Latest / Left of the Projector / Wall-E (2008) with Closeted History and Leftist Squidward
Transcript
- 0:17Track 1: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host, Evan,
- 0:21Track 1: back again with another film discussion from the left.
- 0:24Track 1: You can follow the show at leftoftheprojector.com and support at patreon.com
- 0:29Track 1: slash leftoftheprojectorpod.
- 0:32Track 1: This week on the show, we are discussing the night, uh, the,
- 0:36Track 1: this week on the show, we're discussing the 2008 film WALL-E.
- 0:40Track 1: And with me, I have back on the show Destiny, who is the host of Closet History,
- 0:44Track 1: LGBTQ Plus Stories of the Past, And Thomas, thank you both for being here today.
- 0:50Track 3: Thank you so much. Yeah, excited to get into it.
- 0:54Track 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
- 0:55Track 1: Of course, we've been, I don't know if it was you, Destiny, had brought up,
- 1:01Track 1: I think you maybe and I at some point talked about a few animated films.
- 1:04Track 1: It was this one, I think Ratatouille as well, you know, ones that would be fun to do.
- 1:09Track 1: And WALL-E is one that I think anyone listening who's probably seen it probably
- 1:14Track 1: can immediately think of reasons it's worth talking about this film,
- 1:18Track 1: you know, as a just as an analysis. And then, of course, from sort of a leftist analysis.
- 1:23Track 1: And I'm curious if this is your favorite Pixar film. I'm going to put you on the spot.
- 1:28Track 1: Or if it's not this one, do you have like another preferred Pixar movie?
- 1:34Track 2: This is not my favorite Pixar film. So I feel like there are a lot.
- 1:38Track 2: It's kind of hard to choose, but probably Monsters, Inc. or Toy Story.
- 1:46Track 1: Good choices.
- 1:47Track 2: Are my favorites. But I do thoroughly enjoy this one.
- 1:51Track 2: And as you mentioned earlier, Ratatouille. I love that one.
- 1:54Track 2: I think that it's probably like a very working class pro proletariat kind of movie.
- 2:02Track 2: But yeah, I mean, WALL-E is good. it's solid I love it.
- 2:07Track 1: What about you Thomas?
- 2:09Track 3: I didn't see this movie until last year it's my partner's favorite movie and
- 2:14Track 3: they were very nervous about showing it to me,
- 2:16Track 3: and when I saw it I cried and I said it was like absolutely my new favorite
- 2:21Track 3: Pixar film re-watching it it just solidifies that yeah it is the best thing
- 2:26Track 3: Pixar I've ever made I do think that everything that Destiny has listed Ratatouille,
- 2:30Track 3: Monsters Inc, Toy Story are like classics but this is like,
- 2:34Track 3: I feel like this is the last truly elite thing that Pixar made.
- 2:39Track 3: Actually, no, sorry, Ratatouille came after this.
- 2:42Track 1: No, Ratatouille was the year before.
- 2:44Track 3: Oh, amazing. Then yeah, this is the last elite thing that Pixar ever made.
- 2:48Track 1: For me, I think I've probably seen Ratatouille more times than WALL-E,
- 2:53Track 1: but as far as a complete work, I think that WALL-E is probably the better film.
- 2:59Track 1: I mean, it's a close one on that. I mean, again, I think you're right.
- 3:05Track 1: It's probably the best one they've made. They've had lots of good ones since then.
- 3:08Track 1: I think, you know, some of the Toy Story sequels are fun and some of those other ones are good.
- 3:13Track 1: But WALL-E is just, it's hard.
- 3:16Track 1: So that leads me to like the actual film itself is you really don't have much
- 3:22Track 1: dialogue in this film and for a good 45 to 50 minutes into it.
- 3:27Track 1: And even in the beginning, when there is like little bits of dialogue,
- 3:30Track 1: It's mostly just like individual single words and, you know,
- 3:34Track 1: everything is done through emotion and, you know, things that are happening throughout.
- 3:39Track 1: So, like, do you think that's what makes it so impressive as just like a,
- 3:45Track 1: you know, I want to say like a kid's movie, but it's not really just a kid's
- 3:48Track 1: movie as an animated film.
- 3:49Track 1: It's, it's so much more than that.
- 3:51Track 3: I would say that, yeah, like the movie, you know, to some people,
- 3:56Track 3: that's a big criticism, right? That you feel like you're getting two different films in one.
- 4:00Track 3: To me, it's such an experimental and like left field approach to movie making
- 4:07Track 3: from a company that is making the kind of most normative, huge,
- 4:12Track 3: bestselling movies that almost any other company could possibly aspire to make.
- 4:16Track 3: So it's like to have so much amazing detail and exploration of theme be done
- 4:24Track 3: in these first 45 minutes with like almost no dialogue is just surreal to me.
- 4:31Track 3: And it's done so well and so beautifully. I was saying to both of you before
- 4:35Track 3: this call, 45 minutes in before any humans actually get introduced,
- 4:39Track 3: I had like a thousand words of like notes.
- 4:42Track 3: And I was like, I need to trim this down. I'm not going to be able to get all
- 4:46Track 3: of this into the pod without us just like endlessly discussing for like three
- 4:49Track 3: hours. But yeah, it's brilliant.
- 4:51Track 3: And like both halves, I think, equally have a lot of value to them.
- 4:57Track 2: Yeah, I agree. I think that I that's one aspect of the film that like I really
- 5:02Track 2: enjoyed was the storytelling.
- 5:04Track 2: Because, you know, like, yeah, it just it does such a good job of like telling
- 5:10Track 2: the story through the songs and like the dancing and it's so romantic.
- 5:15Track 2: It's just like such a cute, wholesome, amazing movie that has a lot of like
- 5:22Track 2: really great themes that then you can analyze and make lots of pages of notes.
- 5:28Track 1: Yeah. I mean, that's like that's sort of like what I was also going to say is,
- 5:31Track 1: you know, as you know, you could probably go down the list of Pixar films.
- 5:34Track 1: I'm sure you could go through a lot of them and say, like, there's stuff worth talking about.
- 5:38Track 1: Definitely in Ratatouille, I think, would be one that comes to mind.
- 5:40Track 1: But like, why would you say this?
- 5:43Track 1: I don't think I've ever asked this before. Like, what makes this? movie worth like
- 5:47Track 1: analyzing from a you know
- 5:50Track 1: a critical lens a leftist critical lens you
- 5:53Track 1: know as again an animated film where there's lots of limited dialogue for the
- 5:58Track 1: first half it's kind of like you said tom like two different kind of movies
- 6:01Track 1: in a way you have that first 40 minutes where they're on earth and then you
- 6:04Track 1: have the next 45 minutes or so on this uh you know this giant spaceship and
- 6:09Track 1: then returning back to earth again so i don't know yeah.
- 6:13Track 2: I mean i think it's important that like the very first
- 6:16Track 2: thing that we see is trash and like
- 6:19Track 2: you know that right there it's like oh okay there we're setting the tone for
- 6:25Track 2: the film that you know we're gonna talk about consumerism and capitalism and
- 6:31Track 2: you know our relationship with earth and like the ecosystem And just,
- 6:37Track 2: you know, like, even from the very first kind of frame,
- 6:43Track 2: it kind of...
- 6:44Track 2: Makes itself it lends itself well to to have those kinds of those it lends itself
- 6:51Track 2: well to have those kinds of conversations.
- 6:53Track 3: Yeah i would say that like unlike any
- 6:56Track 3: other time that disney has tried to have a sort of
- 6:59Track 3: progressive facing message this
- 7:03Track 3: movie is the most confrontationally honest
- 7:06Track 3: about the kinds of you know politics that
- 7:09Track 3: involve having a really progressive message like whoever
- 7:13Track 3: greenlit this movie was also
- 7:16Track 3: consciously being like we you know we're kind of admitting that
- 7:19Track 3: the current direction of capitalism is is essentially
- 7:22Track 3: an apocalypse like there is no other way out of
- 7:25Track 3: it sure there's this kind of you know cute message that.
- 7:28Track 3: Humans will survive and go away for a bit and and
- 7:31Track 3: maybe they can come back and there's still hope yada
- 7:34Track 3: yada but like the truth of the matter is that like the setting
- 7:37Track 3: of the movie from the very beginning is like the creators
- 7:40Track 3: telling you this is what big corporations do
- 7:43Track 3: this is the the monopoly theory that
- 7:46Track 3: also came true like eight years after the movie
- 7:49Track 3: with amazon so it's like i mean i think that
- 7:52Track 3: like you know this is a bit of a tangent but
- 7:55Track 3: i feel like in 2008 maybe they were thinking that walmart was
- 7:58Track 3: going to kind of become that like i feel like by and large kind
- 8:01Track 3: of reminds me a lot of walmart but uh but amazon
- 8:04Track 3: kind of ends up taking that spot and becoming the the everything company
- 8:07Track 3: that like we imagined uh was going
- 8:10Track 3: to eventually proliferate so like it is just a
- 8:13Track 3: it's such a coldly honest uh or not coldly but refreshingly honest take from
- 8:21Track 3: a company that you would not expect to be this honest and i and i really appreciate
- 8:25Track 3: that because it makes the the details and the and the sort of thematic investigations
- 8:30Track 3: of this movie really really interesting well.
