The Darker Side of Things
Andrew Stanton never set out to dwell in the idea of mankind in ruin. In the early days of the project, the “robot love story” or “Trash Planet” wasn’t going to be a film that elevated the animation genre or exposed the potential dangers we face if we keep staying plugged in, hooked up and immobile. It was going to be the next movie in the Pixar lineup, thought up by Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter at the infamous lunch meeting. Years later, after both had gone and done other things, it was Stanton who picked it back up and, along with co-writer Jim Reardon, turned it into a masterpiece.
‚ÄúThe big common thread was programming,” he says. “If you’re a robot, of course you’d be programmed, but even as a human being you can get into your habits and your routines and they could prevent you from forming a relationship or furthering a relationship or continuing a relationship. So, I came up with a theme: irrational love defeats life’s programming.‚Äù
When the Los Angeles Film Critics passed over all of the live actions offerings from Hollywood in favor of Wall-E, it was time for everyone to stop referring to animated movies by category and to start thinking of them as great films, period. On winning that award, Stanton said it was “Surreal. “You always hope that the animation bias could be broken, that the glass ceiling could be broken , and it certainly has been already, with many animated films that were worthy. But to be the guy that did it in any of these award ceremonies was pretty amazing.”
Stanton will tell you that the aim of Pixar has always been to support the filmmaker‚Äôs vision, which is perhaps why the films coming out of there seem to be kicking live action‚Äôs ass lately. When you think about it, in today’s industry, animation is much more aligned with an auteur‚Äôs vision than live action productions (with a handful of exceptions) in that it allows someone like Stanton to take control of his own vision without a lot of other influences, especially after having delivered Finding Nemo.
One thing Stanton does that no other filmmaker seems able to master is the art of the interesting female character. Both Dorrie and Eve are two of the best characters in Pixar’s history because, for one thing, they are allowed to have great flaws. Dorrie can’t remember anything and Eve is almost too sophisticated for her own good. She can’t really dance in Wall-E’s little house and she’s unable to grasp the concept of bubble wrap without utterly demolishing it. Eve is a perfectly designed enigma.
‚ÄúI’ve been certainly fortunate that I’ve been surrounded by very influential women in my life – my mother and my wife and my daughter,” Stanton tells me. “I was always one of those guys that had lots of girl friends — not girlfriends but friends that were girls. I don’t know, if you put your brain to it you don’t have to see them as any different than you do when you build any other character.
‚ÄúI take each character on an individual basis,” he continues. “Gender may be one of the things about them that’s their unique quality but I’m always trying to look at them as who they are on the inside first, and then apply all of the characterizations and trappings that dictate who they are, sociologically or gender-wise or [in terms of] hierarchy. When you strip off all that stuff, everybody is the same on the inside to varying degrees.‚Äù
2008’s slate of films will be remembered for various reasons. There are stories everywhere you look. One of the best, though, is how Wall-E proved that an animated film can have as profound effect on humanity as a live action one can, maybe even more so. No other film released this year packs the kind of a message that resonates so universally, and it wasn’t even Stanton’s intention when he began writing it.
It seemed to me that Stanton wasn’t really going to focus on some of the darker themes in the early days of the publicity on the film. He tells me over the course of our phone conversation that he is uncomfortable with the idea of preaching to audiences but just wanted to tell a good story. And how do you tell a good story without facing certain truths?
‚ÄúWhat I was really afraid of is that I didn’t want to accidentally seem as though I was preaching something,” he explains. “The last thing I go to a movie for is to be preached to or have an agenda shoved down my throat. There was even a period of time where I was thinking of changing the conceit. But I was thinking: I would never want to change a movie out of fear. And so I said no, this is not why I put it in there and so I’m not going to take it out.‚Äù
Once he was in the thick of it, he knew he couldn‚Äôt back down. The key was balance. “With both Nemo and Wall-E, I found that it struck a balance of what I like in a movie. I know that turns some people off who have certain expectations and standards. I know that when I made that statement about Nemo, it was just a matter of having worked in animation for so long that it was almost reactionary. I just wanted to counter it. Because it seemed like [there was] too much happiness. Maybe that’s just a reflection of me. I don’t feel a need to hide from the truth of life to feel good, to really enjoy a film.‚Äù
Stanton had actually wanted to go darker with Nemo but in the end, he found it to be dark enough as it was. In many ways, this is old school Disney, which really was as dark as you can get.
