority of being the autopilot of the space station to keep the humans from returning home. In the film we see that Auto tries to keep the captain from finding out that Eve returned successfully with a plant, indicating that it was safe to return home. In the film, we see that Auto is the captain’s assistant, but in order to stop them from returning home he disobeys the captain and begins to try to take full control over the space station.

Captain B. McCreaCaptain B. McCrea in the film is not necessarily a main character, but in the film we see that at first from being stuck on the space station for so many years, he has become lazy and use to Auto assisting him in everything he does on the space station. Once the Captain realizes what is going on he begins to take action because he wants to return home to Earth, and live the way that they are meant to. In order to do so he does what many people on the space station have not done in years which is to literally stand up, and turn off the autopilot(Auto), and begin to take charge as captain once again. Once he was able to turn off Auto, he takes control of the ship and returns everyone home in which he is very excited about.

Related Films

Plastic Island•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc6Lvd

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•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en4XzfR0FE8

Plastic Island ContinuedIn the film Wall- E there is a much larger picture to be seen then just a cute child animated Disney film. The message that we can see in Wall-E is that industrialization and pollution is highly affecting our planet. In these two additional video clips The Great Plastic Trash Island, and Planet 100: The Pacific Trash Vortex Explained we learn more about how manufactured plastics are affecting our planet. In these clips we learn that we use two million plastic drink bottles every five minutes in the United States every day. Isla San Roque has a lot of plastic bottles with bottle caps that are made with harmful chemicals that cause them to sink in water. After watching these clips we learn how harmful plastic is for our planet because it is becoming accumulated in certain parts of our planet, and harming the animals that live in those areas. Such as fish and goose, and several other animals that are living and consuming the water. In Wall-E we see that there is a lot of waste that is left and accumulated on Earth, and if we don’t begin to take action about our waste we could potentially be making our planet no longer suitable for us to live on. According to an article by Clair Le Guem Lytle in 2008 our world wide estimate of plastic consumption was 260 million tons. We often don’t realize that one bottle of water that we purchase can cause so much damage to our planet, but the reality is that we as consumers are purchasing beverages in plastic bottles everyday that don’t always get recycled. We also often don’t take even a moment to realize that one littered bottle is actually contributing to a much larger problem.

Food Waste•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwGHl

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•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20eSorVHuik

Food Waste ContinuedFood waste is another huge issue that is affecting our planet. According to these video clips, the reason why food waste is such a huge issue is because not only is food being wasted that could be given to those who are in need of it, but also because when we waste food and it rots it releases a green house gas called Methane. The reason why the release of this gas is such a huge issue is because it is twenty one times more harmful than carbon dioxide, which contributes to the issue of global warming. According to Face the Facts USA in 2010 in America we wasted 33.79 million tons of food. All of which contributed to harming our planet. In Wall-E we see that Earth was no longer suitable for humans to live on, and it could all be because of these reasons. We as humans are constantly using and taking far more then what we need to survive. If we took initiative to stop wasting so much food we would not only save money, but it would also help benefit our planet. In the Wall-E film they do not state the exact reason that Earth was damaged and basically collapsed, but it is easy to see the results in real life what the possibilities could have been. If we were to try and reduce this problem, we would save money that goes into having to dispose the food, as well water that is used, and we would most importantly reduce the amount of Methane that is being released, and increasing the cause of global warming.

Introduction to Film/Text

The Disney Pixar animated film Wall-E was released in 2008 and easily was able to warm the hearts of many. In the film we see that Wall-E has been left alone, with no one by his side except for his pet cockroach, on Earth after the humans evacuated the planet when it became no longer suitable for them to live on. In the beginning we see that Wall-E is a solar powered robot, which allows us to see why he can still function without needing any special maintenance. Everyday Wall-E wakes up and collects the trash that has been left behind by humans and crushes it into cubes, and collects items that he find interesting. Wall-E seemed to be living a daily routine until one day Eve is brought to Earth to find any sign of photosynthesis that would indicate that Earth is safe once again. Eve and Wall-E end up having to fight against evil robots whom wish for the humans not to return home. This film does not only provide its audience with entertainment it also provides us with a much larger message, that industrialization and pollution is highly affecting our planet.

