God, BHC is going to be such an abomination.  Every time that has come up in a movie theater, I’ve heard loud groans from the audience.  I await it with fear and trembling, and not the good kind.

One day, the main hero in a Pixar film will be a woman.  In 2050 or something.  Or maybe we’ll get a gay robot love story first.  I dunno.

“Rob Schneider is a Chihuahua, a Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and when he gets lost in Mexico anything can happen, with hilarious results!”

It’s interesting you bring up the obesity.  My husband and I saw the film yesterday (absolutely loved it) and he thought that the film didn’t really make any judgments about obseity.  It just was as it was.  It was more a consequence of the decisions made by their ancestors.  He also thought that the humans were made sort of heroic because once they found out about Earth, they wanted to go back and fix it.

There were previews of the Beverly Hills Chihuahua movie and I thought it looked painful, but the kids in the audience were laughing.  It told my husband that we weren’t the target audience for the movie.

The Canadian CGI series Tripping the Rift had a robot aboard who was purportedly homosexual (done strictly for laughs and playing up stereotypes, mind you).  Not quite the same thing at all.  A movie plot that included a same-‘gender’ (do robots have genders?) love story would be quite provocative.

Here’s a plot that could cause fundies’ heads to explode:  A same-gender love affair between a human and a non-human (alien).  Would that be considered zoophilia, by either culture?

I saw the film as mainly denigrating the consumerist culture, and taking a big swipe at Wal*Mart/Sam’s Club (Buy-n-Large) culture.

I also really liked the whole selfless love theme—WALL-E caring for EVE even though she’s shut down and non-communicative, protecting her from the rain, etc.

We could have done without the cheesy plastic watch, though.

That was my thought after seeing the movie:  The initially repulsive, obese humans really became the heroes in the end, defeating the robots that were keeping them locked in their consumer culture.

“A rubber bracelet around a cheap-ass LCD watch, which looks more like it should have come with a showing of E. frigging T., wrapped around a piece of cardboard”

Yeah, it made me dig out my pocket watch that they gave out at Citizen Kane in 1941.  High quality watch.  Still works!

Seriously, isn’t criticizing the quality of the free watch a bit like the old “the food is terrible, and such small portions” joke?

The Wanderer: Such a plot is possible in the Mass Effect video game, which will probably be turned into a movie in four or five years, and then re-made another 24 to 25 years after that.

Um.  You got it all wrong.  Or you failed to get it right.  Or something.  This movie was about an ayahuasca trip.  It was like team high on drugs setting of a nuclear bomb in the collective unconscious.  All the parts of the movie took place in the mind of one character, best understood as the captain, metaphorically representing the director.  Everyone is talking about this film like the ecological theme was the deep hidden message.  No, underneath that level (which is a relatively shallow surface level) there is the characteristic archetypal unraveling and reassembly of various aspects of one self during the ego dissolving experience of an ayahuasca journey. 

Wall-E and Eve are best seen as conscious and unconscious aspergian aspects of the same self, with the entirety of the film taking place in dream logic.  Earth and the Axiom are different levels of abstraction of the same reality.  The fat humans who held hands mirrors Wall-E and Eve’s relationship at the level of gross (pun intended) physical bodies in the same self.  When the captain returns to earth, and starts spreading ecological wisdom aided by technology, the movie completes itself by closing out with the inspiration of it’s director while delivering the final emotional payload. Wall-E was occult, gnostic and visionary. 

The imagery that runs over the end credits gives us a multi-level guide to deconstructing the occult meaning of this masterpiece.  Try it again with dream logic.  Giving a movie like this to critics is like giving a box of rubiks cubes to drugged monkeys.  Because they lack first person insight into spiritual practices that include the symbolic death and rebirth of the self, the deeper layers of this masterpiece aren’t accessible to the critics.  What’s beyond the surface meanings that is the facade of symbols?  A freaking ayahuasca trip in the mind of one person.  You are cheating yourself if you think that it was a sci-fi love story and an ecological parable.  It was, but it was also the kind of deep psychological study of self, in the tradition of the best dream logic movies.  This was the best esoteric movie I’ve ever seen.

Saw it on Saturday and I really loved it. I was awed by the graphics throughout, the physics during the space scene were really impressive: watch the particles from the extinguisher bounce back and forth off both of the robots… quite a sight!