‚ÄúThere’s got to be a way to look in the mirror and see what’s really there and still be happy at the end,” he says. “I know that on Nemo, my idea of the Lion King and the circle of life, the idea that everything was there for a reason — I kinda didn’t buy it. I was like, ‘Well no, everything’s out there to eat you and we all deep down know that when we’re out in the woods.’ In a weird way, it’s ‘s like you send your kid out to cross the street all day long. It’s THAT predatory and it’s that dangerous and I thought, ‘There must be a way that you can still tell a fascinating story of wonder and keep that rule alive, and not have to lie that those rules don’t exist in the world. ‘ Some parents, they just don’t want their kids to be aware of any of that stuff until a certain age and I respect that; that’s just not the way I am. I just thought there’s gotta be a way you can tell this and keep the rules intact.‚Äù
To Stanton, Wall-E follows the science fiction tradition of taking on realities you can‚Äôt avoid. ‚ÄúThere are no happy science fiction stories,‚Äù he said. ‚ÄúThey all have some intense aspect to them. It’s never a ‚Äògee whiz‚Äô kind of thing, and so I just think I was inheriting that just for that idea and, if anything, I worked at trying to tone it down. But there’s no way to tone down too much there because everyone had to leave the planet, so it was just about trying to find the palatable and easy-to-get. And, to be honest, I wasn’t thinking about topical things [when I started it]. I mean, this was in ’94. I don’t think people were talking about global warming then.
‚ÄúAs the film was getting made years later, it was starting to match headlines,‚Äù he continues. ‚ÄúI figured, that’s not a bad thing to be associated with.‚Äù Wall-E, of course, not only matched headlines but seemed to come out at exactly the right time.
One of the great things about the film’s more terrifying themes is that it sort of reminds us that we’re our own worst problem. We are the ones who give in to the endless amounts of temptations thrown at us for profit. People are too good at inventing indulgences.
“Technology is never going to be thrown at you,” he says. “We trick ourselves or seduce ourselves into that stuff. We’re victims of our own problem. It’s because that cell phone seems so sexy or that laptop seems so sexy that I want it in my life, and so I always think that would be how it happened — our own seduction, wanting all the cool stuff, so when we came up with it, we tried to find something that was cool enough so that that there was a part of you that thinks, ‚ÄòOh, I kinda want that.‚Äô And you would feel a little ugly in that as much as you could see the wrong in it, you were kind of attracted to it.‚Äù
I tell him that I was walking around Disneyland recently and felt like I was on the Axiom. Though Stanton says he never once thought of the Happiest Place on Earth, he does concede that there are many ways we can be contained with multiple pleasures at our fingertips. If those were extended over a period of years, what would become of us? ‚ÄúIf I was thinking about anything, I was thinking about cruise ships and any place that locks you in,” he says. “I guess you could use a mall or a theme park [for] the same analogy, but if I was really thinking about it, I would think, ‘What would convince humanity to go out in space for five years?’ Well, a paid-for vacation.‚Äù
Even if you aren‚Äôt willing to ‚Äúgo there‚Äù about the potential future of humanity, the central story to Wall-E remains universal. Somewhere inside the character of Wall-E, whether it’s his own evolution after 700 years alone on earth, or a culmination of the effects of going through our garbage and salvaging all that was good about us, a soul is being born.
‚ÄúPeople asked what caused him to evolve and I said, the thought of a machine doing the same thing for seven hundred years, day in and day out, I guess I wanted to believe that he would just finally start to ask questions, like ‘Why am I doing this?’‚Äù Stanton muses. ‚ÄúThere’s got to be more to life than [this].‚Äù
Stanton says he‚Äôs not a technophobe nor a luddite – how could he be when there are so many references to Apple computers in the film, among other gadgets. But the seeds of worry started back in the ‚Äò80s, “when cable came in and everybody started having a remote in their right hand, or their left hand remote permanently soldered into their hand. I just sort of feel that that’s progressed and amplified to the point where there’s so much distraction. I love technology as much as everybody else, but it just feels like [there are so many things] we can have right at our fingertips to be distracted by and not have to deal with the person next to us. We can just be stimulated by so many things so quickly. I mean, you can now be on a city street and nobody sees each other, nobody talks to each other, and now it’s at this weird place where people have things in their ears and they’re just talking out loud looking at you and they’re not even talking to you. I’m even at a point where my kids are texting their friends when they’re in the same room. And I just think that can’t be good. The long term effects of that can’t be good.‚Äù
Still, what makes Wall-E work isn’t that Stanton and his co-writer Jim Reardon are heaping an albatross upon us or a cautionary message about life’s trappings, but that we root for Wall-E and all of the things that make being human and life on our blue planet worth it.
‚ÄúWall-E literally is just starting to grow up, even though he’s 700 years old,” Stanton reflects. “He’s probably got the maturity of a five-year-old, but he’s probably more like a fifteen year old meeting a girl for the first time. He’s so innocent and naive that he doesn’t know what he missed about humanity and that makes everybody want to root for him.‚Äù
In truth, Wall-E belongs in the Best Picture lineup, and if it weren‚Äôt for the animation category it easily would be. All five of the current Best Picture nominees come with messages about life — they deal with love, redemption, hope, faith and activism. But Wall-E gives, inadvertently, a roadmap out of despair. If you‚Äôve been kicked off of your own planet because of the trash and the unbreathable air, the smallest glimmer of life would be enough to renew your hope that there is nothing better than life on Earth.