Wall-E Supervising Animator Tells His Story 228
Denofgeek wrote in to tell us about their story where "Pixar's supervising animator Angus MacLane gives an interesting interview about the technical challenges in bringing Wall-E to the screen. Plus he squeezes in a bit on his love of Lego, too..."
Re:Rated G! (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids don't take much to be entertained. "Oooo Robot Moving." or anytime he goofs up or does something silly.
Here be some spoilers, kind of.
I think this movie had more in it for adults than any other Pixar movie I've seen. The first thing I thought of when I saw the movie was Idiocracy. I imagine that the animators were probably fans.
Short Circuit, 2001 (I was really hoping they'd work in a "I'm sorry captain, I can't do that", Apple startup chime, references to all previous Pixar movies and of course Cliff Claven (John Ratzenberger).
From the beginning everything was very well done and even small details weren't over looked. I can't wait for the DVD to watch it again and just watch some things in the background to see what I missed in the theater.
Re:Copy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shorts (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa, whoa, whoa... You went to a Pixar film not realizing that there would be a short before it? What rock have you been living under?
Re:Rated G! (Score:5, Insightful)
The rating doesn't mean that it's "for" kids, it just means that it won't "offend" them with the particular things that make the other ratings required for a movie. A documentary on beans could be rated G and would be so boring as to make kids run screaming from the room. Put the F word in that documentary a few times, and it's rated R, but still heinously boring to kids/etc.
Re:Shorts (Score:5, Insightful)
The only movie I remember without a short was The Incredibles. But all the others had shorts. I've always like them myself, a tribute to the old movies. Besides if you are going to be that serious then why the heck are you going to a kids movie.
Blew me away (Score:5, Insightful)
To be quite honest, I wasn't all that thrilled about going to this movie. I walked into the movie by request of my little brother, and I figured I'd at least get a few laughs out of the movie.
What I got was a masterpiece.
Not two minutes into the film, I was enthralled by the sheer beauty of the landscapes. The incongruity between the cheerful opening tune and the devastated Earth landscape is absolutely delightful.
Also, Pixar has gotten so good at what they do that they don't even need words to tell a story. The first 45 minutes of the movie has pretty much ZERO dialogue with the exception of BnL ads for background. Oh, also a word or two (literally) from the robots.
Particularly well done were the flight scenes - the part in the beginning where EVE watches the ship leave and start cruising around while WALL-E watches in awe, and when the two of them are dancing around the Axiom. I could watch those two scenes over and over again and still be thrilled.
Also, the (oft overlooked) soundtrack is phenomenal as well. I bought it the instant I could, and I've had it on repeat for about a week now. (2815 AD and Define Dancing are my favorites)
I can honestly say that this is the best (in terms of sheer all-around quality) film that I have ever seen, and I fully expect this to just rake in its well-deserved awards.
Greatest Wall-E Triumph: the roach! (Score:5, Insightful)
They were able to make a roach cute. And no, not some Disneyesque anthropomorphic huggable buggable plushified abomination to be mass-marketed to yowling ankle-biters everywhere, no, no, no! This was a realistic roach, the kind that makes me reach for a shoe and go Khrushchev on its filthy self. My family went to see this movie together and my own mother, my earliest memories of which involve her screaming hysterically and attacking palmetto bugs with a toilet plunger wielded with the sort of two-hand grip reserved for viking warhammers, she found the roach cute! She gasped when Wall-E rolled over it that last time, thinking it might be dead.
If Pixar can make her identify and sympathize with a realistic roach, the animators at those other studios should just hang up their keyboards and go home.
Re:Excellent Movie (Score:5, Insightful)
The main character's directive is to compact trash, but for the most part the "message" is an incidental passive voice in the background of the movie. The last half of the movie is spent in outer-space (away from the planet), and a lot of the first half is setting up the romance between the two robots. This movie is way, way, way more than just "take care of the planet".
