WALL-E spreads the robot love
— -- If you thought Nemo and Buzz Lightyear were cute, brace yourself for WALL-E, one of the most endearing characters, robotic or otherwise, ever to grace a movie screen.
With its newest CG-animated creation, Disney-Pixar has outdone itself. The fact that WALL-E, a robotic trash compactor left stranded on a future Earth, can communicate so much emotion without real facial features or even a speaking voice, is an impressive feat.
Much has been made of the risk the filmmakers took in producing a movie with almost dialogue-less main characters. But the lack of chatter felt refreshing and let the gorgeous visuals and emotive actions of its characters tell the story.
The action takes place in intricately appealing landscapes, including a dazzling trip through the galaxy. Even the bleak future Earth, almost devoid of life, is packed with visual details such as the Christmas lights and garden gnome in WALL-E's treasure trove of a truck.
When we first meet WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class), he is a forgotten robot left behind on an abandoned Earth. While humans have gone off to live in luxury on a floating cruise ship in space, WALL-E spends his days compacting trash back on the desolate planet as he was designed to do.
Over the years of collecting left-over human trinkets and watching a video of Hello, Dolly! on repeat, WALL-E comes to long for companionship beyond his squeaky sidekick — a cockroach.
When EVE, the Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, lands to scan Earth for signs of flora or fauna, it is love at first sight — for WALL-E, at least.
Thus begins a quest through space as WALL-E chases EVE back to the human's hideout — a giant ship where people are so pampered and lazy, they can't even walk and must be transported around on floating inner-tubes.
In this vision of a future, it takes a robot to remind humans of their humanity.
When WALL-E arrives at the human outpost, he meets the eclectic gaggle of robots keeping the ship in working order.
