Wall-E World

Leave it to Pixar -- the studio with the best success-to-release ratio in history, and the one that made one of the best superhero movies ever created (THE INCREDIBLES) -- to make one of the best science fiction movies in recent memory.



WALL-E takes many of the tropes that have been around in science fiction since at least the thirties -- a devastated Earth, generation ships, robots with personality -- and make them feel fresh. Although, if STAR WARS showed the future as if seen through the eyes of the thirties, WALL-E shows the future as if seen through the eyes of the sixties and seventies. The robots -- particularly EVE and the auto pilot -- conjure memories of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (back when 2001 was the future) and the "space age" design aesthetic of the Apollo era.

Much of WALL-E's success is simply bravura movie-making: Taking characters with extremely limited verbal skills, and even more limited facial expressions, and yet bestowing them with complex emotions.

WALL-E deserves all of its success. It's a drink of cool water in the arid summer-movie desert.


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Only on reflection did I realize that the giant trash-compacting robots in the Axiom's hold were called Wall-A. And there were two of them. Yes -- Wall-A Wall-A.