On the obesity thing, the “take home” for me really hit a little later that evening when I got a call asking if I still had power “there;s a storm? I hadn’t noticed… I’m on the computer, wow, lookit that lighting!”. Ya, bothering to take the time and effort to look more than two feet infront of your face at the electronic doo-dads? Something I’m going to make an effort to do more of this summer. If there is a theme about obesity (and it can be seen both ways) I think that it’s as much about people allowing themselves to get caught up with the gizmos that will live life for you and forget just how nice it is to go for a walk in the sunshine.

I enjoyed many parts of the film (totally agreeing re: the wacky shenanigans in Act 3), and my animator BF was practically weeping with joy, but I’m disappointed that EVE, “the strongest female character Pixar’s ever coughed up,” is still trapped in Pixar/Disney’s boy-world.  While I think eventually it worked—they collaborated, sacrified for each other, etc., but at the top, WALL-E was just another boy-man-robot loser stuck in a (literally) dead-end job, with his collection of obsessively-collected kiddy toys, obsessive video-watching, until the physically ravishing EVE shows up for him to fixate on—and for a good portion of the movie, that’s all it is.  She’s pretty.  Classic male slacker/female striver, where she provides the impetus for him to grow up.

Also good to know:  that over 700 years, all the captains of Axiom were male.  Thanks for nothin’, Pixar.

I saw it and didn’t view Wall-E as a slacker at all. He was very hard-working, creative, and industrious, just not white collar. He had evolved well beyond his programming. I saw it more as the working class guy and the professional woman. Right on about the male captains, though, although the theme of the film WAS that humanity had not evolved, so it fit.

The Canadian CGI series Tripping the Rift had a robot aboard who was purportedly homosexual (done strictly for laughs and playing up stereotypes, mind you).

Well, they played up the stereotypes because the joke wasn’t that Gus was gay, but that he kept denying he was gay.  In that sort of case the stereotypes are a necessity.

For what it’s worth, I recall at least one female captain. I believe she was somewhere in the middle of the timeline, because she was just barely overweight. She was also Asian, if that helps stir any memories.

I seem to recall a female Captain as well: she had short hair, so it was easy to skip over her.

This will, and already has, led to some serious discussion in the fat acceptance movement, including claims that the film is just another salvo in the “obesity epidemic” wars.

I knew when I saw it that some people would fixate on that without seeing that the point was not that fat people are lazy and bad, but that they’d basically been bred like penned veal for 700 years.

Some fat activists don’t want to admit that it’s not all biology—there are absolutely cultural factors in why people weigh more than they used to and why Type II diabetes is increasing.  To me, denying that these factors even exist only means that you’re taking the argument that being fat is bad and moving it to the other end of the spectrum without looking at overall health.

Back on topic, when the movie was over, my husband turned to me and said, “It’s like Stanley Kubrick did a kids’ movie.”  All of those Kubrick themes are there—especially humans becoming so dependent on machines that they give up their humanity and their struggle to regain their humanity and put machines back into their place.

God, BHC is going to be such an abomination.  Every time that has come up in a movie theater, I’ve heard loud groans from the audience.  I await it with fear and trembling, and not the good kind.

My partner and I went to the last showing at eleven o’clock at night, so it was all adults and there was just the most eerie nervous laughter from the audience.  It was like they were pretty much hoping it was just some very odd collective acid trip.

Also good to know:  that over 700 years, all the captains of Axiom were male.  Thanks for nothin’, Pixar.

As muddymunny said there was one female captain she was actually second in line in all the panning shots of the wall.

Although I definitely think that Pixar/Disney could put more of a focus on strong female leads I don’t think it has been the void that people are condemning it to be especially when you compare it to the reams of the “Disney Princesses”.

In the Incredibles “Elastigirl” ends up going to save her husbands butt when he’s trapped on the island.  In “Finding Nemo” it’s Dory who saves the day when she overcomes her memory loss to reunite Nemo with Marlin.  Collette, the human female in Ratatouille was pretty tough, kicking Linguini’s ass into shape.  There are strong females, they just unfortunately do not get the top billing.

Perhaps I missed the one female (possibly asian) captain.  Tokenism—which is what Pixar always delivers with female characters—isn’t really progress.  And I know, compared to Disney Princesses, blah blah blah, rejecting the good in the name of the perfect, etc., but Pixar get SO MUCH right, their gender-blinders really hork me off.