- 8:32Track 2: I think it's also important to kind of note like the context of the movie also
- 8:37Track 2: i mean this is 2008 so like the recession i i think,
- 8:43Track 2: That definitely impacts the way that things were kind of portrayed through film
- 8:49Track 2: at the time, just because, you know, people had different perspectives after the recession.
- 8:56Track 2: And, you know, a lot of people kind of woke up to that reality.
- 9:02Track 2: So seeing it in a film's kit or a kid's film is super cool.
- 9:07Track 2: Um it kind of makes me think about i know
- 9:10Track 2: we talk about it often but uh idiosyncrasy
- 9:15Track 2: oh idiocracy idiocracy yeah
- 9:18Track 2: sorry but um it makes me think about that movie because you were talking about
- 9:22Track 2: that like maybe it was walmart but in that movie it was costco um and our current
- 9:29Track 2: climate it's amazon um but you know it's like that movie but without any of
- 9:35Track 2: the the eugenics well Well.
- 9:37Track 1: It's like both of those are like, I think that the context of when this film
- 9:42Track 1: came out is extremely interesting.
- 9:43Track 1: And I was looking like I watched a couple of the like behind the making of the
- 9:48Track 1: film and some of the other things with Andrew Stanton, who conceived the film
- 9:51Track 1: initially and directed this one. But he had originally come up with this idea,
- 9:55Track 1: like, around the time that Toy Story was released in 1994.
- 9:59Track 1: So he had been, like, putting this together for years and years.
- 10:02Track 1: Like, this was a culmination of, you know, more than a decade of preparing and
- 10:06Track 1: building and something.
- 10:08Track 1: And they also said it had twice as many storyboards as their normal Pixar film
- 10:12Track 1: and, like, the amount of work that went into this.
- 10:14Track 1: So what I found interesting and maybe odd is there isn't as much said by the
- 10:22Track 1: creators of this film as like, yes,
- 10:24Track 1: we were clearly critiquing a company like Amazon or Walmart and doing it from this, you know,
- 10:30Track 1: very romanticized animated film.
- 10:33Track 1: And I only can think like, did they just want to not say that because it would, I don't believe them.
- 10:41Track 1: You know, sometimes directors will say like, I wasn't thinking about this politics
- 10:45Track 1: in this movie. And I'm just like, no, you're lying right now.
- 10:47Track 1: Like you were, and you just don't want to say it because you don't want people to come after you.
- 10:51Track 1: Or it's easier when you work for Disney or Pixar, like not to get into those things.
- 10:56Track 1: So, like, do you find that, like, impossible to have written this film and,
- 11:01Track 1: like, done it in a way where you have, like, the shot later on the ship where
- 11:04Track 1: it says, like, this is the economy, like, welcome to the economy.
- 11:07Track 1: And all these, like, very specific nods that it's impossible for me to say that
- 11:11Track 1: they weren't doing this very intentionally.
- 11:13Track 3: Yeah, I would say that it's definitely something that feels dishonest from the
- 11:18Track 3: creators after the fact of being like, we couldn't have done this.
- 11:21Track 3: Because they could have potentially done a more one-dimensional show of like,
- 11:26Track 3: oh, we're littering and littering is what's going to destroy the world.
- 11:29Track 3: But instead, right after the introduction of WALL-E, you get the by-and-large
- 11:34Track 3: supermarkets, you get the by-and-large gas stations, you get the by-and-large
- 11:37Track 3: banks, you get the by-and-large products that are advertised on these big Times Square-type signs.
- 11:42Track 3: Like, clearly the idea of the
- 11:46Track 3: monopolization of capitalism is at the forefront of why the world ends.
- 11:51Track 3: Like, yes, it's about waste, but it's also about a system eating itself by reaching
- 11:57Track 3: its sort of like, you know, self-centered endpoint.
- 12:01Track 3: And I feel like it, to me personally, it's probably them being in Disney and
- 12:07Track 3: Pixar and, you know, not wanting to get fired because like they're probably
- 12:11Track 3: happy that they managed to just get the movie out.
- 12:13Track 1: I know.
- 12:14Track 3: But yeah.
- 12:15Track 2: Yeah, but I think that there's something like just slightly that feels like.
- 12:22Track 2: Sort of performative or like fake
- 12:26Track 2: you know like i think that at least right now uh a lot of media that's like
- 12:31Track 2: anti-capitalist is like you know in um but i think that like the critique can
- 12:37Track 2: only go so far like you know this was made by disney so it's like yes but also no that.
- 12:46Track 1: Like brings up something i was going to mention maybe later but it's a good
- 12:48Track 1: point now is that this this comes up a lot in a lot of episodes is the book
- 12:53Track 1: Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, where he sort of, he actually references
- 12:56Track 1: this movie specifically as, you know, a movie where you would watch it and you say like,
- 13:01Track 1: this is very clearly a critique of capitalism, but, you know, and the waste and,
- 13:06Track 1: you know, the monopolies and all of these different things.
- 13:08Track 1: And the fact that at the end, the person who is
- 13:11Track 1: clearly in front of like the White House building is just the CEO of
- 13:14Track 1: the company you know like it's very clearly this merging of
- 13:17Track 1: uh you know the the state with um
- 13:21Track 1: you know corporations and it then
- 13:24Track 1: like okay i watched this movie like i've now done something i've now sort
- 13:26Track 1: of like this was me doing a thing whereas
- 13:30Track 1: you know you just watched a movie and again it's a big company selling
- 13:33Track 1: you on this idea they're making money they made which i
- 13:35Track 1: forgot to say at the beginning as i always do this movie made i
- 13:38Track 1: think 532 million dollars so
- 13:42Track 1: half a billion dollars plus whatever they made on dvds and everything like that
- 13:46Track 1: so they're making a lot of money selling you the idea of a company like themselves
- 13:52Track 1: being bad and it's it's always one of those things you just have to there's
- 13:57Track 1: only so much you can say about that i think you both said it so yeah.
- 14:00Track 2: Well and not to mention all the money they're gonna make off of merch.
- 14:03Track 1: Yeah oh yeah right because exactly you.
- 14:05Track 2: Know it's a kids movie like they're definitely trying to capitalize on having
- 14:09Track 2: toys that are associated with the film that also, you know, helps their bottom line.
- 14:17Track 3: Yeah, I agree. I think that the film and also other sort of films that,
- 14:25Track 3: like sort of walk this really awkward line of like
- 14:28Track 3: they were made by people that clearly reap the
- 14:30Track 3: benefits versus the film's quality is still great i
- 14:34Track 3: feel like there's a bit of me that wants to exist in a death of the
- 14:36Track 3: author type state and just enjoy the fact
- 14:39Track 3: that like the film obviously is is
- 14:42Track 3: not made by like the most it's not
- 14:45Track 3: made by che Guevara but like but it's
- 14:48Track 3: still saying some incredibly interesting things
- 14:52Track 3: and and it has more
- 14:55Track 3: longevity than like a lot of other films because of the
- 14:58Track 3: fact that it's able to say these interesting things um so
- 15:02Track 3: i don't know it's difficult as like as a as an isolated piece of
- 15:05Track 3: media it's brilliant and it's probably the best thing they've ever made but
- 15:08Track 3: like you're you're both 100 right that it's a
- 15:11Track 3: very difficult one one thing i will say is
- 15:14Track 3: that nowadays particularly with
- 15:17Track 3: how shit everything has gotten and trump having a second
- 15:20Track 3: term and you know people being disillusioned with capitalism i think that it's
- 15:24Track 3: much more popular to have this sort of superficial capitalism bad the richer
- 15:29Track 3: bad like i remember watching the glass onion and thinking it's a fine movie
- 15:32Track 3: but it's like just rich people making fun of being rich in 2008 that's kind
- 15:36Track 3: of what i meant yeah yeah like.
- 15:38Track 2: Glass onion what was the other one where they were like eating.
- 15:41Track 3: The menu yeah i think that in 2008
- 15:44Track 3: that wasn't so popular and i think about like the kind of
- 15:47Track 3: movies that surrounded the era of the
- 15:50Track 3: stock market crash like the hangover you know
- 15:53Track 3: it was like a sort of silly comedy movie but it was about like
- 15:56Track 3: middle class white guys financial fantasies of
- 15:59Track 3: spending as much money as possible in this kind of blackout
- 16:02Track 3: moment because i think at the time it was a movie made for like a lot of the
- 16:06Track 3: audience were people that had just been fucked over and probably lost their
- 16:09Track 3: homes and were watching this of fantasy as like a sort of wish fulfillment type
- 16:13Track 3: thing for a movie to go the opposite way in 2008 when we still didn't really
- 16:18Track 3: have that much of a progressive streak in america,
- 16:21Track 3: is kind of fascinating um so it was it's it's just interesting to see how it
- 16:27Track 3: stands with other films that were reacting to the economic uh circumstances of the time.
- 16:31Track 1: Well as in you want to go i was just gonna say like just as to put that in context
- 16:35Track 1: here are the top gross i just looked it up too yeah so the top grossing film
- 16:39Track 1: from 2008 which i knew the top grossing i didn't know all the whole list was
- 16:43Track 1: the dark knight and then you also had the the reboot of indiana jones Kingdom and the Crystal Skull,
- 16:48Track 1: Kung Fu Panda, so another animated film,
- 16:51Track 1: Hancock, Mamma Mia, Madagascar 2,
- 16:54Track 1: Quantum of Solace, the Bond film, Iron Man and the Chronicles of Narnia with Wally coming in ninth.
