WALL-e
 

My wife and I wanted to go see a movie the other day...flipped a coin and it came up "WALL-e". Glad we went...the folks at Pixar have outdone themselves again. Excellent movie, many messages on many different levels. As usual, after 5-10 minutes you totally forget it's animated and just settle back and enjoy. BTW...the "Presto" cartoon at the beginning is a real bonus! Fun!

Great movie! Wall-E! What about Hancock!!
 

Wall-E was great and lots of fun!

Think it was fun wait till you see Hancock! It was a blast and loads of fun!

enjoyed the movie but I have reservations about messages (I'll leave it at that cause I don't want to get burned at the stake here)

I enjoyed Wall-E, mostly due to the craftsmanship of the movie as a whole. It is a bit odd in that live action, photorealistic CGI, and non-photorealistic CGI ("A Bug's Life" being an example of NPR CGI) are all used together.

The story line is good but the many serious messages that the movie tries to make were detractions for me.

I still think that I will see it again though.

I know what you mean. I haven't seen Wall-E, yet, but my wife and I felt the same about the animated movie "Iron Giant." Loved the movie - thought the 'message' was a bit heavy-handed (no pun intended) and also incorrect. But we decided to just enjoy the movie as a movie and let it go at that - we loved it on that basis.

Average
 

I thought the way they introduced and included the environmental messages was brillant but the implementation wasn't. It didn't keep my interest throughout the whole movie and I didn't think it was even close to the best Pixar has done so far. I was nodding off several times in the middle of the movie. Here's how my family rated the movie using the Netflix 5 star system:

Mom- 4 stars
Six year old daughter- 3 stars
Six year old son- 5 stars
Dad- 3 stars

BTW The Incredibles is my favorite Pixar movie so far. :thmbsp:

.....the reference point for animated films.

:thmbsp:

Looking forward to seeing WALL-e however.

We felt the same way about the penguin’s movie a couple of years ago.

Not subtle at all like Disney was with Bambi...

I agree visually it was great. Story was a bit heavy for me....

Why is protecting, or saving the planet (from ourselves) heavy..

Dr. Emmett Brown: There's that word again; "heavy". Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?

How is that different from any other science fiction setup.

I think someone mentioned this too, but it reminded me a lot of 2001/2010. Like a kids version kind of...

to me it was a love story. Really admired Wall*e's patience.

I'm guessing it is because at every turn it is either alluded to or directly stated that we (Americans) are destroying the planet from our wasteful, avaricious, over-consumptive, thoughtless, greedy, did I say wasteful yet?, non-efficient, have too many things, most of the world's resources utilizing, only a fraction of the world's total living, have it too good when others have nothing, coal-fired, fossil-fueled, ocean polluting, non-caring after me the deluging, putting it all on our children's backs ignoring, global warming, cheap labor exploiting, SUV driving, gas guzzling, non-mass transit using, too many plasma TV watching, ozone depleting, carbon dioxide dumping, non-carbon neutral imprinting, slash & burning, strip mining, landfilling, toxic VOC creating, incandescent bulb using, idling in the fast food line sitting, animal extincting, polar bear drowning, shooting guns in the air bullets dropping, kind of lifestyle we all are supposed have.

:D

Apologies if I left anyone's ox ungored.

Quite a sentence.

What would be your suggestion for fixing the problem?

Let me just take a few of your objections to us awful Americans at random...

1) Own too much. OK, I own 'too much' according to you. How do you fix that? Do you take my things away under the auspices of government? Who decides how much is 'too much', by the way? You? I'm just curious how you (or anyone) decides how much is too much to own, and what you intend to do about it.

2) Have it too good when others have nothing. OK, a reasonable statement in terms of the US standard of living compared to many other nations (although supposedly we do not enjoy the world's highest standard of living - leave that aside for now). Again - what do you propose we do about it? Will you take my money away through heavy taxation, distribute it to others? Will you force me to live like a person who is a resident of Ghana, or Ethiopia, or Bangladesh in terms of living quarters, food availability, money, life expectancy, health care, and so on? Who will decide who lives 'too high on the hog' and what will they do to fix it?

And since we're goring oxen here, let me ask the question no one seems to want to ask.

Who cares?

I will not be around when the planet is ruined. I will not suffer the consequences. I have no children. What do I care? Why should I care? What possible difference will it make to me?

Self-centered? Yes. And why not? What does it benefit me to be otherwise?

Nothing I do is illegal, and no religion I have yet found considers my lifestyle immoral. I pay my taxes, live within the law, even contribute to charity and try to assist others as I can. But I live more or less precisely as I wish and can afford, and for this - I am a bad person? I must change how I choose to live because others do not have my standard of living, for whatever reason? I can afford an SUV, but I must not drive one because others cannot afford one - or because it does more harm to the planet than a Honda mini-car?

