Empire has named Wall-E one of the Most Downtrodden (Yet Inspiring) Characters in Movie History.
Here’s what they had to say about Wall-E:
Why he’s so miserable: The only thinking creature left on planet Earth, Wall-E spends his days on the Sisyphean task of cleaning up the mountains of rubbish left by a vanished human race. All the rest of his kind have succumbed to decay, malfunction and machine death over the 700 years that he’s been labouring, so that - aside from a cockroach pet - he is entirely alone in the world, just trundling through the dust of a vanished civilisation.
Why he’s inspiring: It’s Wall-E’s endless sense of wonder and delight in the world and its peculiar rubbish that has the ability to remind us how much we have to be thankful for. Seeing him try to decide whether to place a newly-discovered spork with his fork collection or his spoon collection would charm a dead man. And if we want to make Wall-E’s future-potential life better, we’re going to have to clean up our act now.
Sisyphus- I believe he’s from Greek mythology. Had the unenviable task of pushing a heavy boulder up a hill, only to have it come down again. Then he’d push it back up, and it would come down again. He had to do this constantly in the afterlife, as punishment after he died. Punishment for what, I’m not sure.
Calling Wall-e’s task Sisyphean alludes to the fact that Wall-e constantly picks up trash which, considering the rate he’s going and the fact there’s only one of him, will never get completed. He’ll just be picking up trash forever and never be done.
If I remember correctly from my Latin lessons, lennonluvr9, I think he was being punished for giving away Zeus’ secrets and generally being a sly, tricky kind of guy. It’d be a nice word to use in an English essay, I guess! tries to insert it into coursework somewhere But anyway, back on topic…
Interesting. I wonder what pushing a boulder up a hill had to do with giving away secrets or being sly. Sometimes these punishments were related to what they were being punished for.
Poor Wall-E, he doesn’t even get respect at his own forum, by people who are supposed to be his friends.
It sure looked like he was clearing the streets of that big city to me. He had quite a task. Somewhere I read that the animators planned for some of the skyheaps to look much older than others. Individual cubes sometimes had eroded and rusted away largely. Then eventually the skyheap would collapse. Some sort of structural fatigue. But that was no problem for our indefatigueable Tonka friend. Anyways, even tho some may have collapsed, the net result would be progress in cleaning up Chicago’s streets, something Mayor Richard Daley VI (the Sixth) couldn’t accomplish before he evacuated with a smile and a wave.
Even Wall-E’s chief creator, A.S., referred to his janitorial task as being near the bottom rung of society. Boy, no surprise that Pixar has janitors on strike. Wall-E was even downtroddened by his own maker. Hmm, I wonder if when Pixar in 2020 has Wall-E cleaning up the garbage cans in each office at 5pm if A.S. will have enough heart to give him a can of WD-40 at Christmastime. Ouch, I guess that was a low blow on my part, well, I’m speaking sort of tongue-in-cheek here, don’t take me too seriously. But if Wall-E’s job is near useless, there are tons of peeps who seem to be just messing up the world, on and off the job. (My favorite gripe lately are the people who buy and sell lotto tickets. The state brags about how much $$ they are making for Education by selling gambling addiction to poor people. In truth, they are bringing more and more of these people into cheap Gas Station markets where smokes, alcohol, sugar and salt are sold - all of which just adds to the health costs that the state and we taxpayers have to compensate for. Stop the Insanity!)
Are you referring to ‘Wall-E Forums’? Because those folks over there are like, hardcore admirers, so I don’t understand what you mean by him not getting any respect over there. Correct me if I misunderstood you.
Yeah, I heard the term ‘Sisyphean’. I even mentioned it during the first commentary, but I dunno if anyone understood what I said.
But anyway, back on topic…