- 16:59Track 1: So I think it's still what you're saying makes is completely true.
- 17:03Track 1: Like none of those other movies I could even look at and be like,
- 17:05Track 1: yep, those have any kind of critique of anything at all, for the most part,
- 17:09Track 1: you know, or, and they're making tons of money.
- 17:12Track 1: And Wally was the ninth, you know, made the ninth most money that year.
- 17:16Track 1: So for it to be that popular of a message of this nature, I think is important.
- 17:22Track 1: And it's not, it's worth not like glossing over that.
- 17:25Track 3: For sure. Maybe Hancock has some kind of like, you know, they're inverting the superhero story.
- 17:31Track 3: He gets to be homeless and that's the joke, yada, yada. But also like that also
- 17:36Track 3: comes from like, if you see the movie, it becomes less and less relevant as
- 17:40Track 3: you like learn about the story.
- 17:41Track 3: So i don't know maybe i'm just pulling stuff out of my ass.
- 17:44Track 1: No there there are also probably other films that weren't like the top there
- 17:47Track 1: are some other great films like in bruges came out that year the
- 17:50Track 1: wrestler oh oh beautiful so
- 17:53Track 1: there were lots of other good films that had relatively like good in like good
- 17:57Track 1: messages waltz i think waltz with brazier also bashir came out that year another
- 18:01Track 1: worthwhile film anyway we don't need to talk about other movies it's easy to
- 18:05Track 1: do easy to do but yeah so like were you going to say something yesterday or
- 18:08Track 1: is it about the films of the year Yeah.
- 18:10Track 2: It was just about the films. Just because you said Iron Man and the Dark Knight.
- 18:16Track 2: And so, like, I just think that it's really interesting that, like, that was...
- 18:20Track 2: Right at the time where we were kind of like propelled into superhero universe
- 18:27Track 2: kind of mania um i mean because that's where it started iron man.
- 18:32Track 1: Yeah no that's a that's a good interesting like that could be an
- 18:35Track 1: entire episode i think could be about the kind of like the creation of marvel
- 18:39Track 1: and how it well one how it like changed the film industry for a long time i
- 18:43Track 1: think maybe finally sliding away a little bit but yeah i mean it was promoting
- 18:47Track 1: the military industrial complex and kind of just making you forget about the
- 18:51Track 1: fact that the economy just literally just bombed.
- 18:53Track 1: And, you know, millions of people lost their jobs and homes and worse.
- 18:58Track 1: So, yeah, at least...
- 18:59Track 2: Well, and I wonder if... Because when did Disney buy Marvel?
- 19:05Track 2: Because I feel like that's also relevant that, like, you know,
- 19:08Track 2: we're getting this film that's seemingly anti-capitalist, but from a company
- 19:15Track 2: that continues to like monopolize and buy out other companies.
- 19:20Track 1: 2019.
- 19:21Track 2: Okay. Yeah. So it wasn't until later on, but you know, I feel like,
- 19:25Track 2: like even though I enjoyed the film so much, it is so wholesome. I love it.
- 19:29Track 2: I would say like 9.8 out of 10 only because there's like just that slight part
- 19:35Track 2: that feels like very disingenuous, like because it comes from Disney.
- 19:39Track 1: Yeah.
- 19:39Track 3: Yeah. I got that.
- 19:40Track 1: But I mean, I think when you look at it, though, I think you both were talking
- 19:43Track 1: initially, like maybe we can talk about it further is, you know,
- 19:46Track 1: you said when you first see planet Earth, you see these, you see like tall buildings
- 19:50Track 1: in like what could be New York City.
- 19:51Track 1: And then you see tall buildings that are just trashed. It looked like the same
- 19:55Track 1: thing that you think about how many years has been going on.
- 19:58Track 1: And we realized later that it's been like 700 plus years that WALL-E and his
- 20:03Track 1: other WALL-E counterparts have been just building trash, you know,
- 20:07Track 1: buildings and skyscrapers of just all the excess.
- 20:10Track 1: And you talked about, Tom, earlier, like some of the little funny things.
- 20:13Track 1: I thought one of the funniest was when he has the little diamond ring and he
- 20:17Track 1: throws away the ring and he has... And it's also made by and large,
- 20:21Track 1: too, which I think is hilarious.
- 20:22Track 1: Like they literally make every single product in, you know, in this world. And that is...
- 20:28Track 1: Starting to be Amazon, where I think for a while it was just them selling everything
- 20:32Track 1: and now they make their own, you know, everything like the cheap version of,
- 20:36Track 1: I don't know, water bottles and spices and like cookware, every,
- 20:40Track 1: you know, everything you can think of.
- 20:41Track 1: And it's not so hard to imagine in 10, 15 years where they just buy out all
- 20:46Track 1: of the companies where then you just have to buy all of your stuff from Amazon.
- 20:50Track 3: Yeah, we can only be grateful that Rings of Power was shit because it slows
- 20:53Track 3: them down a little bit, you know?
- 20:57Track 1: Yeah, the second season.
- 20:59Track 3: But no i agree i think that like uh i it's
- 21:03Track 3: so funny you know there's the whole disney theory that people
- 21:06Track 3: are obsessed with keeping up with about like by and
- 21:09Track 3: large being in the background of everything and i think it's so
- 21:12Track 3: clever that after years of people sharing this theory and spotting it and like
- 21:17Track 3: uh and i think it was like a bug's life and then they spot it in toy story to
- 21:22Track 3: finally have them as like the ultimate kind of villain of the entire world and
- 21:27Track 3: the and the ender of the world um but yeah yeah.
- 21:30Track 1: I think they're in they're in like um the incredibles
- 21:33Track 1: and finding i think they're like they're in a lot of the pixar movies like in
- 21:37Track 1: the background as you're saying and then it becomes this you know the evil company
- 21:42Track 1: that then takes over everything and destroys it and it's almost like wally is
- 21:46Track 1: like the last pixar movie you know like at the end of the the timeline i guess right.
- 21:50Track 3: Yeah and also like i wanted to touch on a point that you
- 21:54Track 3: about uh the the diamond ring thing the first 45
- 21:57Track 3: minutes they're so reliant on uh physical comedy and the incompetence and the
- 22:05Track 3: silliness of wally bumping into things and and you know doing this kind of physical
- 22:10Track 3: comedy wally very much is like a robot charlie chaplin and i don't think that that's.
- 22:17Track 3: Like an accidental choice there i think that you know
- 22:20Track 3: charlie chaplin very like big sort of
- 22:23Track 3: kind of working class representative in
- 22:26Track 3: terms of like being constantly in films where he's just playing a different
- 22:29Track 3: working class role showing the sort of silliness and ridiculousness of like
- 22:35Track 3: the inner workings of capitalism um there's a really wonderful poem by this
- 22:40Track 3: brazilian uh uh poet called Carlos Drummond Jandradi,
- 22:44Track 3: where he dedicates an entire poem to Charlie Chaplin as this kind of socialist
- 22:48Track 3: hero who in every film is showing the kind of struggles of working class people
- 22:54Track 3: in a lighthearted way to allow them to pick themselves up after like a shit
- 22:59Track 3: time of constantly being exploited.
- 23:01Track 3: And I do think that Wally is sort of like both a robot,
- 23:05Track 3: but like the the last worker in, in late stage capitalism, you know, like Wally is the,
- 23:11Track 3: is the final worker and gains a sort of glitchy sentience because of the,
- 23:16Track 3: of the social alienation that he undergoes as like an individualized worker
- 23:21Track 3: that doesn't get to ever socialize again.
- 23:23Track 3: He yearns for like touch and connection and love partly because I do feel like
- 23:28Track 3: it is a bit of a nod to Marx's theory of alienation.
- 23:31Track 3: Like it's hard not to read it that way.
- 23:33Track 1: So, no, I think, I think that's a good point. So one thing I was maybe to like,
- 23:38Track 1: does this make sense is so you also have in that first 45 minutes,
- 23:41Track 1: too, which is kind of what the the creator Stan had mentioned as part of his
- 23:46Track 1: thinking when he was making, especially that first 45 minutes is just like the idea of nostalgia.
- 23:50Track 1: Of all of these little items, Rubik's Cubes and these little things from the Not From The Past.
- 23:56Track 1: He's watching over and over the Hello Dolly film on his little iPod that he
- 24:02Track 1: then projects through something and all of these little very nostalgic things.
- 24:07Track 1: It's like he is pining for these things that,
- 24:12Track 1: earth, you know, once had, you know, people were on earth and they,
- 24:16Track 1: you know, lived lives and they had these little items and trinkets and things,
- 24:20Track 1: but like none of them really brought them any,
- 24:22Track 1: true joy, you know, like, I don't think those things were the things that actually,
- 24:26Track 1: you know, made you connect with another person, which we find out later is once people stop,
- 24:31Track 1: engaging with technology and these little items, they can actually connect with
- 24:35Track 1: like the person next to them, literally that they've been there the whole time.
- 24:38Track 1: And so the same thing kind of happens with wally when eve comes down and he's
- 24:42Track 1: finally you know has someone else he can connect with like he can stop looking
- 24:47Track 1: at these trinkets and actually connect with another person.