I find no particular reason to change anything about myself. I am looking forward to seeing the movie when it comes out on DVD.

Apres moi, le deluge.

1. Loved it.

2. Ya'll are looking at things too hard trying to find an issue.

"Don't go changing to try and please me..."

I don't know the right way to say this so it doesn't sound like something I don't mean it to, so I'll just say it and take it for what you will.

That really makes me sad. Not like in a condecending way, but in an Elanor Rigby kind of way.

Don't get too teary-eyed. My question is more of a philosophical one, really. I have concern for future generations - my question is intended to ask the legitimate question - why should I?

Three themes that run through "we're killing the planet" themes consistently are these:

1) We Americans (OK, USA-ians) own, consume, produce, spend, output and in every other imaginable way create or use 'too much' of whatever *it* is. We're bad.

2) That we (humans) actually possess the capability to destroy the planet through our presumed overuse and abuse of it.

3) That we should - or must - care.

It could be that all three are true (although the first is a value judgment and difficult to attach an objective value to). I don't know. I suspect no one else knows, either.

BUT, I tend to challenge those three assumptions whenever I hear them - on the basis that such assumptions need to be challenged.

If one is to assess that I 'own too much', then they must really be prepared to tell me how much 'too much' is, who decides, and what they intend to do about it. Otherwise, it's just talk, isn't it?

I mean, how easy it is to proclaim my (or your) ownership of 'too much stuff' as the cause of the ills of the planet. How difficult to detail in what way that is actually true.

The same can be said of the assumption that we are, in fact, breaking the planet. People observe effects and ascribe them to factors without a great deal of evidence. I liken this type of thinking to 'end of the world' religious thinking. In every religion that has an 'end of the world' scenario, predictions are made so that one may know when the end is nigh. And lo - we seen the 'signs and portents' constantly - the world insubordinately and stubbornly refuses to end. This, to me, is not unlike the type of mawkish claptrap being peddled as science that tells us the earth is being destroyed and we're the ones who did it in (in the pantry, with a candlestick). When the growing season refused to give rain to our primitive ancestors, they sacrificed a couple virgins to appease the Gods for whatever offense we might have given them. Nowadays, we merely try to make everyone give up their SUVs.

And finally, that I should care. Well, in point of fact, I do care - but I fail to see any compelling reason why I should, other than that I choose to. It is not unlike (to me) my 82-year-old mother-in-law being urged to stop drinking and smoking heavily. Her response? "What on earth for?" I get it - there is no point, so what purpose does it serve? If one presumes we do not possess the power to break the planet, or that the planet is not actually being broken, or even that the planet is in fact drying, but that there is nothing to be done about it, then there is no point in getting all broken up about it.

The flood, as I stated, will come. What comes after that? I won't be here to know.

I thought it was a great movie and my kids really had a good time. Sorry for my part in dragging this so far off topic.

Thank you, I'm wordy.

Why do you believe I think there is any problem to contend with or that Americans (me being one) are awful in any way whatsoever? I'm sure some are but most of the ones I know and spend time with are not.

I don't think you fully grokked the word suppose at the end of my big ol' sentence? Everything I reference comes from the daily onslaught I receive inferring (either by allusion or direct condemnation) that I am a bad person because I BBQ (often), use a 2-stroke string trimmer, have owned guns and shot them, drive rather than walk or bike, and don't ball up in the thumbsucking fetal position asking to be forgiven for my envirosins over the thought that........ it might get a couple degrees warmer sometime over the next 55 years. (Meaning at the end of my life I might not have to migrate south in the winter and perhaps can start my tomatoes a month earlier in New England.)

So again, what makes you think I am saying Americans are awful in any way at all? Indeed I am not, the above was sarcasm but perhaps it was with too fine a point. (Although I personally thought it was a bludgeon.)

I admire Wall*E if only for bringing a conversation like this to light.

Yep, gotta admit, I missed the sarcasm. Even going back and looking again, I see your 'supposedly' but still didn't quite make the connection. However, point taken. My remarks are clearly not meant for you, my apologies.

Not accepted as I was not offended in any way whatsoever.

Sometimes you just gotta say what's on your mind & screw 'em if they can't take a joke!

:thmbsp:

If anyone thinks we, the USA, comsume too much, go to Japan.
As far as the movie, I might rent it, but I don't like "preachy" movies.

I saw it and really enjoyed it on the big screen. The story is shall we say a bit....shallow? But it is still a treat. The theater was empty, the sound superb, & the visuals wonderful. I can see how many would find it an indictment of US society and a stark warning to change our habits. However, it is so over the top you would have to be already somewhat hyperbolic in your viewpoint to accept it as such. In other words, you might have thought "Idiocracy" was a documentary too.

:D

http://www.ilounge.com/images/uploads/idiocracy2.jpg