Pixar’s newest film Wall-E is excep­tional. Excep­tional not in the way that ‘hey this is really great ani­ma­tion’ but excep­tional in what it does for ani­mated films. I think it’s the first film to finally bridge the gap between ani­mated films for chil­dren, and ani­mated films for adults. Mind you, sit­ting in the the­ater wait­ing for the film to actu­ally start was a daunt­ing task, as you’re sur­rounded by chil­dren, and every god-awful trailer was tar­geted for what seems to be the exactly wrong crowd for a Pixar film. Of course the only good thing about sit­ting through the trail­ers of any Pixar film is their new orig­i­nal short film, this time around it was Presto, and I’ve got to say, it is one of their best. 

One of the strangest things I noticed in the first few min­utes of Wall-E was Pixar’s use of what appeared to be either real video footage, or ani­mated footage made to look very real. I’m not sure the exact pur­pose of doing this, other than to per­haps illus­trate the that this new dystopian future por­trayed within Wall-E was what we’d become, if we were to con­tinue using the planet at the rate we are now. Speak­ing of plan­e­tary respon­si­bil­ity, that’s another huge step for­ward for Pixar; in Wall-E, Pixar actu­ally tack­les a real social issue. They tackle this issue in a some­what un-cartoony way as well, by show­ing harsh exam­ples of what the world would become if we were to be waste­ful and unin­volved, for exam­ple, humans aboard the space­ship The Axiom sit in float­ing chairs with video screens in front of their faces, con­stantly ‘drink­ing’ food, and are grossly obese. This sort of por­trayal I think is nec­es­sary to trans­late a more com­plex idea to chil­dren as well as adults, where more spe­cific adult-oriented ideas in the film such as highly consumer-inflated lifestyles are present to adults. 

All social issues aside Wall-E is a won­der­ful love story. In the past, Pixar films have tended to be more ori­ented with issues of friend­ship and fam­ily (i.e. Toy Story or The Incred­i­bles), and less focused on some­thing as sim­ple as a love story between two char­ac­ters of dif­fer­ent back­grounds. Wall-E is a trash com­pact­ing robot left on Earth to clean up after a des­o­lated planet, when Eve (a veg­e­ta­tion prob­ing robot) comes to Earth look­ing for any signs of real life. Instantly Wall-E falls in love with Eve because to him she rep­re­sents all that Wall-E wants, com­pan­ion­ship and some­one to hold hands with. After a some­what com­plex sce­nario, Eve even­tu­ally real­izes Wall-E’s ded­i­ca­tion to her and returns the feel­ings. The film really is as sim­ple as that, but wait, there’s so much more. From the amaz­ing ani­ma­tion to the very Apple-esque visu­als Wall-E com­mu­ni­cates it’s base emo­tions with lit­tle to no dia­logue at all. 

All and all, what makes Wall-E a fan­tas­tic film is it’s abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate to mul­ti­ple audi­ences with mul­ti­ples mes­sages and still be a very enter­tain­ing film for peo­ple who don’t want to think about social issues or how great the visu­als look. If this film is any indi­ca­tion of the direc­tion Pixar is mov­ing I’m very excited.