Wall-E doesn't play by the rules. I refer to
Wall-E the film as opposed to
Wall-E the character.
While it seems that praise has been nearly universal for this latest Pixar film, a considerable amount of dialog has emerged about what many consider the movie's somewhat odd mixture of formats. Specifically, the initial presentation of photo-realistic characters and environments, the use of live-action footage (primarily in the scenes featuring actor Fred Willard) and the somewhat dramatic aesthetic shift to the more cartoony realizations of the human beings aboard the Axiom spaceship in the film's latter half.
Noted animator and animation historian Michael Sporn noted on his blog, "I was, again, impressed with the incredible artistic abilities of the Pixar people, but I didn’t feel as though I were watching an animated film. It felt like a live action film (until the balloony fat people entered) with high effects. Perhaps that’s a positive; I’m not sure anymore.
Pinocchio,
Bambi,
Dumbo,
Snow White. These films were magic to me as a child. I imagine
Wall-E is like every other effects film to today’s children. I can’t imagine it will inspire future generations to get into the field. Maybe, you never know."
I agree with Michael; very often over the course of
Wall-E's 97 minutes, I completely lost the sense of this being an animated film. In fact, so immersed was I in this environment that, when EVE ignited a cigarette lighter in one of the movie's earlier scenes and my friend next to me marveled at how the flame was a simple yet amazing piece of animation, it took me a moment to understand what he was talking about. And I understand Michael's reservations as well. With much of
Wall-E, Pixar has stepped beyond the very genre it has espoused and remained generally faithful to over the course of its prior eight films. They clearly decided to, in many aspects, move beyond what would be considered a traditional animated presentation. To many, especially industry professionals like Michael, it begs the question--are we watching something akin to
Pinocchio or
Snow White, or product more related to George Lucas' FX-driven opuses, or blue screen-filmed dynamics like
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and
300?
I believe the answer to that question is truly rooted in the out-of-box creative approach that Pixar has long been noted for.
Wall-E is unconventional. It moves beyond the unwritten but still somewhat ingrained rules of animation presentation, and does so in the service of the story it wishes to tell. I submit that the combination of the film's disjointed aesthetic dynamics was very much a deliberate choice on the part of Andrew Stanton and his team. The movie's three very distinct design approaches--photo-realistic animation, live-action actors and sets, and cartoon-based characters--are in fact integral components of the film's overall theme and story.
While
Wall-E is at its heart a character-driven love story, it is played out on a thematic canvas that contrasts reality with the artificial. Robots are artificial; that is and has been a consistent truism of all entertainment media. And typically accompanying that truism is the story device of imbuing robots with sentience and emotions. But that plot dynamic is in fact not really central to
Wall-E. Wall-E is introduced as a fully developed personality, not requiring a journey of self-discovery. He is a survivor very aware of his harsh reality, a being who understands concepts of loyalty and friendship, and more than anything he is a lonely dreamer yearning for companionship. Though artificial in construct, Wall-E is very real; he is not very far removed from current executions of robot-based technology, thus he is all the more believable. In turn, his native environment is equally believable; from the haunting landscapes of an abandoned and garbage-filled megalopolis, right down to his battered Rubik's Cube and comical collection of garden gnomes. The intention becomes clear, Wall-E's world is not very far removed from our own.
The establishment of Wall-E and his environment by use of photo-realistic animation then serves to contrast the film's other not so subtle overriding theme--the reverse-evolution of humanity. Closeted aboard a giant cruise ship-inspired spacecraft, the human race has wholly embraced the artificial. Theirs is an existence of commercial over-consumption, supported by an infrastructure that simultaneously exposes and insulates them from their environment and fellow beings. The physical-emotional connectivity that Wall-E so desperately desires is seemingly always within reach for the denizens of the Axiom, but ironically only occurs by accident.
In filmed entertainment, there is in fact nothing more artificial than traditional cartoon-style animation. And so we thus see that transformation of human beings in the film. Humanity, as initially represented by the very real character of Buy-N-Large CEO Shelby Forthright, portrayed by Willard, is ultimately supplanted by the very artificial and cartoon style-designed incarnations aboard the Axiom. It is an evolution that is cleverly documented via the portraits of the Axiom Captains that hang on the wall in the current ship captain's quarters. It is there in that one subtle but very important set piece that the filmmakers' aesthetic and design intentions become especially clear.
Characteristic of Pixar, it is indeed a bold move. For they in fact use the various different formats of filmed presentation in the service of storytelling and transcend the very medium they have long been associated with. In many circles, especially those within the animation industry, it will likely remain a debated and somewhat controversial topic. As strictly a moviegoer, for me,
Wall-E presented a wholly new and original approach to the animation genre. We can certainly split hairs as to how we want to categorize and classify the film, but in the end, at least in my opinion, it will remain a wonderful combination of stunning visuals and heartfelt storytelling.
Image © Walt Disney Company
The great outdoors beckon! Let's spend the next part of our summer vacation on a trip through nature's wonderland.