And thinking about Disney Princesses:  obviously little girls will go for female characters big time (no matter how vapid), and their parents will drop major scrilla on tie-ins, so Pixar, why not cash in?  I know, I know, boys won’t watch “girl” movies, and male producers and…patriarchy, basicaly.

And my typos are horrifying. Apologies all ‘round.  I’m better educated than I appear.

And thinking about Disney Princesses:  obviously little girls will go for female characters big time (no matter how vapid), and their parents will drop major scrilla on tie-ins, so Pixar, why not cash in?

Because Pixar is/was cashing in on the underserved market (at the time) of animated features for boys.  The paradigm was the musical with princesses and romance as founded by Walt Disney and “Snow White,” and Pixar made a point of creating a different paradigm.

People forget how anomalous “Toy Story” was for its time.  There’s no fairy tale?  There’s no princess?  The characters don’t dance or sing?  There’s an “Exorcist” reference?

We forget now because so many other studios like Dreamworks started imitating the Pixar way of doing stories with male protagonists, but that was how Pixar set themselves apart when they first started making feature films.

(And I have a very funny “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” story that I sadly cannot tell here since it’s work-related.  Let’s just say that the trailer is somewhat notorious in the film industry.)

The pervasiveness of strictly enforced gender roles in animation (‘kid movies’, well not really but that’s the perception from studio higher-ups) becomes all the more evident with movies like Wall-E, Bee Movie or Antz. The people working on these films had to *actively* introduce those tropes in the movie because if you’d follow real-world logic instead of Hollywood logic, the characters would have to be genderless (Wall-E) or all females (Bee Movie, Antz).

The strong-yet-only-supporting-actress is barely an improvement over the old women-as-extras status quo, and reminds me of what a lot of POC activists call the ‘magic negro’ trope in Hollywood movies. It’s a character that’s there only to bring about the (white, male) protagonist to his destiny.

“It’s interesting you bring up the obesity.  My husband and I saw the film yesterday (absolutely loved it) and he thought that the film didn’t really make any judgments about obseity.  It just was as it was.  It was more a consequence of the decisions made by their ancestors.”

Which isn’t exactly a great message, either.  “Don’t be such a consumer… or you’ll be FAT!!!” - this is obesity as punishment, because, OMGObesity is such a horrible thing.  Is it really better to reduce fat people to weak-willed victims?  Is it better to push the idea that Society-Made-Them-Fat, than the standard Fat-People-Have-No-Discipline trope?  Is there a difference?

By using obesity as a “consequence,” it becomes implicit that adipose tissue is a Bad Thing.  I am fat.  I’m not a derelict, or lazy, or a victim.  Nor, frankly, an infantilized figure that just needs to be shown the wonder of taking a walk.

I kind of thought that the “consequence” was being unable to walk.  You know, because you haven’t used any muscles in seven hundred years.  And that the other consequence was, you know, not having a planet to live on.

>Here’s a plot that could cause fundies’ heads to explode:  A same-gender love affair between a human and a non-human (alien).

Several separate episodes of Torchwood. Of course this is a series where most of the characters are canonically bi-sexual. Except the lead, because as he says “you people and your narrow categories”.

The genders were assigned on the basis of archetypal psychology.  Eve is a female because she represents the force “Anima” in the mind of the character best understood as the captain, the entire movie is an hallucination in.  All the captains of the axiom were male because the movie is, primarily, a study of the various aspects of the male directors psyche.

The relationship between eve and wall-e is not a romanitic relationship between two seperate people, but a metaphoric representation of the conscious and unconscious aspects of a single self.  Whats happening isn’t a boy becoming obsessed with a girl, but a man tripping on ayahuasca reconciling aspects of self.  You people are completely missing the point!

These critiques about gender totally mistake the surface of the movie for it’s real meaning.  From the real meaning, the concerns just evaporate.

The people working on these films had to *actively* introduce those tropes in the movie

As much as I loved WALL-E, this is one of the things that bothered me most.  EVE is clearly intended to be perceived as female, WALL-E is clearly intended to be perceived as Woody Allen.  There’s the idea that only romantic attachment could explain the kind of love and devotion between the two of them.  I mean, I know WALL-E’s personality was heavily shaped by Hello, Dolly! and all - but why couldn’t he have found a tape of Hairspray or something?

