OH MAN. I have a confession to make. I’m in love with Wall-E.
There are so many exciting things on my mind after watching this new Wall-E trailer for dozens of times, and I cannot help but think that Pixar has created my most hyped film of all time with Wall-E.
The marketing campaign for Wall-E is the best campaign Pixar’s ever had. The trailers are probably giving us an accurate presentation of what most of the film is going to be like. It’s going to be plain awesome. They started this campaign by telling us how they created Wall-E (in that meeting at Pixar), then they showed us Wall-E and his interactions with the garbage all alone, then they leaked his relationship with Eve, and now they finally show us the action sequences in space and the first shot of the overweight humans in space.
Next, there’s the environmental theme. When I’m not talking about Pixar, I’m talking about how to conserve the planet. As I was clapping and cheering at the amazing scenes that the trailer previews, the last scene in the trailer really caught my eye. Wall-E getting chased by shopping carts? GENIUS. Now here’s Wall-E, assigned to clean up the planet after humans have destroyed it, being chased by shopping carts, which represent our addiction to consumerism and consumption. What can be more symbolic, yet comedic, than shopping carts chasing a cute little robot?
Which brings me to my last point. Now I know the main story is the relationship between Wall-E and Eve, but If Pixar really brings the environmental theme to the masses, then people would not by Wall-E merchandise, as that would be more toys to add to the trash pile in 700 years.
I think the message of this movie will be more about doing things for yourself sometimes instead of buying something to do it for you. Not “don’t buy stuff.”
The way I see it, every single Pixar movie so far has had some anti-corporate theme to it. So I don’t know why the political message of Wall-e is being emphasized so much.
In Toy Story, the identity of both Buzz and Woody was threatened by mass producing.
In A Bug’s Life, the characters had to overcome their fear of change and overthrow the people they worked for in order to find happiness.
In Toy Story 2 they had to choose between family life and life as a money making slave.
Monster’s Inc is one of the most blatant ones when it comes to criticizing a corrupt corporate culture.
In Finding Nemo the fishing and pet industry kept getting in the way.
In the Incredibles the characters the best they could to act mediocre and get an office job, and they only succeeded when they abandoned trying to be like everybody else.
Cars, again, was about big corporate culture VS a small community.
In Ratatouille the restaurant was being ruined by over commercialization.
Most of the people at Pixar have experience working for people who don’t care about their employees or even the quality of their films and only care about money. So it’s natural that Pixar has always tried to create imaginary worlds in which people are worth more than their monetary value.
I have no words for how excited I am about WALL-E. I’ve never been so anxious for the release of a Pixar film, and trust me, that is saying something.
Going to see a Pixar film in theaters is not only exciting because you’re about to see a first-rate story with great characters and gorgeous animation, but also because of the new short and the preview for the next film. I can’t wait to see what Pete Docter has in store for us with Up!
^Yeah, it’s kind of an event, like back in the day, when you had more to look forward to than just the movie (short, newsreel, feature, etc.). I hope this shorts devision Disney started expands so that all movies have a short.
Definitely worth the price of admission when seeing a Pixar movie.
Incidentally, I just saw my first tv spots for WALL-E since the Super Bowl. They werent new but still, it was exciting to see. Actually I saw it twice, between 7 and 8 while I was watching Everybody Loves Raymond. I was all 'look! look! Wall-e!" and my mother who was in the room was like “that’s very nice…:”