- 24:50Track 3: Yeah i think that the uh the use of the trinkets and the relics and just inanimate
- 24:57Track 3: objects is such an interesting touch in the film because like i think it works
- 25:02Track 3: in a sort of in two different,
- 25:04Track 3: ways in one it's the thing you were saying about it's
- 25:08Track 3: there and people sort of obsess over them uh
- 25:11Track 3: but it doesn't bring them the ultimate joy that they're looking for which is
- 25:15Track 3: in the socialization in the sort of more social and communal aspect on the other
- 25:20Track 3: hand i also think that it shows the ways that like some so to go back a little
- 25:29Track 3: bit wally to me is like the last.
- 25:32Track 3: Creature in like the universe or in that
- 25:35Track 3: world that has what i would
- 25:37Track 3: call like a sort of realized sense of
- 25:40Track 3: like human agency in the sense that
- 25:43Track 3: like wally's imperfection allows wally to do human
- 25:47Track 3: stuff all the humans in the axiom the ship that left
- 25:50Track 3: when you know the toxicity levels were too high are in a sort of deep slumber
- 25:55Track 3: of like ai induced obedience and subservience so So the way that Wally interacts
- 26:05Track 3: with objects shows that kind of humanity.
- 26:09Track 3: When Eve shows up, Wally gives the objects to Eve, and Eve doesn't understand
- 26:15Track 3: what contemplation or valuing is.
- 26:19Track 3: Eve either fixes the object or turns it on in some kind of way.
- 26:22Track 3: There's always the capitalist, productive machinery working in Eve's design.
- 26:28Track 3: Until WALL-E starts to infect her with the joyousness of human emotion and feeling.
- 26:38Track 3: But yeah, I feel like there's a lot there with how inanimate objects play into the,
- 26:45Track 3: the consciousness of humanity when it's like tampered and not tampered by capitalism, basically.
- 26:52Track 2: Well, and it's important to note that like all of the little trinkets that he
- 26:56Track 2: has all came from the trash.
- 26:59Track 3: Absolutely.
- 27:00Track 2: You know, so it like really is saying something about humans and the way that we just consume.
- 27:06Track 2: And especially now with, you know, the way that products are so cheaply made,
- 27:11Track 2: they're designed to break so then you
- 27:14Track 2: have to buy them again like i was
- 27:16Track 2: wearing like a sweater the other day that i've had for
- 27:20Track 2: at least 10 years uh but
- 27:23Track 2: then you know you buy like a pair of sweat pants from
- 27:26Track 2: amazon or walmart or whatever and like
- 27:29Track 2: you know after a month or two it
- 27:32Track 2: has like a hole in the crotch or you know
- 27:35Track 2: whatever but um so it's it's interesting that like that's kind of where his
- 27:40Track 2: joy comes from but it's like it's something that we know didn't really bring
- 27:47Track 2: humans joy either um so that's an interesting perspective i like that.
- 27:52Track 3: Yeah for sure.
- 27:53Track 1: So one of one of the other things that like this maybe is
- 27:56Track 1: slightly related but slightly a little unrelated is
- 27:59Track 1: the you know we see how the like what happens
- 28:02Track 1: to earth it's been destroyed and later on we
- 28:05Track 1: see the video of like the ceo essentially of
- 28:08Track 1: of by and large showing this video to the
- 28:11Track 1: captain on the ship which we later find out but something that like
- 28:14Track 1: kind of struck me as i was watching it this time maybe more than
- 28:17Track 1: others is like the the irony of like
- 28:19Track 1: the capitalists and the owners of by and large
- 28:22Track 1: and other corporations they're selling you all these items like
- 28:25Track 1: you said this crappy pair of sweatpants you buy that's going to just end up
- 28:28Track 1: in a landfill in you know six months because it just isn't made to last they're
- 28:33Track 1: selling you all this all this nonsense and all this stuff that's creating the
- 28:37Track 1: mess that then they have to then swoop in and solve themselves by then saving
- 28:41Track 1: you with a ship that's going to then, you know,
- 28:44Track 1: take you to another, you know, to orbit or another planet because of the mess
- 28:48Track 1: that they have essentially created.
- 28:50Track 1: And I just think like the irony of them sort of selling you the thing that will
- 28:55Track 1: then save you, which doesn't really...
- 28:58Track 1: Work because we see later that the company does not want
- 29:01Track 1: the anyone to go back to earth they want them to just
- 29:03Track 1: continue to swirl around you know the you know the sky and these different gigantic
- 29:09Track 1: ships because that's how they can continue to make money which side note i don't
- 29:13Track 1: understand how anyone has any money that they're buying things by and large
- 29:17Track 1: at this point like what's the the money situation on the ship anyway like that's.
- 29:22Track 2: A good question that's that's a good question.
- 29:24Track 1: But I think the whole like the point of just like the ship and the fact that
- 29:28Track 1: they're just consuming and they've just gone to consume in a different,
- 29:32Track 1: more technologically, you know, superior, you know, in quotes,
- 29:36Track 1: I guess, way where they can just like press a button on their little iPad or
- 29:39Track 1: they can call for a little, you know, droid to come over and give them their
- 29:43Track 1: empty cup of, you know, like hamburger slurry or whatever.
- 29:46Track 1: So, like, it's all very, it feels like we're on that trajectory and it makes me, it doesn't make me.
- 29:55Track 2: Yeah. Well, so since Alex isn't here, I know that, like, based on what you said,
- 29:59Track 2: that maybe she would have brought up the shock doctrine by Naomi Klein.
- 30:05Track 1: Good point.
- 30:05Track 2: That, you know, like you said, like when they give you this product,
- 30:10Track 2: but then they're also selling you what the solution is supposed to be like,
- 30:14Track 2: you know, it's kind of the same vibe that like capitalism is creating all of
- 30:20Track 2: these disasters, you know, whether that's environmental,
- 30:24Track 2: economic, whatever, but then also coming back and selling you what the quote
- 30:30Track 2: unquote solution is supposed to be.
- 30:32Track 2: So it's just like this vicious cycle of consumerism, but also like exploitation.
- 30:38Track 3: Yeah, I would also like my whole theory of the ship is that.
- 30:43Track 3: First of all, I think that if it's not implied,
- 30:47Track 3: it's at the very least maybe something that is highly likely to anyone that
- 30:53Track 3: has left his perspective on this, that everybody that is on the ship is a descendant
- 30:58Track 3: of probably the richest people on earth.
- 31:00Track 3: Like those are probably the people that managed to get on the ship.
- 31:03Track 3: So perhaps like an economy in terms of like hard labor wasn't intended because,
- 31:09Track 3: you know, it was meant to be a villa for the people that can afford to have
- 31:12Track 3: like a five year vacation.
- 31:14Track 3: But my, my sort of theory of how an economy would develop on that ship would
- 31:18Track 3: be entirely like database.
- 31:20Track 3: Right. So the value is driven by how much the humans interact with the virtual
- 31:28Track 3: screens and show their options and their preferences and the things they like
- 31:33Track 3: to consume, the ways that they like to date.
- 31:36Track 3: Those kind of things maybe are what feed the machines and allow them to learn
- 31:41Track 3: from this and upgrade themselves.
- 31:44Track 3: But that's like a sort of wacky, like, oh, let's imagine more things in WALL-E
- 31:48Track 3: that aren't really talked about.
- 31:50Track 1: No. So that's actually a good point, because what we also see on Earth is lots more space shuttles.
- 31:56Track 1: Like initially when they show everyone leaving Earth, it's lots of spaceships, smaller ones.
- 32:01Track 1: And so probably the working class people are on different ships going to other
- 32:07Track 1: planets to mine them and do all the hard labor on those places.
- 32:11Track 1: And that's what's feeding the data and the things that are happening on this
- 32:15Track 1: fancy ship are probably feeding... How are they continuously getting food on this ship, right?
- 32:20Track 1: So someone's bringing it to them from somewhere else. So I think it makes perfect
- 32:25Track 1: sense that that's the richest.
- 32:26Track 1: Those are the billionaires and the millionaires of people, and everyone else
- 32:29Track 1: is somewhere else doing hard labor.
- 32:32Track 1: And they get to stay in space while this fancy ship gets to return to Earth and.
- 32:37Track 3: Take it over.
- 32:37Track 1: Again and build a new working class for them to exploit.
- 32:40Track 3: I'm just i'm just imagining like a a a deleted scene of like a planet full of
- 32:45Track 3: working class people and like once a week one of them wins a lottery and the
- 32:50Track 3: lottery is like they get to go up to the ship and they're just eaten by the people in the ship well.
- 32:57Track 1: I just picture like the other people like live in the alien timeline right like
- 33:01Track 1: timeline like well i guess it's all the same timeline but they're on some you
- 33:04Track 1: know planet mining the ore for you know weyland yutani or by and large or whatever.
- 33:09Track 3: That's actually like i promise i'm not gonna do tangents every like five minutes
- 33:14Track 3: but that's one of the things i really loved about the new alien film is so many
- 33:18Track 3: of the alien films after the first two uh or first three i should say they have
- 33:24Track 3: like so many kind of characters that are just,
- 33:27Track 3: rich or or you know like the the top of
- 33:30Track 3: the line scientists and researchers of like
- 33:33Track 3: that the earth can offer and romulus
- 33:36Track 3: right off the bat starts in a stark in a star colony
- 33:39Track 3: where like everybody is essentially like an enslaved like like a wage slave
- 33:42Track 3: type thing and it's and you know it's it's nice that like we're getting some
- 33:47Track 3: sci-fi again that is giving the proper you know harsh critiques of of capitalism
- 33:54Track 3: that sci-fi used to do as opposed to just kind of being like Like, what if, you know,
- 33:58Track 3: scary alien killed a bunch of scientists?
