[spoiler]1. My eldest son and I also wondered that. Perhaps the robots do that for them, too, a la Brave New World - a DNA bank, IVF, cloning, artificial wombs, etc.? There was a robot teacher of the infant kids, after all.
I assume the CEO went into space and has since died. I also assume that there was just one ship, but obviously it couldn’t have carried any more than a tiny fraction of all of humanity. Having more Axioms would complicate things too much from a storytelling perspective, I suppose. Which reminds me… the pudgy remnant of humanity which returns to Earth is still going to have to deal with some monster sandstorms for awhile.
The other robots just broke down or malfunctioned over 700 years, leaving “our” Wall-E as the only one remaining. It was just happenstance that it was him and no other.[/spoiler]
Eh. I thought it was so-so. The early scenes were good, and I enjoyed the post-apocalyptic Earth city. I think the live action footage worked well, but the contrast with the animated people later on was disconcerting. The whole thing just seemed to fall apart at the end for me.
Question about the plot:
For what reason was information about Earth’s toxicity kept confidential to the captain? It seemed as if the president meant for somebody to receive the message. It seems to me that Auto could have revealed this information to the captain at any time and ended the charade of sending Eves to Earth.
Liked it a lot. I think the Pixar people must have really studied silent movies, especially Chaplin.
as for “our” WALL-E being the last surviving robot on Earth (when presumably thousands of his model had been at work cleaning up); maybe his personality is what saved him. I got the impression he had more curiosity and initiative than a typical robot, including making a home in shelter that would survive the dust storms, and cannibalizing the defunct robots for parts.
Sure, if it were presented as serious science fiction, I’d have lots of nits to pick, but as a sweet little parable that looked amazing, it worked fine.
I was really struck by how real WALL-E’s world looked in some scenes. I’m imagining that level of graphics applied to some science fiction classics. You could film The Caves of Steel, or Rendezvous with Rama, and at least make them look right.
Oh – noticed a space buff joke. When WALL-E, clinging to the ship, passes through the vast cloud of old space junk orbiting the Earth, he briefly gets a little satellite stuck on his head; it looks just like the first Sputnik.
Yep. When that happened the first, time, a good number of our fellow theatergoers (including the two of us, since the spouse works at Apple) had a good laugh.
I also noticed that WALL-E had an iPod (you can only see it for a few seconds–it’s visible right before he fires up his ‘Hello, Dolly’ tape for the first time). One very nice touch was that it wasn’t a current iPod, but several generations old.
On a completely different note: Did anyone else notice that Peter Gabriel did the song over the closing credits? I didn’t know anything about that, and it was quite a pleasant surprise since I’m a fan. The spouse and I looked at each other as the song started playing: “Is that–? No, it can’t be! But it sounds like him…” and then the name appeared and I was happy.
I went to a Saturday Matinee with my kids, 15, 13, 7 and just barely 3. All of us loved it, and it was the first time my 3 year old was taken to a theatre. She now loves Wall-E.
My brilliant 15 year old daughter got the sputnik joke.
And Reloy3’s brilliant 15-year-old. Sputnik 1 is kind of an iconic image by now. Obviously WALL-E isn’t completely rigorous hard science fiction, but I bet Pixar is full of people who grew up reading sf and following the space program.
I went with my mom on Saturday, and we both really enjoyed it. I have to say it’s now my favorite Pixar movie, and I quite like all of them (some more than others).
I got the Sputnik reference, and giggled out loud at the Mac startup sound. But surely I’m not the only one who has had “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” stuck in her head for the past two days!
I loved the soundtrack- La Vie En Rose was a nice touch and Peter Gabrielle’s song during the credits was really good too.
I really liked the combination of robots, animated humans and live action. I thought all 3 had different qualities- and the captain ended up being one of my favorite characters- he was just so determined. I am planning on seeing it a second time with a group of friends.
I asked myself the same question re: your first. The next one… I don’t think that all the people left. Remember early in the movie the recording talking about how there was lots of room out in space, and ships were leaving daily (or something like that)? I think that there were a lot of ships. Not sure if they were all like Axiom or not but I think the implication is that everybody left, not that everybody died.
I’m curious at what point everyone said that? (Just because I can think of a bunch of places where that could have been said, and there was no such universal audience moment at the theater I saw it at.)
I’ll join you in that boat. I thought The Incredibles was sub-meh at best and have never understood all the fuss. I loved Wall-E.
I do think that they should have used all CG people and not live action. The progression to fat and lazy is believable. The progression from looking like people to looking like plastic animated characters? Not so much.
So yeah, sort of the ‘king iShinystuff designer.’