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WALL-E

Classic stories appeal to all of us; they work on different levels and across themes. Shakespeare was the greatest writer of the English language because what he wrote resonates even now; the settings and specific language aren’t as important as his understanding of characters, plot, and how to tell a story.

In creating Star Wars, George Lucas consciously tried to imitate myth-making, reaching for archetypes and progressions based in large part on the work of Joseph Campbell. And indeed, where those films work best is when we consider the larger themes they consider, rather than when he got too focused on the superficialities in the later movies.

But this approach isn’t really what drives most popular fiction today. Setting is more important than theme, looks more important than character development, and action or laughs more important than plot. We despair for something with substance, something that will work now and thirty years from now. The truly classic Disney works, from the earliest animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through Cinderella, understood this. We can watch these movies today, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the first viewers, and feel just as moved to laughter and tears as they did. Then they forgot this for a while, instead going for the easy, cheap thrills of references to popular culture of the moment. Aladdin was perhaps the lowest point here; so many of Genie’s jokes only make sense in the context of the time when the movie was released.

But they’ve learned from this. This is the same company that gave us The Lion King, a fine retelling of Hamlet. And with the absorption of Pixar, the circle is complete and they have remembered how to tell a story.

WALL-E is the culmination of this trend. Not content to be classified as a “children’s movie” or a “computer animation movie”, it’s not even just a “science fiction movie”. It’s much more than that; it’s a classic story that we’ll remember for years to come. And it works on so many levels that this viewer couldn’t help but see it through many lenses at once.

As a father

The story of the endearing, lonely little robot who finally connects and endures to maintain that connection is handled with deftness. I went with my two small children, both not even school-age, and they really got it. The preschooler took home quite a few messages, including the value of friends and the importance of keeping things clean. The first half of the movie has essentially no dialogue, and it’s not a gimmick. The toddler watched WALL-E’s antics with glee, and finally even the young teenagers trying to be cool in the back got quiet as the film pulled them into its world.

As a humanist

The folks at Pixar made some clear statements about today’s society, and I hope that when my grandchildren see this movie they’ll laugh at how we actually needed to be reminded of the need to take care of the earth, to connect with the people around us in human ways and not just walking around glued to our electronic communications, to move around and really notice the world around us.

No particular group of people is singled out, though. This is not a “social message” movie of the sort that conservatives or liberals will reasonably criticize (though I suppose “reasonable criticism” isn’t the hallmark of political discourse today anyway). One of the clearest idea is that technology should serve us rather than the other way around. This is balanced against the need to do some things for ourselves, or we might not be able to make our own decisions: natural conditions and our own technology may, in some sense, make them for us.

As a geek

Oh, the glee of (mostly) accurate Newtonian physics! Oh, the references to 2001 and Van Gogh and Apple Computer! The fact that this is an animated movie is almost entirely besides the point, because the work here has reached such a pinnacle that the technology is just a way of telling the story rather than the point of it in the first place.

The makers of WALL-E filled it with so many allusions that I’m certain I didn’t even get half of them. But they’re mostly handled in a way that they’re not the point. This isn’t Aladdin referring to popular talk shows, it’s the ship’s autopilot whose eye bears a strong resemblance to HAL from 2001. Note that this is no accident, as that film influenced this one in countless visible ways. And the old Macintosh sound when the little robot powers up? Genius.

Wrapping it up

The movie’s not perfect; there are a few little things I wish they could have handled slightly differently. But they’re mostly about characters or themes that left us wondering. In the end, WALL-E may be no Shakespearean comedy, but it still manages to achieve on a plane most popular entertainment doesn’t even realize exists.