- 34:01Track 3: But yeah, I think that that's also one of the things I appreciate about WALL-E.
- 34:05Track 3: It starts us off right in the in the shit, you know, like we are in the middle
- 34:09Track 3: of the trash and we're not just getting the cool sort of ship concept.
- 34:13Track 3: We we see an advert for the ship, but we don't really know what the sort of
- 34:17Track 3: 700 years later picture is going to be until like halfway through the movie.
- 34:22Track 3: I wanted to quickly say something before we move away from nostalgia,
- 34:26Track 3: which I know is like we kind of quickly went through
- 34:29Track 3: it i think the nostalgia works both in a good and in
- 34:32Track 3: a bad way in this film the bad way we talked
- 34:35Track 3: about how it's a very easy way to fixate on items and not realize that what
- 34:41Track 3: you actually should be face fixating on is the stuff beyond that and creating
- 34:45Track 3: the memories as opposed to just being nostalgic but i think that there's something
- 34:49Track 3: good in the former nostalgia that WALL-E has because,
- 34:54Track 3: and this is something that I kind of wrote in my thousand word essay about the
- 34:59Track 3: losing Guattari and WALL-E,
- 35:01Track 3: but like the robots and the sort of unconscious humans who are being dictated
- 35:07Track 3: their every move and thought by AI,
- 35:10Track 3: they're living in this like ever present moment where there is no thought about
- 35:17Track 3: the future or the past. And the.
- 35:20Track 3: Wally thinking about the past becomes more human than most of them because Wally
- 35:25Track 3: is yearning for a thing that is like forever gone that Wally will never have.
- 35:29Track 3: And the humans in some way are yearning for a future they'll never have because
- 35:33Track 3: of, uh, auto, the robots, you know, stopping them from being able to go back to earth.
- 35:37Track 3: So it's like in the sort of ever present moment,
- 35:42Track 3: one is kind of like enslaved to be subjugated by capitalism and by the sense
- 35:50Track 3: of constantly having to be productive,
- 35:52Track 3: whether it's in the humans creating data for the robots or in WALL-E having to do the work.
- 35:57Track 3: And allowing ourselves to exist in
- 36:01Track 3: a time period that is not the present is also
- 36:04Track 3: allowing ourselves to exist in a time period where we're not being productive
- 36:07Track 3: and it's that sort of humanity that is lacking in like the perfect ai and the
- 36:13Track 3: perfect robots of the movie uh which then we see that humanity in the robots
- 36:18Track 3: that start to have faults and start to show more humanity i don't know if that made sense but yeah.
- 36:24Track 1: No, that makes sense. Yeah, no, I, that's a, I hadn't, I hadn't really considered that at all.
- 36:30Track 1: Oh, it was something to do with, well, I do, I do want to also talk about like
- 36:33Track 1: the other robots on the ship, which I think is like a really,
- 36:36Track 1: I mean, we can talk about them now.
- 36:37Track 1: I mean, it's a, I think it's like a good, well, one, I think you pointed this
- 36:41Track 1: out, Tom, and like your nose is the kind of the link or like the connection
- 36:45Track 1: to the ship in 2001, a space odyssey.
- 36:48Track 1: And then also i didn't know this but the the uh
- 36:51Track 1: the cockroach is named hal i didn't
- 36:55Track 1: realize that was his name which is also the name of the you know
- 36:58Track 1: the person in 2001 species clearly they're throwing a
- 37:01Track 1: bunch of the you know these little nods to other sci-fi
- 37:04Track 1: but i love how the robots have this
- 37:07Track 1: initial sort of programming where they have to follow the
- 37:10Track 1: little you know lines that are created on the ship and
- 37:13Track 1: they have this very structured way of doing things like he sees
- 37:16Track 1: a contaminant and he has to brush it away and then slowly they realize there
- 37:21Track 1: is like another way to this it's almost like they become they're like the robots
- 37:26Track 1: like revolution uh like uh became class conscious almost right like towards
- 37:30Track 1: the end when they get released from that little like prison of,
- 37:34Track 1: broken robots they then realize okay well maybe i should be doing what wally's
- 37:40Track 1: doing maybe he is the one that actually has this thing and it's it's interesting
- 37:43Track 1: that he comes from earth and he's coming there in chasing eve and all of this
- 37:48Track 1: and it eventually leads to help you know they all come together i don't know
- 37:52Track 1: i don't know what i'm saying exactly but.
- 37:53Track 3: No i get you there's actually like a sequel to
- 37:56Track 3: wally where uh the robots like destroy themselves to
- 37:59Track 3: death because one of them believes in rosa luxembourg and the other
- 38:02Track 3: one raised lennon so you know it's the class consciousness is strong in the
- 38:06Track 3: robots but like yeah it's it's a major part of the movie i feel like um wally
- 38:11Track 3: is the more awakened and human and connected to the world around them and like the,
- 38:23Track 3: The perception is that WALL-E is broken or faulty, but truly what is considered
- 38:34Track 3: a glitch or a fault in WALL-E is actually the most human parts of WALL-E.
- 38:37Track 3: It's that imperfection that drives people to break away from the capitalist,
- 38:41Track 3: ever-present mode of production.
- 38:43Track 3: And until WALL-E shows up and breaks the faulty robots free, that's all they are.
- 38:48Track 3: They're just faulty robots. it takes them interacting with the world outside
- 38:52Track 3: them to realize that there is no fault with them they've just gained sentience.
- 38:56Track 1: Yeah i mean and not just that like wally also
- 38:59Track 1: is the per you know the person they say that the the
- 39:03Track 1: the reason that the humans eventually
- 39:06Track 1: like drop their device and for the first
- 39:09Track 1: time ever like realize what's around them oh like we have
- 39:12Track 1: a pool you know like the this like this realization
- 39:15Track 1: and all these things and then they you know the you know
- 39:18Track 1: then there's the person next to them and they like touched hands and they
- 39:20Track 1: realized like oh wait there is human connection like
- 39:23Track 1: so the thing that like wally was yearning for more than anything he then brings
- 39:28Track 1: that to you know both the humans on the ship and then also to like the the robots
- 39:34Track 1: giving them like almost giving them a you know human like humanizing them in a way that's uh,
- 39:42Track 1: you know taking them beyond just the simply like medial tasks that they're being
- 39:46Track 1: forced to do like Like I have to brush and I have to, you know,
- 39:50Track 1: clean or whatever their different little tasks are.
- 39:53Track 1: So, yeah, I just think it's such a like a wonderful touch, all of that.
- 39:57Track 3: I mean, like it really shows with like, you know, the biggest villain of the
- 40:00Track 3: movie, aside from CEO Shelby Forthright, is a robot called Otto.
- 40:05Track 3: Like the the the the biggest threat to humanity is the idea of switching off
- 40:12Track 3: and just automating everything and never thinking about doing anything imperfectly
- 40:16Track 3: ever again it's it's the idea that like you know,
- 40:20Track 3: the only thing you can ever be in life is productive. And I really appreciate
- 40:25Track 3: that kind of little detail.
- 40:27Track 3: Um, auto obviously being another visual, uh, reference to 2001,
- 40:33Track 3: very much looking like how 9,000.
- 40:35Track 1: And like, it's funny, you mentioned that too, is because he's
- 40:38Track 1: meant to be like an AI autopilot
- 40:42Track 1: in like 2008 when people were not really like
- 40:46Track 1: large language models for AI we have now did not exist at
- 40:48Track 1: that time like that was not a thing and not to mention the
- 40:52Track 1: actual voice for the auto was
- 40:55Track 1: actually the like macbook computer program
- 40:59Track 1: auto voice like they based like it wasn't actually a person they
- 41:01Track 1: like were creating that through like that's why
- 41:04Track 1: also the little wally boot up symbol is also really
- 41:07Track 1: funny too but i just like the idea that they had to almost defeat an ai robot
- 41:12Track 1: to return to home is is it's also very uh you know perceptive in a way that
- 41:20Track 1: i don't know if they meant it then maybe they got lucky but i think it's a good
- 41:24Track 1: like critique of ai as well no.
- 41:26Track 3: I agree 100.
- 41:27Track 1: Oh i think this like we kind of skipped past this but
- 41:30Track 1: i wanted to like maybe go back to it and i think so we didn't really talk too
- 41:33Track 1: much about eve and sort of the like again one thing you don't also really totally
- 41:39Track 1: see is there's clearly wally is not like an individual like he's not the only
- 41:42Track 1: robot wally like there's clearly hundreds of these robots that were doing this
- 41:46Track 1: task just like there's hundreds of ease probably that are going off,
- 41:50Track 1: exploring like what do
- 41:53Track 1: you think the actual directive of eve
- 41:56Track 1: was because it does seem like it was meant to go find whether earth was inhabitable
- 42:00Track 1: again but it actually isn't what you know like the ai programming wanted so
- 42:05Track 1: do you think they were also like just scouting for resources that they could
- 42:09Track 1: use you know for their like giant ship or am i just reading too much into it.
