Wall-e?

[Alboin]

Looking back at the archives of this forum, there used to be at least a few discussions on movies, so here it goes...

I read some reviews on Wall-e, all of which suggested it was a great movie, possibly the best Pixar film. Being bored, and not particularly wanting to see anything else, I went and saw it.

It was pretty good. The one thing that really stood out, however, were its political overtones. The entire film was a political point more than anything, and did not make an attempt to hide it. One large cooperation, trying to keep its monopoly, becoming incredibly wealthy while making its customers fat, spreading propaganda into children, eventually becoming the government, etc. With these being so blatant, it didn't almost seem like a Disney movie, and the entire love story kind of fell to second row.

Anyone else see Wall-e? What did you think of it?

[JohnnyTheDon]

I saw the movie as well, and I agree that there were very strong political overtones.

However, I think that the movie's primary audience (little kids) won't pick up on the political overtones, so it doesn't make much of a difference to them. As for adults, they should be thinking about this kind of thing before the Earth in Wall-e becomes reality and my generation has to live in it T.T

[piranha]

I rather liked the movie because it had a good message. Yes, I did notice the political statements, and I agree it didn;t seem disney-ish

-JL

[01000101]

I agree with the movies political points.

Someday (if we don't change our ways), we will be floating in a ship after leaving our desolate planet. We will also, most definitely, fall victim to mass (no pun) obesity and lose our ability to walk. And I won't blame fast food restaurants when that happens, no no, I'll be blaming the over-indulger's of the "fast food".

[eddyb]

i saw it, also. it's very sweet...
the political point, yeah, there is a company, BnL, which almost take the cotrol to the people and give them a better home, in a galaxy far far away... but there's no place like home, so they return to earth...

[tantrikwizard]

Leave the social engineering in the government schools. I want to see dancing bunny rabbits and singing mice when I go to a disney movie. The politics are nonsense. It showed the level of stupidity that I'm accustom to seeing from Al Gore and his group of whinny frauds, but disney? The 'evil human' theme has now worked its way into disney for christ sake! give me a break.

[Colonel Kernel]

I'm more afraid of the "sedentary human" part coming true, moreso than the "evil human" part.

[bewing]

Overall, the movie was amusing. I'm not sure I agree with the exact word "political".

There is a mass delusion meme propogating around the industrialized countries that we are destroying our environment, and are about to be buried in trash. But it is more a form of paranoia than a political idea, I'd say. It seems to me that left wing politics has coopted that theme, rather than creating it. (In general, I dare anyone in the US or Europe to walk out their front door, and point to this mountain of trash that's about to bury them -- or to some heap of dead animals that indicates a deteriorating ecology. In fact, it's quite easy to calculate the rate of trash buildup -- and the length of time to get buried in it is geological. It is also fairly easy to find numbers that show that the local environment has been getting cleaner for the last 40 years.) Sadly, you simply have to accept that many naive people will be deluded by this meme, or these scare-tactics, whichever you deem it to be.

But I would have to say that the movie handled the "mountains of trash" concept, and the "sedentary people" concept with a lot of humor -- and I found the little nod to "2001" to be hilarious.

[JohnnyTheDon]

It is also fairly easy to find numbers that show that the local environment has been getting cleaner for the last 40 years.

Could I have links to these numbers? A quick search about global warming shows http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... rming.html. Unless you believe national geographic is lying?

Sadly, you simply have to accept that many naive people will be deluded by this meme, or these scare-tactics, whichever you deem it to be.

Who exactly is employing these scare tactics? Environmental groups? And what hidden agenda can environmental groups possibly have?

[bewing]

http://www.epa.gov/ebtpages/watewaterpollutiondata.html
(You might want to pay especially close attention to lead, mercury, and ddt data -- as they are some of the most environmentally toxic.)
From the page:
http://www.epa.gov/epahome/learn.htm
"Although national air quality has improved over the last 20 years ...."