There's also social critique of how lazy humans are getting (fast food smoothies, etc). There are a lot of other smaller parts in the movie that are charming, as well (like Wall-E teaching the robot on the Axiom how to wave).
I find it really funny that you think the people who wrote this story and brought it to life are the same people who want to milk the franchise for all it's worth.
The end credits complete the story (Score:5, Insightful)
I absolutely agree; this film is a masterpiece, and what I find amazing is how Pixar turned the end credits into such a subtle and beautiful coda to the story. The art styles, and the scenes they depict, reflect the progressive rebirth of the newly-recolonized Earth, moving through hieroglyphics to a scene reminiscent of a Van Gogh painting, with Wall-E and EVE gazing up at the large tree, which one realizes is the same plant they struggled to protect, growing from the boot deep in the soil. I can't say enough about this wonderful film, and I continue to be stunned that Pixar keep outdoing themselves with each release.
Re:Rated G! (Score:5, Insightful)
I enjoy many of the Pixar movies and "The Incredibles" is still my favorite. Wall-E is second though, displacing "Monsters, Inc." It grew on me.. I've seen it a couple times so far and enjoyed it far more on the second viewing (not that I didn't enjoy it the first go round).
I understand what you're saying about social commentary though. If not handled properly it can be annoying. This may sound like a copout, but I think science fiction has to handle it differently. In other genres the commentary is best hidden beneath layers of abstraction. Want to protest the madness of war in a drama and you make a "Romeo and Juliet" piece that ends in tragedy. Want to comment on the deterioration of the environment and you write about the flower girl that gets sick because a factory blocks her view of the ocean.. Not in science fiction.. In SF the skies turn violent because of pollution. The people wear gas masks. The effect of the disparity between rich and poor are farmed organ donors.
IMHO, this commentary on the cuff is what distinguishes SF. Traditional literature teachers scoff at SF because the themes and messages are so brazen, but it is precisely this "obviousness" that I enjoy.
Re:Excellent Movie (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the message was 'geeky socially awkward guy robot gets the hot chick robot.'
IMO the whole 'taking care of the planet' business was nothing more than a macguffin [wikipedia.org]; the movie doesn't revolve around B&L, but around the interaction between Wall-E and EVE. You could have replaced B&L with anything, such as a post-apocalypse setting, or widespread disease, or simply running out of food (or space).
Re:Blew me away (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's the thing - it's not at all silent, there's just a small amount of character-to-character dialogue. The beginning is mostly about WALL-E himself, his attraction to EVE, and what the Earth has become - just absorb the imagery and environments.
Also, the only characters in the first half are two robots, a couple ads with the BnL CEO, and a cockroach. Not really a situation where meaningful dialogue can happen and not feel awkward. Doesn't really make sense for a 700-year-old robot to have an extensive vocabulary. Even though he's capable of learning, that would still require human contact, which hasn't existed.
Re:More than taking care of the planet (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, spoilers I guess:
Actually one thing I really liked about Wall-E was how all the humans were shown as fundamentally decent people willing to give up ultimate comfort once an alternative was offered to them.
Incredibles - Exceptionalism should be rewarded
I really had issues with the Incredibles message. Unlike Wall-E the average human was portrayed as weak-willed, contemptible, and ungracious for not heaping glory on their superhuman betters. The line from the kid, "when everyone's special then nobody is" I found to be a pretty horrible statement, the implication being that he can't really shine unless everyone else is inferior in every way. And the race at the end, I didn't really see the point; it takes no effort to win, all he gets from winning is the dubious recognition of having won an elementary school race.
Cars - taking a different path is a good thing
I wish the writers had taken a different path instead of hitting every cliche along the way. Five minutes into Cars you know everything that's going to happen in the rest of the movie.
Re:Blew me away (Score:4, Insightful)
> I fully expect this to just rake in its well-deserved awards.
I agree, but you know what sucks, is that an animated film, no matter how well received will ever be able to win an Oscar for Best Picture thanks to the creation of Best Animated Feature category by the Academy a few years ago. Having a separate category for documentaries makes sense to me, but splitting out animation and not action, romance, western, etc. does not.