- 42:14Track 3: I i i think that like there are so
- 42:16Track 3: many elements to eve that are interesting
- 42:19Track 3: eve also i think was the first thing in the
- 42:22Track 3: movie that made me cry um and i'll
- 42:25Track 3: get to that in a second but eve is interesting
- 42:28Track 3: i i believe that eve's directive at the beginning is
- 42:32Track 3: find plant life feed it back to humans get
- 42:35Track 3: them to come to earth uh and and it is clearly not a thing that is consciously
- 42:40Track 3: done by any living person in axiom it is like an automated process because like
- 42:45Track 3: obviously once the captain sees it for the first time he's shocked and he has
- 42:49Track 3: no idea what to do with it um but,
- 42:52Track 3: Eve is so interesting. Eve is obviously the first convert in the church of Wally.
- 43:00Track 3: I'm going to use they, them pronouns for Wally and Eve because I think that
- 43:04Track 3: Destiny was telling me a while back, what if the two of them are non-binary?
- 43:09Track 3: And I kind of really like the, I see the vision, basically.
- 43:14Track 2: You're a convert, too.
- 43:15Track 3: Oh, absolutely. You know, I was a convert since I came out of my egg.
- 43:19Track 3: But basically, Eve, you know, starts off with this incredibly capitalist minded
- 43:27Track 3: design and function, right?
- 43:30Track 3: Eve is both I like like in a in a sort of paradoxical way looking for plant life but also,
- 43:38Track 3: annihilating with a laser beam anything that moves in
- 43:42Track 3: the planet and it really shows that kind of like really
- 43:45Track 3: awful human instinct within capitalism of like you got to do your thing you
- 43:49Track 3: got to you got to try and keep the survival of the race but you also have to
- 43:52Track 3: be like a like the greatest product that humans can make which is like kind
- 43:57Track 3: of sorry I'm doing like so many tangents here But Eve is like the,
- 44:02Track 3: the par excellence thing that like humans have created versus Wally,
- 44:07Track 3: which is like a broken trash compactor machine, right?
- 44:11Track 3: Eve is a, a war machine, a nomadic war machine.
- 44:15Track 3: If you like to lose, uh, that is like sent to the earth to uphold the survival
- 44:20Track 3: of humanity, but also could destroy anything in their path and.
- 44:25Track 3: It takes interacting with WALL-E and seeing a robot be able to show inefficiency,
- 44:31Track 3: incompetence, ineptitude for Eve to start to be charmed and to start to also
- 44:36Track 3: interact in a way that fits with WALL-E.
- 44:40Track 3: And the full extent of the conversion of Eve.
- 44:45Track 3: I mean, I think that Eve gains a form of sentience during that time when they're
- 44:50Track 3: learning about WALL-E and realizing that there's more to life than just one's directive.
- 44:54Track 3: But i think the the sort of turning point of the movie and
- 44:57Track 3: the bit that makes me cry is when eve admittedly like
- 45:01Track 3: you know not thinking too much about the humans at the time throws away
- 45:05Track 3: the plant like behind them and is like
- 45:08Track 3: you're my directive wally is my directive and suddenly
- 45:11Track 3: you realize that like this robot has just rejected
- 45:14Track 3: all of like its human commands and
- 45:17Track 3: its entire design and its entire reason to
- 45:20Track 3: exist for the sake of like that that
- 45:23Track 3: social connection which is what capitalism tries
- 45:26Track 3: to destroy in all of us by making us alienated workers so there's something
- 45:30Track 3: truly beautiful about like the the journey that eve takes themselves like like
- 45:35Track 3: not even sort of thinking about their relationships with other characters in
- 45:39Track 3: the in the movie just eve and their progression is just really beautiful to watch yeah.
- 45:44Track 1: All of the scenes where they're you know kind of
- 45:47Track 1: like looking lovingly into each other's like
- 45:50Track 1: robot eyes you know it's just
- 45:52Track 1: like when wally sort of has those moments where they
- 45:55Track 1: think they're on the axiom and he's waiting you
- 45:58Track 1: know in the little with the towels on his head and he's like peeking out looking
- 46:02Track 1: at her like it's like you can't help but it's like it's almost i don't know
- 46:09Track 1: sometimes you see in films where there's uh you know animated films with animals
- 46:12Track 1: that are kind of anthropomorphized or just simply animals where they don't really have that same...
- 46:18Track 1: I don't know feeling of them being truly human but
- 46:23Track 1: they really really like nailed it with
- 46:26Track 1: just the way that they look it doesn't whether or not you like you
- 46:28Track 1: buy it or not that's fine you know but just simply just
- 46:32Track 1: the way that they look at each other is it's like it's a pretty incredible animation
- 46:35Track 1: of just it's hard
- 46:38Track 1: to look at them they're like progression too and
- 46:41Track 1: then especially later when while he's injured and they go
- 46:44Track 1: back to earth and she's you know rescuing him and thinks that
- 46:46Track 1: he's not gonna or they they don't think that
- 46:49Track 1: they're going to uh you know uh make it
- 46:52Track 1: like he doesn't have the same memories as they did before and
- 46:55Track 1: you see that they do and it's just that's that's the part that like for me is
- 46:59Track 1: like the most like chilling like you want to cry from is when you think at first
- 47:04Track 1: that wally is not going to remember eve and then he closes his uh his claw over
- 47:10Track 1: over Eve's claw or hand whatever it is.
- 47:13Track 2: I think any pronouns for them.
- 47:16Track 1: Are fine because.
- 47:18Track 2: Like they're robots but I I
- 47:21Track 2: do think that it's important to to point out like how um their relationship
- 47:26Track 2: in the movie and how like it just became very like heteronormative and like
- 47:33Track 2: you know there's something to be said about that but I think that as far as
- 47:37Track 2: the pronouns like you know,
- 47:39Track 2: They're just robots. But yeah, I like I cried when they were dancing together
- 47:46Track 2: because it's just like it is very human and like just the way they like yearn for each other.
- 47:54Track 2: Like it's it's a gay love story. I mean, it doesn't get any gayer than that.
- 47:59Track 3: Absolutely. There's nothing more gay than like falling in love within a day of knowing one another.
- 48:04Track 3: You know, I'm going to get the U-Haul right now. with after.
- 48:08Track 1: Having just watched hello dolly like on the little uh you know together.
- 48:11Track 3: Briefly absolutely i i
- 48:14Track 3: wanted to bring up something really interesting that happens with
- 48:17Track 3: eve in particular uh during uh
- 48:21Track 3: like the first night i think or maybe the second night that eve is on earth
- 48:25Track 3: um they shut down because i guess they're just recharging or whatever it is
- 48:29Track 3: that they need to do And Wally thinks of doing this romantic gesture where they
- 48:34Track 3: create like a structure that looks kind of like,
- 48:38Track 3: I think either Wally or Eve, they create a structure that looks like a robot
- 48:41Track 3: and Eve not having spent enough.
- 48:44Track 3: So it's like, it's a very human thing to do.
- 48:47Track 3: Wally is creating a romantic gesture and the romantic value behind it is the
- 48:53Track 3: fact that that gesture took time and effort and labor to make.
- 48:57Track 3: And Eve being still a hundred percent in this mentality of being a robot doesn't
- 49:03Track 3: value the strain and the labor it takes to create a gesture like that because
- 49:07Track 3: Eve is a robot designed not to feel strain or effort or time.
- 49:11Track 3: So Eve shakes it off and goes away.
- 49:14Track 3: Then they start to
- 49:17Track 3: properly connect and fall in love and Eve starts to see
- 49:20Track 3: the world view of Wally as a human and when you get to the sort of climactic
- 49:25Track 3: scene of Eve replaying their recordings and finally getting to see how much
- 49:30Track 3: time and effort and energy Wally spent taking care of Eve while Eve was shut
- 49:35Track 3: off for however many days,
- 49:38Track 3: there's a beautiful moment where Eve recognizes.
- 49:41Track 3: Like gestures based on labor and
- 49:44Track 3: time and effort which are impossible for a robot to do
- 49:47Track 3: so it's like a sort of full circle moment where you
- 49:50Track 3: had eve not understanding that sort of that that human concept at all to suddenly
- 49:55Track 3: being like oh my god this robot really loves me and i really love this robot
- 50:00Track 3: and i think that to me is fucking gorgeous it's it's such a beautiful way of
- 50:05Track 3: like type of storytelling that didn't involve any fucking dialogue whatsoever yeah.
- 50:09Track 2: Yeah i didn't really realize like how much this movie
- 50:12Track 2: like really speaks to mark's isolation um
- 50:16Track 2: because i mean you know that's what happens we
- 50:19Track 2: get really separated from our labor and even the things that we consume we become
- 50:25Track 2: separated from the labor that it takes to create like you know you can order
- 50:31Track 2: door dash and listen this is not a judgment i order it way too often but But
- 50:37Track 2: like you can order DoorDash and like, you know,
- 50:39Track 2: you're separated from the labor that it took to create that meal or even where
- 50:46Track 2: the food came from, like, you know, growing it,
- 50:49Track 2: harvesting it, taking care of it.
- 50:51Track 2: Like, it all takes work. And I think that the more isolated we become and the
- 50:57Track 2: closer we get to our work and letting that define us, you know,
- 51:05Track 2: the more that happens, unfortunately.
- 51:08Track 3: 100%. Yeah.
- 51:09Track 1: Yeah, that's true.
- 51:12Track 2: I did see your... Oh, sorry.
- 51:14Track 1: No, no, go ahead. You go.
- 51:15Track 2: I did see someone's note about Eve and how like Adam and Eve,
- 51:20Track 2: I thought that was interesting.