People point to global warming (as you have done) as if it is an "environmental degredation" issue.
However, global warming/cooling is mostly caused by energy output fluctuations of the sun http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Sol ... lished.pdf
(please note the high correlation between sunspot numbers, and "global temperature" (as denoted by the Carbon-14 concentration), and the sunspot trend for the last century)
-- and CO2 variations only play a minority role. That is, global warming/cooling is primarily a natural environmental cycle.

People who write global warming articles slant their coverage (even in Natl. Geo.) by not including any data that disagree with their slant, of course.

Al Gore, in his movie, posted a graph of the 600K-year global climate -- as if it supported his claims. The humorous inconvenient truth that he failed to point out was that the graph showed clearly that this planet's climate changes constantly, and swings from Ice Ages to 70-thousand year long "global extremely hot" periods. In fact, it got so hot 300 thousand years ago that the entire North Polar Ice Cap melted, AND all of Greenland melted. (Polar bears survived this, BTW.)

If you assume that these "issues" are left-wing political in nature, and you notice that the recent US elections were heavily influenced by precisely these non-issues -- isn't it abundantly clear who is employing the scare tactics, and why?

Environmental groups are run by lawyers. Their "hidden" agenda is to pay themselves a salary. Ask yourself why, over the last 40 years, environmental groups have succeeded in solving exactly 0 environmental issues? Because they don't get paid for solving them. They get donations for having the problems continue.

And sorry to everyone for hijacking this thread. It would most likely be a bad idea to continue discussing global warming -- but if you want to, I think it would be best to start a new thread.

[chase]

My GF and I liked the movie. See actually has one of the high-rez wallpapers as her background, http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/05/08/new ... -released/

We've got some friends that loved the whole "go green" type message more than anything else about the move. I just like Pixar moves, they always make good stuff. Personally I saw the movie more about Wall-E being lonely. The whole trashed planet thing was just a ok premise for everybody to leave so Wall-E could be as alone as possible.

[tantrikwizard]

There is no such thing as 'global warming'. The southern hemisphere has showed no signs of irregular warming, so the warming is not 'global'. The northern hemisphere showed some signs of local warming in some areas but it ceased around 1990, the northern hemisphere has been getting cooler ever since. If you want to make a dooms day cultists mad just tell them good news, isnt it great that the world has been cooling since 1990?
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/ ... aches.html
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... 4616db87e6
"I am a skeptic...Global warming has become a new religion." - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever

[Masterkiller]

I watched the movie. It reminds me about what happen in my country. Actually the idea really comes from Bulgaria. Here the government cannot decide what to do with Sofia's garbage. They pack the garbage and send it to other cities and towns instead of recycling it. This gives the idea of one of the pixar's workers (which is Bulgarian) to make this movie. Well, you know, even with all good that we do, we SUX, it's in our nature . You'll see it's true, and if there is alien's civilization somewhere, probably they shouldn't see us at our level of evolution. Anyway, no matter how fat, disgusting are people, no matter how much garbage we do, no matter what we destroy, we are humans and that we are, so no better from us for the earth
PEACE!

[tantrikwizard]

I have a different POV about humanity. We are beautiful, innovative, artistic and creative. We've made vast strides to understanding the nature of reality with science which has cured thousands of diseases and saved millions of lives. We've erradicated diseases of humans and animals and have protected species that would have otherwise gone extinct. We've enahnced nature beyond what is possible with the untamed evolutionary process. Evolution is not perfect, its a 'hit or miss' process where things that work continue (not neccessarily things that are best). Untamed nature, though beautiful in it's own right, is not neccessarily ideal.

[Solar]

The southern hemisphere has showed no signs of irregular warming, so the warming is not 'global'.

Here we go again...

The northern hemisphere showed some signs of local warming in some areas but it ceased around 1990, the northern hemisphere has been getting cooler ever since.

Could you please stop the BS before I throw up?

No reputable scientist still doubts the existence of global warming. The only thing still under discussion is to what extend mankind contributed to it.

Everything else is pure, raw, stupid BS of the really stinking kind.