Re:Rated G! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, Wall-E was much different than I expected... I found it to be a bit heavy for younger kids,
I hear this a lot. Frankly, I don't understand why a movie that doesn't pretend to be a kid-friendly movie gets dinged for, well, not being very kid-friendly. My 8 year-old liked it (the messages were a bit over his head) but my 12 year-old really liked it and he understood the deeper themes. What really bothers me about bad reviews of this movie is the claim like, "I didn't laugh out loud one time!". Gee, maybe that's because it doesn't rely on low-brow humor to get its point across?
Re:Excellent Movie (Score:4, Insightful)
1. There's more than one message in the movie. Yes, the prominent theme is taking care of the planet, but the movie also advocates (*Warning: spoilers*): active awareness and participation; improving the world; disobeying a stagnant and narrow-minded regime; and of course, love, compassion, and teamwork. Not to mention the initial concept of being less wasteful generally.
2. Yes, there is some irony in using mass-culture happy-meals and sedate audiences to convey a message of active participation and environmental conscientiousness. However, there is nothing stopping you from enjoying that happy-meal and then doing your part to contribute to your community. We don't have to be paragons of excellence in order to live up to whatever message you read into the movie, just make an effort toward making a difference.
3. The movie has a lot of unique qualities that make it worth seeing, such as the remarkable characterizations and emotions created without so much as a word; or the fairly unique (or at least rare) storyline that engages our imagination (which is not something I can say about Pixar's Cars' "big-city chum gets stuck in backwater village" scenario). Wall-E is full of invention and creativity, and offers a lot to the audience besides morals.
4. I don't think you are simply tired of hearing the message, but rather you are explicitly offended by the particular message you read into the movie. It seems like what really turned you off from the movie was the suggestion that our current lifestyle is the cause of world's destruction. I'm not sure why you are unable to look past that one nerve that the movie struck and enjoy the film for all the reasons that make it a charming romantic-adventure story, but take solace in the fact that no matter what you do with your life, you won't actually turn into a mindless blimp in a hover-chair.
As a side note, the movie does not claim that mega marts are the root of all evil. Rather, they are simply a little jab at current culture as Pixar illustrates the dystopia. The causal force behind the destruction was humanity's lack of care.
It's a good movie with lots of charm. Go see it for its entertainment value.
Re:More than taking care of the planet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More than taking care of the planet (Score:2, Insightful)
Incredibles - Exceptionalism should be rewarded I really had issues with the Incredibles message. Unlike Wall-E the average human was portrayed as weak-willed, contemptible, and ungracious for not heaping glory on their superhuman betters. The line from the kid, "when everyone's special then nobody is" I found to be a pretty horrible statement, the implication being that he can't really shine unless everyone else is inferior in every way. And the race at the end, I didn't really see the point; it takes no effort to win, all he gets from winning is the dubious recognition of having won an elementary school race.
I think you are sort of missing the something/being overly critical
"when everyone's special then nobody is" was said by Flash (the youngest child) in response to his mother saying "everyone was special". IMO he said it in a way that I could see any child near his age saying.
I never felt like they were trying to glorify that statement, in fact the same thing was said by the main villain later in the movie. I can see it as an attempt to get children to associate the statement with flash, then show that it was a wrong line of thinking by associating the same statement with the villain, ie guilt by association.
So if anything, I think they were saying that every one IS special even if you aren't exceptional
The race at the end, Obviously flash was given more leway, so long as he didn't abuse his gift and make other people feel inferior/ Ie a lesson in being humble.
I'm not a movie critic/analysis/whatever, that's just how I see things.
Re:Blew me away (Score:5, Insightful)
2001: A Space Odyssey is 141 minutes long and has 28 minutes of dialog. And no massive explosions, gunfights, etc. either.
That "story without dialog didn't work"? Riiiiiiiight.
Re:Excellent Movie (Score:4, Insightful)
The people that wrote and brought this story to life are some employees of Pixar and Disney.
