WALL-E

Following Finding Nemo, Andrew Stanton decided to direct a film set in the future, mostly in space. WALL-E was released in the summer of 2008 and starred Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Majimy, Sigourney Weaver, and MacInTalk. It grossed $521.3 million and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

In 2015, humans have abandoned earth to be cleaned by Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth Class robots while they enjoy a five year cruise in space. However, the plan doesn’t work and seven centuries later, the last of the WALL-E (Burtt) robots is running around collecting junk and living with his pet cockroach. But one day, a spaceship drops off a modern robot named EVE (Knight) who seems to be searching for something.

Unless you count “Wall-E,” “EVE,” “Evah,” “Directive,” “Classified,” and “Name,” this film has no dialogue for the first forty minutes. And the film doesn’t suffer in the slightest as WALL-E and EVE are able to convey everything with body language and gestures. It harkens back to the days of silent films three years before The Artist ever did, while at the same time, doesn’t diminish the points in the film that do have dialogue.

WALL-E is also quite the interesting character. He sets a whole chain of events in motion that ends up with humans returning to Earth for the first time in 700 years, all for the sake of wanting to hold EVE’s hand. The classic definition of a fool, yet he’s humanity’s savior.

But he’s also a fool that has deviated from his original programming and developed a personality. Take when he finds a spork and is choosing whether or not to include it with his collection of spoons or collection of forks. He puts it in the middle, showing that he has evolved beyond merely choosing between dichotomies.

And that’s not even going into the message of the film, which blatantly cautions its audience against over-consumption and realizing the impact humans have on earth. But at the same time, it’s still incredibly entertaining.

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