Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Theological Tuesdays: WALL●E and Wanted

This is my first post of this nature so I'll briefly explain it. Every Tuesday I play to write up a post that discusses the thoughts, ideas and themes behind one or two films. I will generally default to the theatrical release I see but if don't have one on a given week I'll pick the one I think has the most worth talking about. I won't go into extreme depth but I'll assume you've seen the film and I will be spoiling the films, often including their endings. So if you haven't seen the films I've talked about I'd probably steer clear of these posts. That being said lets dive right into it.

Spoiler Alert: Major plot points of WALL●E will be discussed in depth.

First off most critics seem to think this is some environmental tale about what happens when people quit caring about the environment as the earth is covered in so much trash that the human races abandons it. Not only do I think this claim is bogus and a result of everyone looking for environmental messages under every rock but also writer/director Andrew Stanton shot down this idea in practically every interview it has come up in. What he said he believes that aspect is about is a cautionary tale of the danger of becoming an overly consumerist society. Furthermore, he says most of what people see as the environmental message rose out of narrative necessity and not idealist beliefs. He needed a reason for the humans to leave the planet and something for WALL●E to clean up. Furthermore, he says he has no intensions of being preachy at all with this film.

Moving on Stanton has said that he believes that at its heart WALL●E is a longing for love and I'm inclined to agree. Romance involving robots in noting new to the sci-fi genre but it generally has taken on more sexual connotations. Here there's no such animalistic approach to love. WALL●E is the last robot on earth in longs for companionship from another robot. He actually first develops this longing from a betamax copy of the musical Hello, Dolly. To him he sees the display of love as holding hands as he watched a pair of lovebirds in the music.

WALL●E also has an interesting social commentary on the advents of modern technology. As we develop better and better technology we run the risk of becoming so complacent and lazy that we become vegetables forced to move around by hoverchair. Also, as we create better ways to communicate with each other but communicate less in what we have to say. Face to face conversations become obsolete when everyone is just a holocall away. Is the film saying that technological advances are bad? No. All it's saying is that we have to be careful how much we rely on that technology before it takes over our very existences. Already we see individuals practically tied to their cell phone as they spend many of their waking hours talking, texting and sending photos.

Spoiler Alert: Major plot points and the ending of Wanted will be discussed in depth.

Fate. This seems to be the core ideology behind Wanted. In the middle of the film Sloan shows Wesley the machine that decides the targets of the organization. It's a giant loom that uses a binary code (yea it's cheesy) to spell out a person's name. It's said fate controls the name the loom spits out in order to achieve a balance in the universe. Understandably Wesley doesn't quite buy into the notion, so much so that he fails to execute his first target. Then Fox tells an effective story about her father being killed by a man whose name came up on the loom weeks before he murdered her father. Convinced by the story Wesley buys into fate and kills his target.

Then comes the twist. It turns out that Sloan's name came up on the loom one day. Wishing to save his own skin Sloan hid the evidence and reconfigured the loom to input names that would benefit him. Fate, it seems, has been twisted and is simply Sloan controlling the machine. The individual's potential to chart their own destiny is the final conclusion of the film. Wesley's character goes from being controlled by his sorry girlfriend, sorry boss and fear to becoming so cool and calculated that he is in control. The film leaves the back door for fate open but ultimately the film concludes fate is a ruse as Wesley takes control of his own life and kills Sloan.

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