Technical Aspects of Animation

Wall-E is a computer-animated science-fiction romantic comedy.  The idea to create Wall-E was inspired after the success of Pixar's Finding Nemo, Pixar felt that after creating an entirety of an underwater world the creating a story set in space would be nothing.  It was however the most complex film Pixar created since Monster's Inc. On average a Pixar film has about 75,000 story boards, while Wall-E on the other hand had 125,000.  A fun fact about the creation of the character Eve during Animation: Pixar asked Apple iPod designer Jonathan Ive to inspect the character.  Pixar wanted her to be on the high end of the technology spectrum, and who better to ask than Apple. Animators watched a lot of black and white silent films during the animation process to study the way that all sorts of emotions could be displayed without sound.  This helped to create characters that could be easily understand regardless of their lack of verbal communication skills.  It definitely worked, because the story was able to flow endlessly without any issues.

FilmingThere were a lot of interesting shots and stylistic spectrums in the filming of Wall-E.  From the dynamic way the animators created a flow to the simple aspects of fading and changing focus.  One of the more interesting aspects of filming Wall-E was the director's desire for a lighting scheme.  During the first third of the movie, the lighting is romantic, overexposed, almost ethereal.  Then the second act, the part primarily in space and on the ship is cold and sterile feeling.  Very uninviting.   But towards the end of the film, when Wall-E and Eve's love is bringing a rise back to Humanity, things change and the light returns to its original ethereal state. To make the story seem more realistic, Pixar wanted to create a feeling of an old Science Fiction movie filmed using 70mm film with flares and barrel distortion.  There was a lot of focus put on creating this atmosphere through camera angles and advanced animation.  They chose to use a lot of angles on the virtual set that would be used during a live-action film shoot to help create this illusion.  Whilst inside the Axiom spaceship, virtual camera angles were kept very close to the movement of the subject to mimic the feel of a steadicam.  This helped viewers to feel apart of the ride as the characters zoomed through the ship.  

Cultural AspectsWall-E was created with an idea of showing what our world may be like several years down the road.  The purpose of the film was to create a sense of urgency to clean up our act and try find a better way to go about living our daily lives so as not to live in a future full of unending waste.  This is a huge cultural aspect of the film because it plays off the way that American's especially live so frivolously without any real cause for taking care of our planet's future.  

The other huge cultural aspect of this film that stood out, was the way that the humans were depicted once aboard the Axiom spaceship.  Everything was only a button away and the world they lived in was built purely out of convenience.  No one had to work for what they had and the could literally glide through life without lifting a finger.  This illustrated to me the growing issues with obesity and laziness due to the rise of technology that we see everyday.

Finally a cultural aspect that was brought about in this film is the so-called "fear of the machine".  With our steady use of technology there will always be speculation about the computers one day speaking for themselves, and I think that this film did a good job of illustrating this, especially through the protagonist character Auto.  It gives us, the viewers, something to think about and reflect on as we continue to rely on technology for more and more aspects of our life.

SourcesCorliss, Richard. "Wall-E: Pixar's Biggest Gamble." Time 12 June 2008: n. pag. Web. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1813964,00.html

Engber, Daniel. "Fat-E." Slate. N.p., 10 July 2008. Web.<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2008/07/fate.html

Johnson, Mitchell. "The Re(f)use City and WALL-E." Solutions 1.1 (2009): 22-23. Print

Sunde, Joseph. "Wall-E vs the Jetsons: Materialism and Technological Progress." Web log post. Remnant Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://remnantculture.com/?p=2951>

 "The Little Robot That Could." Interview by Mark Moring. Christianity Today. N.p., 24June 2008. Web. http://web.archive.org/web/20080731105235/http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/andrewstanton.html

Variano, Dana. "Wall-E and the Consumerism of Environmental Movement." Web log post. Philanthro Media. N.p., 14 July 2008. Web

Wall E is jus too good. 8 Aug. 2008. YouTube. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoa25BjRP-I

Wall-E… the sad future of human kind. 5 Nov. 2008. YouTube. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9s7afoYI-M