100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #139: WALL-E (2008)

Directed by Andrew Stanton. Starring Ben Burtt.

In the summer of 2007, I — like many other Americans — watched the lights go down as Pixar Animation’s latest film was about to begin. The concept was…odd…but after over a decade of releasing classic after classic, I, and everyone else, was willing to just trust that the film would be good. Maybe even great.

(Let’s be real. In the summer of 2007, the chances of a Pixar film being anything less than an instant classic were basically nil. The studio was untouchable in terms of quality. But I digress.)

That film was Ratatouille. This review, however, is not about that Pixar classic, but it provides a key piece of important context. Right before the movie, Pixar slotted a teaser trailer, unlike any I had ever seen (and have seen since). Rather than cutting together a snappy highlight reel or presenting a funny gag to drum up interest ala The Incredibles, Pixar opted to do something unique: they had film director Andrew Stanton tell a story, entirely through concept art and a talking head interview.

Bold? For sure. A sign of hubris? Possibly. But Pixar took a huge swing here, playing on audience trust and nostalgia by having Stanton take viewers back to 1994, just a year before the release of Toy Story. At a lunch, Pixar legends John Lasseter, Pete Doctor, Joe Ranft, and Stanton brainstormed ideas for what would come next after Toy Story. It was during that very lunch that the basic ideas for A Bug’s Life, Monster’s Inc., and Finding Nemo all came to life — an act of creativity not unlike watching Paul McCartney come up with Get Back in real time in Peter Jackson’s documentary of the same name.

It was during that lunch that the “core four” came up with one other idea as well: the story about a robot, left behind on Earth after the rest of mankind had fled the planet. That germ of an idea blossomed over the years into Pixar’s 2008 film, Wall-E. Pixar conveyed all this in a 90-second teaser trailer, while also conveying so much more: how when creativity, imagination, and wonder are given room to breathe, magic and art can be created from the unlikeliest of places.

Wall-E represents the creative apex of a studio built off of these core principles, one whose films have already been rightfully highlighted by this blog over and over again. Just three years after the release of Wall-E, the first signs of chinks in Pixar’s storytelling armor would begin to surface (sorry but also not sorry, Cars 2 fans), but the studio’s first 15 years produced an unparalleled run of which Wall-E might be the grandest achievement of them all.

“I don’t want to survive! I want to live!”

Stanton’s basic idea of a robot, left behind to clean up a trash-filled planet, became so much richer in the 14 years between its inception and ultimate completion. What started off closer to a spiritual successor to Planet of the Apes in Stanton’s mind became a sweeping science fiction romance, as the endearingly lovable robot, Wall-E, falls in love with another robot, EVE, and pursues her literally across the stars. Along the way, he encounters what’s left of humanity — a race grossly obese, locked in only on screens, obsessed only with comfort and pleasure (sound familiar?) — and helps introduce a catalyst that will change everything: a plant, found beneath all the trash left behind on Earth.

There is so much to unpack here. The film’s themes are darker and heavier than one would expect for a Pixar film, but it tackles them with a lightness of touch that is nothing short of inspiring. In an apocalyptic landscape where literally nothing else exists besides a cockroach, Wall-E chooses wonder instead of cynicism. He longs for love, watching Hello, Dolly! — which might be the last film left in existence — on repeat, day after day, night after night, wanting to make the same kind of connection. EVE bursting into his life gives him the companionship he’s been longing for literally for centuries — all conveyed across a first act that is nearly devoid of dialogue.

The film’s first act alone makes something evident that wasn’t clear to me on my first viewing, 18 years ago: Wall-E is more than just a sci-fi romance. It’s also a celebration of the history of filmmaking. The film’s first act would not be out of place in a Charlie Chaplin picture, with its lack of dialogue, how it relays exposition through showing rather through telling, and in its joyful, energetic spirit. When the film moves into its second and third acts and dialogue comes more into play, it’s like journeying through the history of movies with these characters, as sound, colors, and special effects come surging into the film. Wall-E is built on the shoulders of everything that’s come before it in the filmmaking industry, while also providing something excitingly bold and new.

A friend of mine recently watched Wall-E with the sound turned off on a flight, and it’s a testament to the artistry and the clarity of the storytelling that it works just as well as any silent movie that it is clearly inspired by. And yet! To remove the sound would be to remove one of the movie’s other artistic masterstrokes: the sound design from Ben Burtt.

Like Stanton bringing in voices like Roger Deakins and Dennis Muren to consult on the film’s look — which helps explain why it looks so distinct, both in its lighting and in its atmosphere — he also turned to legendary sound designer Ben Burtt to come up with how this world would sound. The result is perhaps Burtt’s pinnacle achievement — a bold statement, considering his work on Star Wars. And yet, he created 2,500 unique sounds for the film, twice the average of any average Star Wars movie. Even now, if you just think about Wall-E, it’s hard not to hear the distinctive ways Wall-E and EVE say each other’s names, or simply Wall-E’s adorable “woaaaahhhhhh.”

“Too much garbage in your face? There’s plenty of space out in space!”

Speaking of bold and new, an animated movie tackling themes as heavy as consumerism, industrialism, and environmentalism is as striking today as it was in 2008. Critics of the film at the time dismissed Wall-E as environmentalist propaganda when, in reality, it presents a message far more rooted in Biblical principles than you would ever expect from a Hollywood animated blockbuster. We are all called to be good stewards of the Earth — it’s right there in Genesis. The dangers of industrialism not just to earthly resources but to human relationships as well are tackled in everything from the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Wall-E is not tackling new ground here, but to find these kinds of themes tackled in an animated movie, released by The Walt Disney Company, is groundbreaking. Wall-E may be a beautiful, sweeping love story across the stars, but it’s also a rallying cry against consumerism and the dark side of industrialism that becomes ever more prophetic the further we push into the 21^st century.

The industrial revolution surely spurred on the creation of science fiction, as mankind began to imagine how new technologies could send them flying across the stars. That Wall-E — a science fiction film through and through — directly takes on the very thing that helped create the genre is a blistering move on the part of Stanton, and one that makes the film that much more dramatically compelling.

Finding out that Stanton himself is a Christian helps all of this make sense. It’s through that understanding that the film’s most important theme becomes ever clearer: humanity must turn away from the false gods of laziness and pleasure and instead return to Earth — to a proper stewardship of God’s creation. In an interview given after the film’s release, Stanton summed it all up rather succinctly:

We all fall into our habits, our routines and our ruts, consciously or unconsciously to avoid living. To avoid having to do the messy part. To avoid having relationships with other people or dealing with the person next to us. That’s why we can all get on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another.

Wall-E being a lonely robot before encountering another robot named EVE is obviously not a coincidence either. EVE’s revelation of a plant to convince humanity to return from its voyage? Also directly inspired by the dove and the olive branch from the story of Noah’s Ark.

Wall-E, truly, is a one-of-a-kind achievement across all aspects of its filmmaking. For Stanton, it represents the artistic culmination of a career marked with compelling characters, rich animation, and propulsive narratives. Just look at Stanton’s films in the years prior to Wall-E: he wrote Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and wrote and directed Finding Nemo. Him perfecting his craft over the course of all those films resulted in Wall-E being simultaneously grander, subtler, and more artistically refined than it ever could have been during its genesis in 1994.

Wall-E is a magic trick of a film: a pop science fiction epic romance that accomplishes what all great science fiction hopes to: providing both entertainment and also a morality tale, begging the audience to listen and change before it’s too late. Not bad for a story about a lonely little robot, just wanting to find love in a hopeless place.