Pixar's WALL• E: 1st Act Spoilers!

By George 'El Guapo' Roush on April 6, 2008

Pixar's reign of cartoon terror has dominated the world of animated theatrical releases for the last decade. Nobody has come close to touching the look, feel and charm of a Pixar animated movie (Except for Cars. Sorry, that one wasn't very good). Oh sure, countless have tried; Dreamworks has Shrek and Fox has its Ice Age series, but when it comes to making your cartoon a household name, nobody has been able to top Pixar and the marketing power of Disney. I, along with a few other journalists, had a rare opportunity to visit Pixar studios back in February and see the first 35 minutes of Pixar's 9^th animated feature film Wall-E.
 

Inside Pixar Studios is their gigantic theater used to show off their features to employees and important people who wear suits. Each seat is a replica of chairs used at The Getty Center in Los Angeles. I guess they really, really liked those chairs. It was in this theater we got to see the 1^st act of Wall-E. They've been able to produce the film in a linear fashion so the footage we were seeing was almost 100% complete. Think of Wall-E as the scene from Star Wars with the Jawas and R2-D2. No dialogue, yet we were able to follow along with what was happening. Wall-E's dialogue is robotic in nature, foreign to us, yet we're still able to understand what Wall-E is saying. Another first for Wall-E is the addition of live action actors inserted in the movie. At first, you're not sure how it would work, but it's not distracting at all and the only live action I saw was Fred Willard's character on a screen.

Alright, enough of my babble! Let's get started! Here's what I can recall (and what I can read from my notes I scribbled in the dark) on the first 35 minutes of Pixar's Wall-E.

Wall-E: The first 35 minutes.

I don't know the opening song that was being played, but the first scene takes place in outer space, closing in on a junk filled Earth in the year 2700. Towers and towers of trash are everywhere and there is no activity except for one lone robot who still doing the job he was built to do. For 700 years Wall-E collects trash and compacts it into a block, stacking it with the other mounds of trash. Humans have left our planet because there was too much trash on Earth, and it was up to the job of robots like Wall-E to clean the place up. Built by B&L Flight and CEO Shelby Forthwright (Fred Willard), Wall-E has unknowingly been left on and abandoned on Earth. You can tell he's lonely but has the companionship of the one other creature that could survive a dust filled planet besides a robot, a cockroach. When the day is ending, Wall-E heads back to his home and shuts down for night. The next day he recharges his solar powered batteries and gets to work again. Wall-E also has to make sure he's shut in whenever a dust storm happens. The towers and scenes for this first act had a sort of orange tint to them. Of course, everything looked amazing like it always does in a Pixar film.

Wall-E likes to collect items like lighters and sporks and store them inside his home which is the inside of a ship. There was a really funny joke with a car alarm and the spork but I won't spoil that here. He has a lift filled with different nick knacks and gadgets that he stores on a rotating wheel of trays to keep him occupied. He also likes to watch the musical Hello Dolly on TV and stare at the dance sequences. I'm pretty sure it was Hello Dolly he was watching. I may not be up to snuff on my Barbra Streisand films. Inside of a small fridge was the one sign of life around Wall-E, a small plant that seemed to be growing amongst the dirt and rocks.

What happens next is the starting point for Wall-E's adventures. A mysterious ship lands on Earth and a white robot comes floating out. It's shaped like a cross between a bullet with the appearance of one of those little white ghost things from Princess Mononoke. The white robot (her name is Eve if I recall correctly), clearly female in its appearance and behaviorisms, scans the area right before the mysterious ship blasts back off into orbit. Wall-E is curious about this new visitor and desperate for companionship, builds a junk version of himself (or her, I can't remember. Sorry) to offer as a present. Not impressed, she ignores him but shows off that she has a laser and isn't afraid to use it, blasting everything around her. A really cool chase sequence ensues and the sense of flight and speed was really well done.

Eventually Wall-E earns the strange robots trust and takes her to his place. I guess it doesn't take long for guy robots to try and put the moves on female robots. Wall-E shows off all the items hes collected to her and they seem to be getting along great when she notices the small plant growing. Wall-E gives her the plant (or weed) and she scans it, stores it, then just shuts down. It's obvious this robot was sent to Earth to search for signs of life. Wall-E instantly becomes confused and wonders what has happened. After time we see Wall-E bored and lonely again wondering why his friend has suddenly become quiet. They did a great job of conveying Wall-E's emotions to the audience.

Time passes and one day Wall-E notices the mysterious ship has returned. The ship takes Eve and prepares to leave again. Wall-E, desperate to stay with the only friend he's met in such a long time, manages to climb onto the side of the ship and hang on as it launches into outer space. It's here that Wall-E first sees a new world outside of the trash filled one he's been living in. The ship travels to an even bigger spaceship called Axiom that was built by B&L Flight. It's here where the first act ends and Wall-E's adventures into outer space begin.

The film looks awesome. The outer space scenes were gorgeous and the Earth scenes were also really cool. Despite the absence of hardly any dialogue except for the exchanges between Wall-E and his robot friend and the cockroach, the story is very easy to follow and extremely entertaining. I was kind of mad I could only see the first 35 minutes because I really wanted to see what would happen next for Wall-E. I guess I'll have to wait for the June 27^th release like everyone else!

Who else can't wait to see it?? E-mail: george@latinoreview.com

Source:Latinoreview