For our next vacation jaunt, let's head south of the border for some caballero-inspired fun and festivities.
The Mike Fink Keelboats have not navigated the Rivers of America in Disneyland for over a decade. On May 17, 1997, the Gullywhumper tipped over, dunking a boatload of guests. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured, but the Gullywhumper was ultimately retired to this remote area of Tom Sawyer Island. The Gullywhumper's sister boat, the Bertha Mae, was sold on eBay in 2001.
Summer is the perfect time for a vacation trip to one of our famous and picturesque national parks. How about a tour of Brownstone?
On this day, Disneyland's 53rd Birthday, we commemorate the 50th Anniversary of a comic book the celebrated the third birthday of the Happiest Place on Earth.
In somewhat striking contrast to the feudal Japanese fortress that houses it is the Tin Toy Stories showcase, located in the Japan pavilion at EPCOT's World Showcase. Standing sentry outside the entrance to the exhibit is N.P. 5357, an oversize recreation of one of the most famous of all tin toy robots. A tin toy Mickey Mouse looks on from the nearby window display.
From Volume 56, Issue No. 8 of the Adventurers Almanac comes this plea in regard to the aesthetics of the Club's entranceway:
Special thanks to Wade Sampson for mentioning our Adventurers Almanac series in his recent article at MousePlanet!
"The roots of the band germinated in the early 1940's when some of us at the Disney Studio used to gather in my office at lunchtime to listen to my records of such jazz legends as King Oliver, Baby Dodds, Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Armstrong. Since most of our little nucleus of old-time jazz lovers had played various musical instruments back in school, we decided to really get into the spirit of the music by playing along with the records. Then one day the phonograph broke down right in the middle of "Royal Garden Blues." Undaunted, we kept right on playing and found to our amazement that we sounded pretty good all by ourselves!"
For many baby boomers such as myself, comic books were a staple of childhood summertimes. Walt Disney's Mickey and Donald in Vacationland, published in 1961, celebrated the fun and joys of summer vacation. The book's title story featured a major character mash-up set in a Wicked Witch-created amusement park called "Vacationland." Featured in the story were Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, Daisy, Uncle Scrooge, Goofy, both sets of nephews, Gyro Gearloose, Grandma Duck, Gladstone, the Wicked Witch, Big Bad Wolf and Captain Hook.
More and more traditional types of souvenirs seem to be fading from view in the many, many retail shops across Walt Disney World. There was a time when you could pretty much purchase a button themed to just about any attraction, resort or special festivity. Here are a few with a distinct Independence Day theme. I purchased them sometime in the late 1980s, early 1990s.
. . . as we have known it.
On the Streets of America in Disney's Hollywood Studios, a somewhat dark and mysterious storefront facade subtlety pays tribute to, what was for nearly two and a half decades, a Main Street institution at the nearby Magic Kingdom theme park. The House of Magic opened with Walt Disney World in October 1971 and was easily one of the most fun and entertaining retail shops on property. It was sadly closed in spring of 1995 as part of an extensive Main Street makeover.
In a somewhat surprising move, the Pixar short film Presto has been made available for purchase on iTunes while simultaneously playing in theaters with Wall-E.
Mickey's Toontown Fair at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World is dense with details and rich with backstory. The area's various attractions and set pieces come together in a central point of connectivity in Minnie's House, by way of large framed covers of the magazine Minnie's Cartoon Country Living. A careful examination of these covers will reveal connections to characters and locations scattered throughout Mickey's Toontown Fair.
One less obvious detail from the magazine cover involves the headline "New Toon Diet- ERASE THOSE POUNDS AWAY!" In the hallway just outside of Minnie's kitchen is a small table with a telephone. On the table is a note Minnie has received from Flora, Fauna and Merriweather, the good fairies from Sleeping Beauty. The note reads:
We will continue to explore the various covers of Minnie's Cartoon Country Living in future installments of the Toontown Field Guide. Stay tooned!
Wall-E doesn't play by the rules. I refer to Wall-E the film as opposed to Wall-E the character.
Wall-E is the right movie at the right time. It is at its core a sincere and simple love story devoid of sarcasm and cynicism, but framed within a cautionary fable that gently, though still pointedly, presents a post-apocalypse future brought about by environmental neglect and commercial over-consumption. It is a visually stunning combination of art and design that conveys an astounding emotional depth through not just its deftly animated central characters, but via landscapes and panoramas at times hauntingly surreal and and at other times dense in high tech polish.
Roy Disney's introduction to the magic of Disney animation souvenir brochure, circa 1989:
Disney Lost and Found: Exploring the Hidden Artwork from Never-Produced Animation by well-regarded animation historian Charles Solomon has arrived in bookstores and it offers another illustration-rich peek into the Disney Studios fabled Animation Research Library. Solomon provided a previous tour of that archive in his extensive 1995 book The Disney That Never Was. Slighter in text and pages than that earlier exploration, Disney Lost and Found still remains a joyful experience and a welcome addition to any Disney history library.
