FILM

Wall.E
Seven hundred years in the future and Wall.E is the only remaining inhabitant except for his friend cockroach. Each day he continues with the task of cleaning up the earth. Wall.E's life is interupped one day when a space ship lands on earth dropping off a plant probe Eve. Instantly Wall.E falls in love.

As our film study we will look at this movie critically. We will studying the opening scene and four selected scenes picked by the class voting. After this as a class we will look at characters, sound, setting, theme and conflict.

Characters
The charcters we studied as a whole class are: Wall.E, Eve, Auto, Captain, Mary, John and Mo the cleaning robot.

Sound
Sound is very important in this film for displaying the characteristics and emotions of the animated characters. The background sound in this film is equally important. It is used to show the eeriness of the Earth without the human race. It is used again to show the vastness of space. As mentioned before the good robots have a lot of Macintosh sounds and the bad robots have a lot of Microsoft sounds. Sound in the form of music is important for us as viewers to understand the emotions of certain scenes. For example: ‘Holly Dolly’ used as an ironic contrast to how the earth was and how the Earth is now. ‘2001 Space Odyssey’ used to emphasis the struggle of the captain trying to walk ‘La vieu Rose’ when Wall.E follows Eve so the audience can see how much of a crush Wall.E has on Eve. Romantic music for romance, evil sounds for bad things.

Setting
There are three places in the film Wall.E; Earth, Space and the Spaceship ‘The Axium’ Write a list of things which are important in each of the settings. Use a Three chart to display these things. e.g.
 * = Earth ||= Space ||= The Axium ||

Theme
There are many themes in the film Wall.E which are interesting to discuss. We will look at most important to least important Pollution, Little man vs Big man, love survives everything and culture vs evolution. This theme leaves us as an audience with a stark warning of where we may be heading. Pollution; has man learnt anything from what happened on Earth? When the men land back on Earth what changes do they make if any? Little man vs the Big man. We are bombarded constantly during this film by images of Buy in Large a ‘Wallmart” parallel. The Big Man can also be seen as Auto as having been switched to autopilot he has full control of the ship. Love survives everything. This theme is quite easy love conquers all. The captain’s love and want for the Earth causes him to overpower Auto and get the spaceship to return to earth. Wall.E and Eve love for each other gives them the strength to do things they normally wouldn’t do. Love is also the main ingredient for Wall.E survival at the end of the movie. The last theme is culture/evolution: We see a variety of evolutionary ideas in this movie. The men in space evolve from the people we know now to these fat blobs of hover beds. That Wall.E evolves to have developed human feelings. This is seen as a good thing by the audience and this is necessary for us as an audience to connect with Wall.E. However, it is seen as a bad thing on the spaceship those robots with feelings or emotions are out of order and get sent to the hospital to “be fixed”. There is a slight paradox with mental institutions and one could argue that If other people don’t think or act like you does that make them broken? Not only this but these evolutional feelings in these robots particularly Wall.E can be taught to other Robots. He teaches Eve to Love and to care. Lastly culture and evolution is shown in the last frames of the movie with the progression of art through the ages: Egyptian art, Roman Mosaics, Greek Black Figure Vase Painting, Renaissance, Monet, Van Gogh, up into computer early 90’s graphics almost looking like the early Atari gaming systems.

Conflict
 There are a lot of moments where conflict plays an important part in the film Wall.E. Conflict is important in many texts including film as it creates dramatic moments and obstacles which the character must content with or overcome for the story and the character to evolve. Wall.E vs Eve: First conflict was when Eve lands on earth and Wall.E must breakthrough her initial aggression to become friends with her. Eve and Wall.E vs the Robots: Eve and Wall.E once returned to ‘The Axium’ must convince the robots that they are good and are trying to complete a worthwhile mission. Captain vs Auto: The last and final conflict in the film and can be taken as the climax of the movie is the fight between Auto and the Captain. The Captain initially feels Auto is on his side yet soon discovers the truth. Aligning himself with Wall.E and Eve is the fight to go home to Earth.