Well, norbizness, we shall see when the remake of Short Circuit hits theatres.  I heard it on the internet, so it must be true! 

Seriously, all I could think about when I saw the pictures of WALL-E at first was Johnny 5…But after I saw the trailers, and saw how little dialogue there was, I thought “I’ve always loved the Pixar lamps.  I think this is the closest I’m ever going to get to getting a whole movie about the lamps.”

The lack of dialogue was my favorite part of the movie.  Since there weren’t any shortcuts with words, the robot characters had to be very carefully characterized by their actions.  I also thought including scenes from Hello Dolly was a great decision…it made the animation (of the robots anyway) and the setting seem much more real.  I wish the people had been less cartoony on the space ship, since in comparison with the live action people used in other portions of the film, the difference was a bit jarring.  The credits were also fantastic—using famous art styles to tell what happened as the people recolonized earth was great (very Studio Ghibli though).

I agree about the lack of female characters…but I’m willing to overlook it for a movie for kids which is: well made, full of good characters, funny without lame sight-gags or fart jokes or pop culture references, good science fiction, full of questions without answers (so kids have to think).  It’s just about the best American kids’ movie since “Babe” (I cry at the end every time I watch it.  That’ll do pig…tears come to my eyes just thinking about it.).

I usually think Pixar movies are okay, but the first half is really masterpiece quality, and the second half is pretty darn good.

I love how TomK’s ‘real meaning’ is that sort of “It’s really deep!  I swear!” simplicity and mundanity that seems to bubble out of people convinced that psychedelia is leading them to deeper meaning.  Honestly, allegory is boring, even more so when it’s all ‘The whole movie is a dream, man.  Do you dig it?’

Catnik: “Which isn’t exactly a great message, either.  “Don’t be such a consumer… or you’ll be FAT!!!” - this is obesity as punishment, because, OMGObesity is such a horrible thing.  Is it really better to reduce fat people to weak-willed victims?  Is it better to push the idea that Society-Made-Them-Fat, than the standard Fat-People-Have-No-Discipline trope?  Is there a difference?”

This is Unstable Isotope’s husband.  What struck me in the movie was that they weren’t really passing judgement on the humans.  So often in movies, they would be portrayed as nasty selfish creatures.  In contrast, consider the human that was knocked off his hover-chair, asking for assistance and taking time to say hello to WALL-E.  The standard set up would be the angry, whiny sluglike human demands instant assistance from the robot lackeys, and snarling at WALL-E “whaddaYOUwant?!”  Not, the gentle, friendly and somewhat innocent depiction in the movie.

If we move beyond the obesity and consider it as a metaphor for the consumer lifestyle as a whole: these people have been brought up in this culture, and don’t know any better.  So “weak-willed victims” isn’t accurate.  They are simply unaware of any other way to be.  There’s many allusions to this in the movie…“I didn’t know whe had a pool/running track” etc.  They look up from their video terminals and notice the real world, or real flesh-and-blood people, and discover it may be better than the virtual world they were living in.  How they’ve been having babies up to this point is a bit of a mystery.

I felt the overall tone of this movie wasn’t “you weak-willed consumption-obsessed fatties need to exercise self-control”.  It was, “you may not have thought much about the lifestyle choices you make as a consumer, and their consequences, but if you stop, look around at the world, and take in the big picture you may find that your priorities change and that you can change your life for the better of yourself and the planet”.

By using obesity as a “consequence,” it becomes implicit that adipose tissue is a Bad Thing.  I am fat.  I’m not a derelict, or lazy, or a victim.  Nor, frankly, an infantilized figure that just needs to be shown the wonder of taking a walk.

So you’ve been living on a spaceship for 700 years in a float chair being fed liquids through a straw?

The point of the film is not, “OMG, they’re fat!”  The point of the film is that Buy n Large has turned adults into giant babies.  Are you arguing that every person consciously chooses their consumer products and the companies are only giving the consumers what they want?

TomK: Nobody’s buying the “postmodern deconstruction” bit at face value.  You’re losing the crowd.

Wroth: If you were to just admit you’re trying to stir up shit, everything would be fine.

My opinion on Wall-E: I wanted to see it again the moment it ended.  I would’ve paid big-city-theater prices to see it again.  That’s how good it is.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, so perhaps TomK is right and it really is a nail…but just in case, he might be well-served by investing in a few tools that aren’t hammers.