Predating Chicken Little by a number of years, Wild Life was intended to be the studio's first foray into a wholly CG animated feature. Solomon notes, "Wild Life began as a Pygmalion story designed to show children the shallowness of the world of glitz and fashion. But over the a period of months, it turned into a more cynical story set in the club scene of Big City, a fictionalized 1970s New York, the era when David Bowie and The Velvet Underground hung out with jet-setters in urban clubs." Designs by artists such as Hans Bacher, Floyd Norman and Greg Killman reveal a concept that was indeed a very dramatic departure for Disney. Alternately stunning and outrageous (and sometimes both), the designs for Wild Life clearly extended beyond what was considered appropriate for a Disney feature and it is not difficult to understand why it was ultimately shelved. As Solomon notes, " . . . insurmountable problems arose, especially between the decadent milieu of the later versions and the requirements of the traditional Disney audience."
The interesting twist to the film's design was that the Peoples would have been rendered in CG in contrast to the film's overall presentation in traditional animation. The artwork revealed in the book foreshadowed what could have been an amazing and visually arresting final film. A careful reading between the lines indicates that executive-level interference ultimately doomed the project, but Solomon does note that "Some artists still hope that My Peoples will be revived one day."
The aesthetic charms of Main Street USA in Disneyland are like magnets to the camera lens. Trademark windows of dedication combine with color and forced perspective to create a dramatic visual vignette.
Happily, the Goofy cartoon How to Hook Up Your Home Theater is available again on iTunes after a brief hiatus. 2719 reader Shane Snyder was amazingly quick on the remote when he found this series of Sport Goofy cameos as part of a football player pile-up near the end of the short. Featured in the montage are characters from three separate Goofy cartoons. (Well four, if you count the obvious reference to How to Play Football.)
Some of the other not quite so hidden gags in the short include the bookshelf photos we featured in a prior post, references to Mickey Mouse and Dopey on the television box, a cuckoo clock inspired by the short How to Ski, and a cameo by Cleo from Pinocchio.
Another eagle-eyed reader spotted the stadium scoreboard near the beginning of the cartoon that identified the two football teams as the Geefs and the Dawgs--a distinct tribute to Goofy's two other cartoon identities, his early 1930s moniker of Dippy Dawg and his 1950s everyman persona of George Geef.
His career was brief, but oh so significant.
Tar Heel Disney fans unite!
It is likely the most enduring legend of Lost Imagineering: Thunder Mesa and its signature attraction, the Western River Expedition. Press materials from 1969 provided this description:
It's been some time in coming but the second volume in the Walt Disney World-themed young adult book series Kingdom Keepers will be released later this summer. Kingdom Keepers II: Disney at Dawn by Ridley Pearson will arrive in bookstores on August 26th. Here's the synopsis provided by the publisher:
The World of Disney at Downtown Disney in Walt Disney World has an amazing assortment of large scale and colorful character vignettes that are suspended above the store's vast selection of merchandise and souvenirs. Wacky gadgetry is the overriding theme and Goofy is featured in a sleigh design that could almost be described as "happy steampunk."
Walt Disney, John Lasseter, Clarabelle Cow and Goofy's debut in Mickey's Revue are all featured in this blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment from How To Hook Up Your Home Theater. They are quickly cast off the bookshelf to make room for a speaker component.
I've received countless email over the past few months inquiring about the availability of last year's new Goofy cartoon How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. In that regard, great news! The short has quietly surfaced on iTunes and is available for purchase. Still no word on a DVD release, though inclusion in a future Disney Treasures set would seem possible.
It is a fun, albeit somewhat mysterious detail that hides in plain sight on the walls of Casey's Corner in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. The Main Street eatery is decorated with old fashioned baseball memorabilia, paying tribute to Casey at the Bat, the famous poem and subsequent Disney cartoon that inspired the restaurant's name and design. Among a number of antique photographs near the large Republic Field scoreboard is this picture of the 1915 Tournament Champions. Though cleverly disguised, it is clearly of a more contemporary origin. It has been speculated that the individuals pictured may be the Imagineers responsible for Casey's Corner. Can anyone out there identify these folks?
While engaging, fun and entertaining, the new Toy Story Midway Mania attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios is also relatively uninspired and certainly unexceptional. It will no doubt be a crowd pleaser for years to come and it serves as a much needed counterpoint to the Studios less kid-friendly headliners, but it is not an E Ticket attraction by any means.
Though I was largely Star Wars focused on my most recent visit to Disneys Hollywood Studios, I did happen to notice this additional piece of theming that was added to the exterior queue area of MuppetVision 3D. In this case, the buffoonery of Muppet Labs extends into the area adjacent to the Streets of America and nearby to Al's Toy Barn.
This year's inaugural Star Wars Weekend at Disney's Hollywood Studios was my first experience with the annual celebration. It was a fun and entertaining time, but I have to say that I enjoyed the Stormtroopers more than anything. They are cool. Very cool? Very, very cool.