- 51:22Track 2: I'm not Christian, so I guess I didn't like initially think about that.
- 51:26Track 2: But yeah, who put that? Talk more about that.
- 51:30Track 1: So I put that down and the only thing I could think of sort of as I thought
- 51:33Track 1: about it was and before they leave Earth and they've now, they go up to the
- 51:37Track 1: ship and then they eventually return is obviously they can't populate Earth.
- 51:42Track 1: You know, they're just, they're just robots. They can't, I guess they could
- 51:45Track 1: build more robots, you know, theoretically if they had the parts too.
- 51:48Track 1: But I just saw like, you know, these are like the first, not the first two,
- 51:52Track 1: but you know, the only two people living on Earth at the time.
- 51:56Track 1: And like, they're a couple, whether you want to refer to them as like man and
- 51:59Track 1: woman, you know, you could. Thank you.
- 52:01Track 1: Take that or leave it but it i this could be just a stretch because like her name is the,
- 52:09Track 1: extraterrestrial vegetation evaluator it's like that's just you know but creating
- 52:14Track 1: that acronym and have it be eve i don't know couldn't have been could have been
- 52:17Track 1: religious in nature could not have been i don't know.
- 52:20Track 3: Yeah i i'm vegetarian so whenever sabrina eats my food that's like my nickname for.
- 52:24Track 1: That well actually so in the actually so sorry i didn't mean to cut you off
- 52:27Track 1: in the that's fine in the wikipedia page under like the theme section there is one that says uh that,
- 52:35Track 1: stanton who created the film was a christian and he named eve after the biblical
- 52:38Track 1: figure so i i swear i didn't see that before that just uh no.
- 52:43Track 3: I i see the connection i think that like you know it like
- 52:46Track 3: i was saying a while back to me after
- 52:50Track 3: the world has ended and humanity has become this husk
- 52:53Track 3: of themselves as just like essentially waking like
- 52:57Track 3: uh what's it called like they're just in waking dreams of like having to constantly
- 53:02Track 3: be under the spell of ai wally is like the last or maybe the first ever semblance
- 53:07Track 3: of humanity enacting itself or or outwardly projecting uh in a world that like
- 53:14Track 3: hasn't seen that in centuries so it's like,
- 53:18Track 3: after WALL-E manages to get Eve not to be so robot-like, it is true that they
- 53:25Track 3: are the first two reintroductions of humanity to the Earth. So I can see that.
- 53:32Track 3: It makes sense, and I understand why Eve was...
- 53:36Track 3: I mean, there's also, I guess, maybe perhaps a maternal read there of Eve literally
- 53:42Track 3: puts the plant in their belly.
- 53:45Track 3: Eve has to be the first sort of life form,
- 53:51Track 3: or I guess, I don't know how to explain it, but Eve has to be the first sort
- 53:54Track 3: of person or robot to carry life within them, which, I don't know,
- 54:01Track 3: perhaps that's the kind of, maybe that's why Eve is called Eve.
- 54:05Track 1: It also says in this Wikipedia, someone notes that Eve was named,
- 54:11Track 1: like they named him Eve or named the robot Eve also because it's like the idea
- 54:15Track 1: that the plant will tell humanity to return to Earth and move away from like
- 54:19Track 1: the false god of, you know,
- 54:22Track 1: by and large, which can be read as a religious version.
- 54:26Track 1: But at the same time, I read that more of a they're rejecting the idea of this
- 54:31Track 1: capitalist excess ship and instead moving back where they can now like till
- 54:37Track 1: the land and like work together because you have like during the credit scene,
- 54:40Track 1: you kind of see their progression of planting and fishing and all these different things.
- 54:45Track 1: So I like to think of it less as religious text and more of a rejection of corporate bullshit.
- 54:51Track 3: Yeah, 100%.
- 54:52Track 2: Yeah, for sure. The only other critique that I had about the movie that I didn't
- 54:58Track 2: I forgot to put my notes is like it's a little bit low key fat phobic because
- 55:03Track 2: like everyone gets fat on on the spaceship and like.
- 55:10Track 2: You know, being fat is not a moral failing. It's not like a result of capitalism.
- 55:16Track 2: So I just didn't love that part of the film.
- 55:21Track 2: But, you know, also, this is 2008. And so I feel like conversation around fat
- 55:27Track 2: phobia was a lot different.
- 55:29Track 1: Yeah.
- 55:30Track 2: But I feel that's my only other gripe.
- 55:33Track 3: So I, I don't want to start like a whole, uh, uh, you know, uh,
- 55:38Track 3: leftist infighting thing here.
- 55:40Track 3: Um, and I definitely think that like it being 2008, there were probably like
- 55:45Track 3: liberties taken with the representation of, of, uh, you know,
- 55:49Track 3: fatness and obesity that like were probably done carelessly.
- 55:54Track 3: But i i think i guess maybe i avoided
- 55:57Track 3: the movie originally because i'd seen shots of like
- 56:00Track 3: you know the fat humans and i thought okay this movie is like fat shaming or
- 56:03Track 3: whatever but when i watched the film for the first time and every time since
- 56:08Track 3: i become less and less convinced that the movie is like really being outwardly
- 56:14Track 3: fat phobic i think my read of the of the humans on the axiom is that.
- 56:20Track 3: They're fat by necessity of the narrative showing that they are like cattle
- 56:24Track 3: to the ai that like the ai have kind of create like become uh complacent in
- 56:31Track 3: a system where they feed off the,
- 56:33Track 3: the necessity of keeping humans docile and
- 56:37Track 3: and not doing anything with their lives um
- 56:40Track 3: and i think that there's a lot of like criticism that
- 56:43Track 3: could be made of like we've we talked about like does the axiom have an economy or
- 56:47Track 3: is it actually bad that the humans managed to find a a
- 56:50Track 3: system in which they'll never have to work again uh like
- 56:53Track 3: there's a lot of complexities to
- 56:56Track 3: the whole thing but i feel like it doesn't
- 56:59Track 3: it doesn't do too much that
- 57:03Track 3: i think outwardly feels horrible and like you know i don't i don't know that
- 57:07Track 3: like too many of the characters like become the butt of a joke because of them
- 57:14Track 3: being fat um maybe there's a couple of instances which like obviously are not great but,
- 57:21Track 3: where they fall down they.
- 57:22Track 1: Can't get it back up.
- 57:23Track 3: Yeah but I think also it's I think that there's a natural thing of like you
- 57:30Track 3: know in a ship you will like your bone density will just be fucked with because
- 57:34Track 3: like that is what being in a ship is and I do think that there is something there to like,
- 57:39Track 3: the fatness not being a bad thing so much as just being a natural end point
- 57:43Track 3: of like they are like them not being able to get up if they fall,
- 57:49Track 3: reminded me of like the whole uh i don't know if it's a myth or if it's like
- 57:53Track 3: genuine fact but like you tip a cow over they can't get up the humans are kind
- 57:58Track 3: of in a farm of sorts for the for the ai,
- 58:01Track 3: like they are made to act like cows where like their their bodies are the most
- 58:06Track 3: like valuable their bodies and minds are the most valuable thing for the ai
- 58:09Track 3: but like not them exerting those things in any kind of like autonomous way and
- 58:15Track 3: that felt like more of a comment on you know,
- 58:21Track 3: how ai is like toxic under a
- 58:24Track 3: capitalist lens as opposed to like you know the idiocracy type like we have
- 58:29Track 3: to be bigoted if we're going to like criticize uh dystopian like humans in a
- 58:34Track 3: dystopian type of way you know yeah it's still not great it's still not perfect
- 58:41Track 3: and it's still not great I.
- 58:43Track 2: Feel like you can send that message without like, like, cause every single person had gotten fat.
- 58:53Track 2: And I just feel like, like, if you are going to show what the human experience
- 58:58Track 2: is on this ship, like we can do that in a more nuanced way.
- 59:05Track 3: Yeah. I think.
- 59:06Track 2: But again, it was 2008. So like my expectations are pretty low.
- 59:10Track 3: It's 2008, you know, stock market crash has only just happened.
- 59:16Track 3: There's still like a long way
- 59:18Track 3: for people to get properly radicalized in a kind of more mainstream way.
- 59:21Track 3: But I think, yeah, there are problematic elements to the movie,
- 59:26Track 3: but there's also elements of the movie where it's like,
- 59:29Track 3: they're you know they become fat because like
- 59:32Track 3: every single human becomes imprisoned by
- 59:35Track 3: the virtual screen and is like may is kind of pressured by the robots never
- 59:41Track 3: to leave their chair again you know like none of the humans are are made aware
- 59:47Track 3: of like any facilities that would allow them to exercise it it's it's it's well that's not.
- 59:54Track 2: True they have a track yeah like the.
- 59:56Track 3: The captain's like jokes.
- 59:57Track 1: He's like, we have a track.
- 59:59Track 3: Yeah, like they don't know these things exist because the AI have been imprisoning
- 1:00:02Track 3: them in their own sort of like chairs for so long.
- 1:00:05Track 3: So I think that's just like, I'm willing to be a little more forgiving of the
- 1:00:09Track 3: movie because it feels like less about the fat shaming, even though there is some fat shaming still.
- 1:00:15Track 3: I don't know, it's complicated. But yeah, I agree with you, Destiny, but yeah.