Doesn’t zero G cause muscles to atrophy?  If so, the space traveling humans’ helplessness seems kind of logical.

Uh, Damian, No.  I’m not trying to “stir shit up.”  You sound like some MRA saying that feminists are “just looking for something to get pissed about.”  Glad you like the movie.  I did too, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t merit critique.

Doesn’t zero G cause muscles to atrophy?  If so, the space traveling humans’ helplessness seems kind of logical.

There’s some sort of artificial gravity on the ship.

I couldn’t disagree more with those who think that to complain about the fat portrayal is to “miss the point.”  My partner and I saw the movie over the weekend, and we loved every part of it except the ones that were about being repulsed by the fat people. Yes, yes, we got it that the point is overconsumption and environmental disaster. But the people’s bodies were used as visible symbols of laziness and consumption. And however much it is protested that in the end, the people were heroic, the real purpose of their bodies looking/moving like that was belied when most people in the theater laughed loudly at the visual gags that the fat was intended to provide. I just kept thinking how hurtful it would be for my partner’s sister-in-law, a wonderful, kind, hardworking woman who is severely obese, to watch that movie and hear everyone laugh and see them cringe at the horror of those bodies.  It was a weird sensation - as a thin person, I knew I was supposed to be in on the joke, but I didn’t want to be.

Rather then a nail, what I’m trying to point out is the cultural foundation the movie is built on.  It’s all explicitly coded into the movie.  Let’s say what happened in plain english.  The little autistic robot took ingested ayahuasca (iconically represented as the vine), came into contact with anima, and blasted off into a meta space.  I don’t say this about every movie I see.  The movie works at other levels too, but it also works (and was no doubt understood by the creators as) an ayahuasca trip.

Damien - there is nothing deconstructionist about what I am arguing.  I’m not deconstructing the movie.  Rather, I am interpreting it at the level most people (having no first person experiences with ayahuasca) are missing.  I am not trying to eliminate structure from this movie, rather, I’m pointing out that the structure is multi-layered, coded, and how to decode it.  In doing so, I do have to use deconstruction (as another tool besides psychedelia) to work away at the surface levels, to reveal the deeper mystery beneath that.  I’m not denying the surface levels, but I do think the surface inconsistencies resolve at higher levels of abstraction, and that understanding the surface levels does not really give you any understanding of what the moving images and sounds actually represent, or what the intent of the creator was.

So, while I dissolve some structure, my thoughts are completely incompatible with a deconstructionist attitude towards the film.  I can’t consistently think the entire film can be deconstructed and also think it’s an encoded alchemical masterpiece containing archetypal secrets about the nature of the individual self as experienced by the director during a visionary ayahuasca experience.

And however much it is protested that in the end, the people were heroic, the real purpose of their bodies looking/moving like that was belied when most people in the theater laughed loudly at the visual gags that the fat was intended to provide.

And yet I don’t think they were meant to be primarily fat jokes, as in jokes about adults who are fat or obese.  They were primarily INFANT jokes—getting up out of their strollers and taking their first baby steps towards independence.  Rejecting the paternalistic decisions made by the computers and setting their own course (literally) instead of continuing to live in a state of ignorance and passivity.

Woody Allen?  If Wall-E was Papa Woody, the bot would be raping smaller bots for ‘love’.

Fat acceptance loses when you jabber endlessly about the horrible injustices you feel and then eat enough food to cause nausea.  When you whine about the lack of dates and then sit on your @ss for hours.  When the biggest cause in your life is that you don’t resemble a model. 

Sorry fat folks, if you don’t have a metabolic disorder (like my cuz) , chances are you are just a fat and lazy ‘Merican.  I’ve watched people drive ten feet in their car to get the snailmail.  I’ve seen folks drive around the mall and stop at each store.  Think maybe that would be a reason? 

I’se fat too but I can’t blame it on McDs or the kulture or fascist fashion.  I eat too much and exercise too little. 

Selling female protagonists will happen when they stop being stoopid (Juno) and start being worth emulating.  Lara Croft, despite fantastical proportions, was far more fun than a whine-filled vat of entitlement and snark.  Lilo was an average child with issues and is the hero of many K-3 viewers.

