I’m not sure if this has been posted yet. If it has, please lock it.
[url]http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/interviews/2008/andrewstanton.html[/url]
There’s some very interesting points in here, especially when he talks about the literary allusions surrounding EVE. Here’s one of my favorite parts of the interview:
It’s a really good read. Check it out!
It actually was in the ‘environmental issues’ thread, a 3 page thread, and the link was posted a week after the movie came out, which was a very busy time, but it was only a link instead of a major discussion of that interview. Here is the pixarplanet Wall-E environmental message thread from 15 months ago:
pixarplanet.com/forums/viewt … ristianity
It was first referenced by Shelby Forthright, if you can believe that, and he had a very good long post. He seems very accomplished and knowledgeable and confident in himself. He only came here to post about Wall-E.
Mr. Stanton, who just turned 44 last week, gave some very interesting answers to the many, Christian-oriented questions. Here is a link to the ‘Happy Birthday’ thread:
…Wait, his birthday was last week?! D8 I did not know this.
I didn’t know about this article either! Nice find. Mr. Stanton seems to have offered himself for interviews in a lot of Christian publications. He also did one for World Magazine here worldmag.com/articles/14127 I quote his second answer on the side of my blog. He’s just awesome to speak up about stuff like that. <3
EDIT: Oh, also, I agree with him so much on so many message movies being crummy. It always frustrated me that most Christian media, be it movies or books, is the same thing: A long, poorly written sermon or an allegory of the new testament. I mean, this is GOD. There’s so much more that can be said and done. Why not just write a good story with a Christian hero if you want to write something for the Christians anyway?
Seriously, and this is coming from a Christian. So many Christian movies are totally lame. Movies like Facing the Giants were so powerful because instead of pushing the gospel in your ear for two hours they simply told the real story of a Christian who was struggling with his own problems.
Heck, how about just a good, intelligent story with human beings doing something interesting and without a ton of content that you feel guilty about watching later?
But anyways, I’m rambling. You get my point. xD;
It’s very interesting to see WALL-E from a Christian perspective, I have to say. I really hadn’t correlated Adam and Eve with WALL-E and EVE (despite the latter of each having the same name) and I definitely agree with Stanton and you too, Netbug009- it’s not nice to be preached at, and movies with a message are always more effective if they’re subtle. A very interesting interview indeed, thanks for the link JustSoWall-eCrazy.
I don’t like “preachy” movies all that much either… not only does it give Christians a bad rep (not like they don’t have a bad rep already, and it’s no wonder since we’ve been made to look like idiots who go around preaching people’s ears off 
), most of the time it can get plain annoying and almost a bit embarrassing. 
Anyhow, Andrew Stanton makes a lot of great points here, and I think I remember reading about the Biblical analogies somewhere before, cuz they sounded really familiar… maybe it was this article, I’m not really sure! 
Awesome read, and great find JustSoWall-eCrazy! 
I really didn’t know before that Andrew Stanton was a Christian, but I can really see some of those themes now in his own films. Finding Nemo he said was a story about faith and overcoming fear, probably the best example being the scene inside the whale where Marlin thinks they’re going to get eaten, and he says this:
Marlin: “How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?”
Dory: “I don’t!”
And Wall-E seems pretty obvious with the reference to EVE and having a similar Noah’s Ark kind of plot with the Axiom, but what mainly impressed me was that it gave such a thought-provoking message on the way we live in the most subtle way possible. Back when I first saw Nemo I thought there was something very different about it compared to the films before it (something deeper and more emotional) just as I have with Wall-E, and now I know why that is.
Wow! I didn’t think this topic would get this much attention. Thanks for reading, everyone. 
Wall-E has a heart of gold and many Christian associations tagged the movie as the one to see on his virtues. So their media asked for interviews. This doesn’t necessary mean that Mr. Stanton is a practicing Christian, just as he has said he isn’t anti-consumerist. He knew exactly who would be reading these interviews, and I’m sure was vague so as not to offend anyone. He has called himself apolitical. But we can’t determine whether he is irreligious, err, nonreligious.