Say What You Must

Today I had great opportunity to watch Pixar’s latest film Wall-E. Twice. Once “bareback.” And the second with “Film Makers” “commentary” turned on.

Now I’ve been a pretty big fan of Pixar’s, even before “witnessing” the first Toy Story, back in 95. I’d been hearing rumblings of what they were trying to accomplish for sometime prior to the films release. And frankly, even though I never much thought about computers before 1995, something about trying to animate a full featured film immediately grabbed my attention. I just had to see it…

As you can well guess they’re, eventual, acquisition by Disney stung. It stung a lot. Disney has been riding on their early and, for the most part, well founded success in bringing the art of animation to the masses. I’m sure, I probably don’t have enough of the story to make such a statement, but I did. 

Disney has been riding that success straight into the ground, in my opinion, for decades now. And, honestly, I was concerned Pixar would adopt the policy’s of their parent company’s “straight to video” ethic and start to, as quickly as possible, release garbage, after shit, after garbage. That has been the reason I haven’t seen the last three films in theatres. I can wait. Which makes absolutely no sense. But it is what it is, I guess.

And, Ratatouille, could be argued to have been the very start of Pixar turning out films with typical Disney gusto. I know, not anywhere near it. But I still wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t terribly bad, yet, it still wasn’t quite “up to snuff,” for me. I’m not sure why. And it’s not important. But my impressions of Wall-E were the complete opposite. I really, truly enjoyed myself.

Yes I realize tides can and probably will change seeing how we’ve yet to see an entire Pixar film released that has endured it’s complete production life under the “Disney” moniker. Not to mention influence. But Wall-E was quite impressive.

From a technical stand point, sure, but they continued in the tradition of Cars, to actually provide commentary on very relevant social issues. I know, Andrew Stanton (Director and Co-Wrier), said it was unintentional. I don’t believe it. In fact that’s precisely why I watched his “commentary” so soon after seeing it. I wanted to see if he would address it and how long it took to come up. He did, and not long.

While being a story about loneliness, isolation, routine, structure, companionship and eventual love, the “Orwellian” society, environmental toll capitalism will inevitably hand us, and corporate greed/power/control/brainwashing references were much too tempting an opening for this bloke to just leave be.

Say what you must, what with Disney listening, and all. But between you and I, Andrew, that was no accident…