And yet I don’t think they were meant to be primarily fat jokes, as in jokes about adults who are fat or obese.  They were primarily INFANT jokes—getting up out of their strollers and taking their first baby steps towards independence.

I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree - although I can see how the movie could have been seen the way you describe, it didn’t cross the minds of myself, my partner, or anyone I’ve talked to about the movie that the people were supposed to be grown infants, rather than fat.  I saw those jokes as being about lazy fat people who couldn’t be bothered to get out of their chairs - a la Mold’s odious comment above.  While some of the visual cues (the feet and hands) looked like infants, others (the necks, heads, and torsos) just looked fat.  So even if they didn’t intend them to be fat jokes (which I find really hard to believe, frankly, given how popular fat jokes are in movies), I would be the majority of viewers would read them as fat jokes, and not because they weren’t thinking hard enough.

p.s. And I say that as someone who LOVED everything else about the movie - really loved it. I just wish it hadn’t felt like I was being asked to laugh at/be disgusted by the lazy slurping fat people.

So even if they didn’t intend them to be fat jokes (which I find really hard to believe, frankly, given how popular fat jokes are in movies), I would be the majority of viewers would read them as fat jokes, and not because they weren’t thinking hard enough.

It’s kind of a chicken and egg question, though:  if we’re so habituated to fat jokes that any overweight character is automatically assumed to be a fat joke, isn’t that why the majority of the viewers would see them as primarily fat jokes rather than infant jokes?

For me, it was the being automatically carted from place to place + being fed nothing but liquid + the onesies that they all wore that tipped me off that they were meant to be infants, especially since it was clear that the humans were raised by robots pretty much from day one (the scenes of the robot teacher with the class of babies).

I’m not saying it doesn’t suck that our popular culture has decided that fat people are only good as comic foils.  I’m just saying that “Wall-E” does not include “Fat people are stupid and lazy” as one of its themes.

for some reason, I have an urge to go drink three or four bottles of Robitussen Cough before watching “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” and then explicate on how it the dialouge of the talking lapdogs parallells the dialectics between Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagvad Gita, folding the entire premise of the film into a giant shiva lingua of deeper oneness.

//I have this friend, Dave, who is so dislexic as to be nearly totally illiterate. One time, I had to physically restrain him from beating the living hell out of some psychonaut acid casualty, who had carlessly and intentionally destroyed that which dave wanted so much.

Some background on the movie, gleaned from AWN.com:  one of the reasons the second half/third of the movie may be such a hard sell is for two reasons:  one, they changed the way the cameras worked.  in the first 40 min.  the ‘cameras’ were rebuilt (meaning that the camera is a computer construct, with limits on focus depth speed of focus, where it tilts from, etc)  to resemble handheld/ dolly held camerawork to the extent that they brought in a famous DP to advise them on atmospherics and lens abberation and stuff.  When they board the ship, the style of camera work changes back to the much more conventional pixar experience; controlled camerawork, smooth glides, etc.  Its like watching two different directors, really.  So, maybe thinking that part of the movie would be easier, they phoned it in a little.  Also, after becoming accustomed to no wordlessness being a wonderful emotional experience, the integration of words is just plain annoying to me.  so consider, that.  But who didnt love the space dance? 

now, i love the themes of environmentalism and recycling, but to me the important theme is the development of personality;  only through time/isolation did wall-e gain the personality to discern beauty and sort the pretty from the crap.  When he arrives on ship, he encounters either human babies or routine robots, both whom he imbibes with curiosity.  and thats the key to the movie.  The ceo of buynlarge didnt want to solve any problems, he just hoped that if he went away for long enough, he could return to selling what he knew. 

of course, even on animation websites people are coming out of the woodwork to protest this movies liberal bias.  ha. 

final thought:  pixar/disney:  couldnt you have given away seeds in a little plastic boot.  I have looked on the web and dont see a huge amount of wall-e crap, thank goodness, mostly games, books and higher end robot toys ($40 programable machines)  so there is that.  but the watch was pretty crass.  as was BHC.

off topic… sorta… what the FUCK is “ayahuasca”????? and why should i care?

Wroth, the fact that you can’t take that your trollish, whiny wannabe-shitstorm (“There weren’t any female captians!!” “Yes there were.” “OMG TOKENISM!!”) has been shown for what it is proves your continued trollishness.  Nobody’s defending your bullshit, now shut the fuck up.

