The most controversial movie of the summer... Wall-E? That's what one writer is claiming. The G-rated animated movie presents a dire image of a morbidly obese human race, crammed into giant spaceships and exhorted to ever greater depths of over-consumption by signs saying "DO YOUR PART, FILL YOUR CART." (Remember those shopping carts in the trailer?) Meanwhile, the reason Wall-E has been left as the only custodian of Earth is because the human race has rendered it uninhabitable with pollution and heedless consumer culture. Somehow, I doubt the inevitable toy tie-in ads will mention these aspects of the film. [Jim Hill Media]
Wall-E, Social Critic
10:50 AM on Thu Mar 13 2008
By Charlie Jane Anders
1,473 views
14 comments













Comments
an animated film targeting children with environmentalist messages? how ground breaking...
Who has the fast-food license?
Is it just me, or is it feeling like the late 70's and early 80's all over again?
Yeah, because people are so quick to be politically correct about tubby people. Oh, wait...
That's one meme that's never going to get off the ground... (get it?)
I thought this post was going to be about the controversy brewing over two robots in love. I mean, clearly this is what's going to happen next if we start letting gays get married. Feeding our kids messages like this is just another part of the gay agenda from the commies at Disney.
Speaking as one of the commies at Disney, I have to say that the little bit of the film I have seen looks fantastic~ from a purely artistic point of view. Though I have to say that Wall-E himself looks a lot like Johnny 5 from "Short Circut"....
Not just an "environmental" message, but a subtle-as-a-brick-to-the-head message about how awful consumerist societies make you fat.
I'm too fat and tired to argue about this.
according to the creator of Wall-E it is purely "Mr. Sparkle " coincidence .......yeah right :)
In the novelization of Red Dwarf, the human species colonizes the rest of the solar system, deciding to use Earth as the dumping ground for all of its garbage. Of course, why the human species doesn't just launch its garbage into the sun is beyond me, but whatever.
Who gives a crap...honestly are they lying or over-dramitizing....I dont think so. this seems very plausible
Two messages came at me from the trailer:
1) Love knows no limits, and 2) Stop being dirty slobs while assuming your kids will clean up the disaster you left behind - they will think the same damn thing when they get to be your age.
I think these are both important themes for kids and adults all around... or is that for kids and adults that are round? 0_o
I saw "The Last Mimzy" when we got it in at work, mostly to hear the new Roger Waters song, but I was kind of surprised at the product placement in it.
The whole time the writers are beating you over the head with "TV is bad, put down your video games and live a life of nature!" but then every piece of technology the family owns has huge SONY branding on it. The brand isn't even shown in a positive light: the father avoids talking to his family by watching a SONY tv, the son retreats from his parents by playing a SONY psp then cheats on his exams by texting with his SONY phone, while everyone blanks each other out with SONY mp3 players.
All the time these SONY products are depicted as turning people's brains to mush, but I just know that some black-hearted marketeer has done the sums and calculated that enough of us have already had our brains turned to mush to not get the moral of the story but still accept the SONY engram into our brandscape.
So it won't surprise me at all when kids spend two hours having Wall-E tell them to eat in moderation and only buy things they need, not just want, then run down to McDonald's and buy five supersized Wall-E Happy Meals.
Wall-E looks beautiful, and I'm really curious to see how a mostly mute main character works with a modern kiddie audience. Last time I could think of was E.T.
The message of the film will be as hammered home as most pixar (FAMILY! LOVE! FRIENDSHIP! DISCOVERY!) stuff wrapped in perfect comedic timing and gob-smacking visuals.
it seems ironic that Disney would disparage consumerism. I mean that big mess over by Orlando didn't just materialize out of thin air.
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