STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM - “WALL-E”

Jeffrey Tung
Oct 9, 2017
3 min read

We move into Pixar territory with their sci-fi film, WALL-E.

Directed by Andrew Stanton, screenplay by Stanton and Jim Reardon, and story by Stanton and Pete Doctor, the film is about WALL-E, a small sanitation robot whose job/programming is to clean up planet Earth of its garbage.

He does so by compacting trash into a small cube, and builds tall towers of these cubes.

During his runs, he collects items that interest him, which includes a Rubix cube, a light bulb, and a Spork. He’s also a big fan of 1969 musical film Hello Dolly!

On the same day he finds a small, growing plant, he is visited by another robot from space: a scavenger named EVE, whom he immediately falls in love with, but she is oblivious to it, as she’s focused on her mission.

That night, as a way to impress EVE, WALL-E shows his collection of items before showing her the plant he finds. The presence of it causes EVE to contain the plant within her, and goes into hibernation mode.

WALL-E (and the audience) is confused about the situation, but he is determined to protect her… even if he has to follow her to outer space.

From the beginning, WALL-E tells its story as if it was a silent film. There are sound effects and “voice acting” from the robots, and even a clip from Hello Dolly! plays, but for the most, it’s all told from the actions of WALL-E and EVE. It’s a refreshing change of pace. I’m not against it switching gears when it becomes a more contemporary film with constant dialogue when WALL-E is taken into outer space, but it did such a good job with retaining my attention without use of dialogue that I was curious to see how long they could keep it going.

The film is also the first Pixar film to blend in live-action footage into their animated film; not just Hello Dolly! but also using scenes with a character named Shelby Forthright.

The symbolism is very clear in its message about the over-reliance of technology, and the creation (or in this case, re-creation) of Earth, down to the main female character being named EVE. This isn’t necessarily a negative, but the message gets heavy-handed when you have a character literally pointing out the obvious dullness of his life, and his desire and interest of breaking it. In other words, “show, don’t tell.”

Pixar is a company that is consistently being praised for its animation, so I don’t know what else to add to that. The worlds they create are realistic, clever, and imaginative. Realistic? Who cares!

WALL-E was one of the first films where I did research on it before I went to go see it. Pixar (and Disney) have trailers that carefully hide the overall plot of their animated films. When I first saw the very first teaser trailer for this film, which just had WALL-E doing his job, and ending by looking into the night sky, I was already fascinated, and immediately looked it up. What made me decide to watch it was the fact that it was a romance film. To me, having an animated film that was primarily a romance was a rarity, and I wanted to see how Pixar would handle it, and to me, they didn’t disappoint.