TomK, this isn’t my first rodeo.  I’ve seen four berzillion people like you pulling this routine, and they did it in a more believable fashion.  I’m not stupid, and you’re obviously not either; I’m just going out on a limb and saying that you’re not seriously arguing your wall-of-text BS so much as you’re trying to get people to buy into the idea that you’re seriously arguing your wall-of-text BS.  In short, I’m saying, “Good joke, but I’m still not laughing.”

Oh, and re the watch: Any guesses for high bid for one of those on eBay at the end of the week?  I’m guessing $150.

Damian, you can disagree with me.  I’m okay with that.  However, our disagreement doesn’t make me “a troll.”  You’re the one name-calling and making totally unwarranted personal attacks.  And, if you’ve actually read the comments, you’ll notice I’m not the only person who takes issue with Pixar’s gender politics.

But you’re the only one who immediately sprung into a different attack the moment someone called you on it.  That’s trolling, no matter how much you throw a pathetic tantrum and deny it.

Why don’t you take your hissy fits and get out?

I was wrong to give you the benefit of the doubt, Damian.  I though you simply had a bee in your bonnet, but really, you’re just unhinged, and a bully, to boot.

Boo-hoo, I called you on your trolling bullshit, so I’m a bully.

I’m done letting whiny little children annoy me.  Keep throwing your temper tantrum, you pants-pissing little shit.  Maybe you’ll wear yourself out and realize what an idiot you are.

I really liked the film, though the second half with the people jarred a bit. Also, did anyone else find Wall-e’s bringing coma!Eve around with him (on a leash, at one point) a little sketchy?

I have the advantage of having seen the movie less than 24 hours ago with a delightful child: my ten year old.

I have the disadvantage of trying to write with a blinding headache that makes coherent thought difficult at the moment.

Those things being said:
Is TomK yanking y’all?  His posts read like Alison Bechdel’s wicked satirical renditions of sociology papers, not as a real post.  Methinks he got you all with a wall’o'bullshit parody.

I could be wrong.  And my head hurts.

Damian:
I don’t necessarily agree with Wroth; I’ve got no position on that.  But isn’t presenting only one female captain in 700 years pretty much a good definition of “token”?

Damian isn’t playing nice.

There’s one female captain out of what, maybe seven? And that one is a silent picture and not an active character? Definitely tokenism.

And what percent of the Axiom human population was white? Far more than Caucasians’ percentage of the earth’s population, or of the U.S. population. Wouldn’t you expect the demographics to be closer to reality? After all, it’s not as if a mere 700 years without natural sun exposure would make people evolve to lose their melanin. So there’s plenty of ethnocentrism to go with with phallocentrism. How many Pixar directors and screenwriters are white men? Hmm.

But I did like the movie!

Come to think of it, I don’t recall if any of the humans on the Axiom were anything other than white.

The woman that the human woman was talking to on the screen was black. I also remember seeing a black guy at one point but I’m not 100% sure about that. I didn’t see any asians, indians, and so on races though.

“Which isn’t exactly a great message, either.  “Don’t be such a consumer… or you’ll be FAT!!!” - this is obesity as punishment, because, OMGObesity is such a horrible thing.  Is it really better to reduce fat people to weak-willed victims?”

Ok, this is pretty much what I initially thought when they made all the remaining humans fat.  However, my partner (who hearts star wars) explained to me that if humans were forced to live in space with only simulated gravity, you would lose bones (featured in the movie) and muscle mass to an extent that you basically would cease to have a metabolism.  Apparently that’s why astronauts have to work out constantly while they’re up there so their hearts don’t give out (hearts are muscles).  Correct me if I’m wrong - clearly this is my partner’s way of rationalizing whether or not star wars will actually happen in due time.  Basically, if having been born and lived entire lifetimes in space, you wouldn’t be able to walk upright, let alone do hard labor like the end credit art showed (fishing, etc) because your heart would give out instantly.  So yeah, I don’t know - it was about consumerism, but it was also about a huge mistake that was made when humans were generally still thin and burying themselves in waste.

Also, I have to say that WALL_E was the saddest movie ever made.  The aching loneliness of the first half pretty much made me want to cry (and those robots are so cute! and sad), and the everything-is-great ending did not make up for the loneliness one bit.

FUCK OFF