- 1:00:18Track 2: I said a tiny bit, a tiny bit. Like I'm just,
- 1:00:23Track 2: i am aware that there is this
- 1:00:25Track 2: critique and that like i could see that for sure but yeah i still give it 9.8
- 1:00:33Track 2: out of 10 what about y'all what would you give it well you two are heavy on
- 1:00:40Track 2: letterbox and out of five so i gave what would you give it i.
- 1:00:45Track 1: Gave it four and a half out of five.
- 1:00:48Track 2: Okay what about you tom i.
- 1:00:50Track 3: Originally gave it four and a half i think that like to
- 1:00:54Track 3: me it's a five star film out of 10 it's probably like
- 1:00:56Track 3: a 9.8 9.9 but i feel like it
- 1:00:59Track 3: doesn't feel fair to say 9.9 and then it go
- 1:01:02Track 3: to four and a half i feel like that's a massive downgrade uh i
- 1:01:06Track 3: do think that it is the closest we'll get to like pixar and disney making like
- 1:01:11Track 3: an actually class conscious anti capitalist film i don't think we'll ever get
- 1:01:15Track 3: especially now in this current climate i don't think we'll ever get disney or
- 1:01:19Track 3: pixar doing anything remotely woke ever again no uh so,
- 1:01:23Track 3: you know c'est la vie but i i do think it's it's a it's a fucking classic it's so good yeah.
- 1:01:29Track 2: I would say 4.8 out of 5.
- 1:01:33Track 1: Yeah and i should say like saying it's 4.5 like
- 1:01:36Track 1: close to 5 at that point like we're kind of
- 1:01:39Track 1: like i guess splitting hairs i guess you could say i guess by saying it's like
- 1:01:42Track 1: it's not i don't know now i feel like i have to watch it again and say like
- 1:01:46Track 1: is it a five-star film like it's it's pretty damn close like i don't know like
- 1:01:50Track 1: if i was gonna 4.8 yeah like you said that's like that's it's it's whatever
- 1:01:55Track 1: we're it's a five star it's fine,
- 1:01:58Track 1: All right, everyone. I'm going to go change my Letterboxd review after this.
- 1:02:01Track 2: Well, this is what we're here to do. Analyze the film, you know, the good and the bad.
- 1:02:06Track 1: Yeah, it's funny that it's funny you mentioned like the stars on Letterboxd,
- 1:02:10Track 1: because recently I've been considering the prospect of instead of giving stars,
- 1:02:14Track 1: just writing like what I think.
- 1:02:17Track 1: Because sometimes it's so hard for me to say i see other people do this too
- 1:02:21Track 1: where like one movie that like i like from my childhood that's a five-star film
- 1:02:25Track 1: and then i see some new movie that's like like the brutalist which i didn't
- 1:02:28Track 1: give five stars like how could i justify you know one of them it's just so hard
- 1:02:33Track 1: to like compare them i don't know i could go off on on this for a while but.
- 1:02:36Track 3: Here's here's my argument for for
- 1:02:39Track 3: rating it with stars even if you might be wrong at the time i've
- 1:02:43Track 3: thought about this i have friends that like don't do star ratings anymore
- 1:02:46Track 3: they'll just write an essay or just say logged and i
- 1:02:49Track 3: it would kill me to look at
- 1:02:52Track 3: like a list of a thousand films that i've seen and
- 1:02:55Track 3: there's not a single sort of instantaneous way for
- 1:02:58Track 3: me to know like i really like that or i didn't even if i feel like
- 1:03:01Track 3: oh maybe i actually would have rated it higher or i would have rated it lower
- 1:03:04Track 3: like i don't have time to read every single essay that i want to write about
- 1:03:08Track 3: every single film because i write like loads so it's nice to just have that
- 1:03:11Track 3: one snapshot at the top of my of my review just to be like yeah you gave this
- 1:03:15Track 3: a four you would absolutely love to re-watch this or you gave this two and a
- 1:03:18Track 3: half it's probably not going to be worth watching yeah.
- 1:03:21Track 1: That's that's partly why i keep it that way because sometimes i go back and
- 1:03:25Track 1: look like oh what did i rate five stars like last year like you know these are
- 1:03:28Track 1: my favorite films of that year and it would be much harder to do it in the way
- 1:03:31Track 1: you're describing of having like no context so,
- 1:03:34Track 1: for now letterbox fans i will stick to the rating system that has been prescribed
- 1:03:39Track 1: to me but i I sometimes wish they had like the quarter option, like 4.25, 4.5, 4.75.
- 1:03:46Track 1: So I can get real nuance in there.
- 1:03:48Track 3: We're spoiled for choice. There's a lot of websites where like you can only
- 1:03:51Track 3: give it like entire star. You can't even do the 0.5 things.
- 1:03:54Track 1: Oh, that's true. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah.
- 1:03:57Track 1: But I'll also.
- 1:03:59Track 2: I feel like Ryan. Oh, sorry.
- 1:04:01Track 1: I was going to say, you can follow Tom and I. Do you have an account, Destiny? No.
- 1:04:05Track 1: Letterboxd? Okay, so you can follow all of us in Letterboxd.
- 1:04:07Track 1: You'll see those links in the description of this podcast. But yeah,
- 1:04:11Track 1: what were you going to say?
- 1:04:13Track 2: I feel like sometimes reviewing movies, like, ruins it.
- 1:04:20Track 2: Like, on Letterboxd, because people are so serious about, like,
- 1:04:24Track 2: I watch movies, but I don't.
- 1:04:26Track 2: Sometimes i review them on letterboxd and sometimes i don't like because.
- 1:04:30Track 1: I do the same like sometimes i feel like i want to write something sometimes
- 1:04:32Track 1: i'm just like i watched that movie and that's the end of it i.
- 1:04:36Track 2: Liked it that's it you know.
- 1:04:38Track 3: No not me i'm a i'm a professional fucking yapper
- 1:04:41Track 3: i have like i i normally have at
- 1:04:44Track 3: least like a hundred words to say about every film and some of them
- 1:04:47Track 3: will go up to like a thousand a thousand five hundred i'm like i'm
- 1:04:50Track 3: so annoying on letterboxd but the annoying thing is like i
- 1:04:53Track 3: will have like i'll spend like a solid hour two hours
- 1:04:56Track 3: really thinking about a movie and being like yeah i have like a
- 1:04:59Track 3: lot to say about this and that will get like two likes
- 1:05:02Track 3: and then if i do a review of a letterbox film where i'm like where
- 1:05:05Track 3: what if willem dafoe in this movie was still willem dafoe but he was gay and
- 1:05:09Track 3: it'll get like you know 40 likes and people will actually appreciate that it's
- 1:05:13Track 3: like letterbox unfortunately also does just reward people doing like bottom
- 1:05:18Track 3: of the barrel like bits that have been done a million times before yeah yeah.
- 1:05:22Track 2: Yeah social.
- 1:05:24Track 1: Media for you i suppose.
- 1:05:25Track 2: Yeah yeah yeah i've been kind of taking a step back a little bit yeah.
- 1:05:32Track 3: That's fair cool.
- 1:05:33Track 1: Well uh i think you everyone probably listening could have told earlier what
- 1:05:37Track 1: our general thoughts on this film are which are our high marks near near five
- 1:05:42Track 1: across the board you know if we're like holding up our little signs for like, you know, afterwards.
- 1:05:47Track 1: But Destiny, I think everyone has probably knows you from other episodes on this podcast.
- 1:05:53Track 1: So, but do you want to remind everyone about your podcast and maybe what you
- 1:05:59Track 1: have planned, if you'd like?
- 1:06:01Track 2: Yeah, sure. So if you haven't already, go follow Closeted History on Instagram,
- 1:06:10Track 2: YouTube, all the places.
- 1:06:11Track 2: And the next episode coming up, we have an interview with a creator named Just
- 1:06:19Track 2: Flint is fine, a fellow educator, and he just wrote a book.
- 1:06:24Track 2: So it's an interview with him and...
- 1:06:30Track 2: Yeah. You want to check out the pod closeted history.com. Thanks for listening.
- 1:06:34Track 1: And Thomas, people can follow you on letterbox, but you still have your Tik
- 1:06:38Track 1: TOK account. I should, I do.
- 1:06:40Track 3: Yeah. I, I haven't, I had like some medical stuff where I wasn't able to post
- 1:06:45Track 3: for like about a month, but I'm going to get back to it ASAP.
- 1:06:48Track 3: Uh, people can follow me on pretty much almost all social media as leftist Squidward.
- 1:06:52Track 3: Uh, and if you do find leftist Squidward, you'll like,
- 1:06:55Track 3: you'll find the link tree that has all my other stuff on letterboxd i'm number
- 1:07:00Track 3: one spy kids fan uh number one is like n-o dot one and then everything else
- 1:07:06Track 3: is just like an individual word uh and yeah i am incredibly annoying across
- 1:07:12Track 3: all social media so uh get ready for that.
- 1:07:15Track 1: Yeah well that's that's that's perfect but uh but thomas and destiny it's been
- 1:07:19Track 1: a great time talking about the best Pixar film we're just gonna we're gonna
- 1:07:25Track 1: top it up to the best one but yeah thank you both for being here today yeah.
- 1:07:29Track 2: Thank you for having me.
- 1:07:30Track 1: Of course and you can again we'll have links to everyone's shows and podcasts
- 1:07:37Track 1: and letterbox reviews and you can go follow everyone there and we'll catch you next time.