Some other employees at Pixar and Disney are already are merchandising this for all that it is worth.
I find it really funny that you can't separate the two.
There, fixed it for ya.
Re:More than taking care of the planet (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually one thing I really liked about Wall-E was how all the humans were shown as fundamentally decent people willing to give up ultimate comfort once an alternative was offered to them.
I agree. The humans weren't willfully destructive or lazy, they simply had developed to have every care or whim taken care of for them. Basically, living on a cruise vacation for 700 years.
The line from the kid, "when everyone's special then nobody is" I found to be a pretty horrible statement, the implication being that he can't really shine unless everyone else is inferior in every way.
Completely disagree here. :) It's a disparagement of our modern focus on claiming that everyone is equal. Everyone isn't equal though -- some people are clearly better than others at certain things. Dash is obviously much better than any of the other kids at running, but he's being held back because excelling goes against what they've been taught to believe, that we're all equal. He knows he's capable of doing better, and he wants to be "special." The phrase "everyone's special" is insulting. The point of the final race is that Dash now has another outlet -- hero work with his family. He doesn't need to show off anymore, and he doesn't need to flout his powers. Now that he can run elsewhere, he doesn't need to "win" the race. He can, but doesn't have to.
Five minutes into Cars you know everything that's going to happen in the rest of the movie.
Yeah, Cars is more about the characters (including the town as a character) than the plotline.
Re:Rated G! (Score:3, Insightful)
It was a social commentary on consumerism and corporatism, not environmentalism.
It might not have been intended to be a social commentary on environmentalism (nor, quite frankly, did I think it was particularly a commentary on environmentalism regardless of the intent), but there's no way anyone could convince me that it's not a particularly violent commentary on consumerism and corporatism.
The humans aren't even human anymore in the movie until they stop feeding at the teat of the Evil Corporation.Wall*E contains a very serious anti-corporate, anti-consumer message. I cannot believe that it was unintended.
Re:Blew me away (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Excellent Movie (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you know how many employees work for Pixar? Do you know how many animators there are? Do you honestly think those animators are the ones who sign off on creating merchandise? Or that Mr. MacLane said "Gee, I'm not rich enough, let's create a new movie about robots and get richer!"
Sure, they know anything they create will be merchandised. That statement implicitly acknowledges that it is beyond their control - i.e. they aren't the ones doing the merchandising.
Re:Rated G! (Score:5, Insightful)
Most kids don't dream of eating fine cuisine in a 5 start restaurant, but they do play with toys, imagine monsters, play with bugs, dream of exploring the ocean, obsess over superheroes, play with cars, and aspire to go to space. The only thing that was really kid-friendly in Rat was the sappy "you can be anything you want to be" moral lesson, and the fact that it's a cartoon about a nerd and his rat. The setting and the plot didn't really involve anything that kids are really into. Even all of the artwork, backgrounds and animation, as visually stunning as they were, still seemed kind of high-brow and adult-ish for a kids show. When we left the theater after Rat, my kids weren't quoting it or talking about it, I think they liked it, but nothing was really memorable to them. I really liked Ratatouille, but I didn't feel like it was one for kids to really enjoy.
We went to Wall-E on opening night after my kids had been watching the trailers for months, and they loved it. My daughter giggled uncontrollably through about half of the movie, whenever the robots would talk, or whenever Wall-E would do something silly. We'll be sure to buy this one when it's released on DVD. But Ratatouille is one that we're ok with just seeing once in our lifetimes.
Re:Rated G! (Score:2, Insightful)
lapagecp says
Amen to that. It's idiotic to bring kids to a theater when you know that their attention span is minimal (nay MTVish) at best.
I'm practicing what I preach. My son's around 16 months. He can sit still for small periods of time, but that does NOT mean I'm taking him
to see a theater movie yet. We'll wait for iTunes etc. to see Wall*E.
Parents- Take your kids to the museum, the park, the zoo, or even the countryside. Let 'em discover movies later or at home.