Wall-E

Released 18th July 2008, Wall-E follows a small robot as he endeavours to form a romantic relationship with Eve in the midst of a post-apocalyptic Earth. By proxy of its post-apocalyptic setting, the film opts to establish the reasoning as pollution through human action and then continues by exploring humanity through their hyper-consumerist lifestyle seen on the spaceship called the Axium. Through this we also see that humanity in its living form is able to liberate people from their consumerist lifestyle and make you appreciate the small things in life. That said, the human arrogance is embodied by AUTO; AUTO is the s=autopilot software of the Axium spaceship and operates in humanity’s best interest… but not their best health.

The film uses 1984’s Apple Macintosh ‘MacInTalk’ software as AUTO’s voice. Besides this however, the only other notable voice actors are Jeff Garlin as Captain McCrea, John Ratzenberger as John and Kathy Najimy as Mary. Ratzenberger and Najimy have fun chemistry with their characters and their blossoming romance: romance made possible by Wall-E dragging them back into the world around them. McCrea also experiences real-life thanks to Wall-E while also going through an arc of regaining power as a captain. Wall-E and Eve also give very basic utterances throughout the film with their voice actors Ben Burtt and Elissa Knight. Despite the utterances however, the film is able to perfect character without dialogue in how Wall-E and Eve indulge in ‘facial’ expressions, movement and the background score.

Thomas Newman’s score is truly great in how it is predominantly gentle throughout the film while also being scaled where needed. The score is also accompanied by Put on your Sunday Clothes from Hello Dolly!; a song that holds great personal weight to Wall-E and appropriately impacts his peers too. Being a Pixar film, the animation is also staggeringly beautiful with the cinematography here being above average for the studio. Overall, Wall-E is a very human film which succeeded in telling a unique love story with a fascinating commentary of human nature in general.