Joshua David Stein: Wall-E and The Fall of Man

Wall-E , though a salutary Pixar flick from afar, is in fact, part Brazil , part Batteries Not Included and part Idiocracy . It's dystopic all right but that's not to say it isn't cute. Think Cuteoverload.com with robots instead of kittens and you'll get the idea. It's been established that human beings (us!) are pretty crummy to our surroundings. We soil our earth and scum up our oceans. We litter on scales both large and small. We'd rather have perfectly sculpted bangs than an Ozone layer. For many years, Hollywood has struggled with making films in which we seem okay, in which human beings can be heroes. Movies like My Best Friend's Wedding and Moscow on the Hudson , for example. But lately, thankfully, Hollywood has seemed to wise up. Or at least one studio in Emeryville, California called Pixar. When robots first began to appear on screen, they weren't very cool or nice. Let's not beat around the bush, Gort was a bit of an asshole, a big metal bully. But by the time Jessica ... (link)