Offline with Jon Favreau - How "Wall-E" Reveals Our Changing Feelings Toward Tech

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Critic Emily St. James and Crooked’s Halle Kiefer join Max to talk about “WALL-E.” The 2008 Pixar film depicts a future in which humans are so addicted to their screens that it takes a robot mutiny led by a mobile trash compactor to get them to log off. Why did the filmmakers opt for a trashpocalypse? How problematic is the movie’s portrayal of fatness? Why wasn’t there cancel culture aboard the spaceship? Find out in our last installment of Offline Movie Club (for now!). For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

It is funny that the robot is the one who feels need for love in this time of disconnection and collapse, and it's all the humans who just really couldn't care less about it. Which is often a theme of movies about robots in this period in time, like AI is similarly about this. It's very much about the robots will remind us of what's good. It's a very boy and his dog type thing where it's like you have a dog and the dog reminds you and we're sort of swapping robots in there for a sci-fi thing. Yeah, I guess the difference is it was a time when we thought the robots were going to be designed by Apple.

So it would be friendly and nice. And now we know, in fact, they're going to be designed by Facebook. It means they're just here to like give a shit posting. I'm Max Fisher. I'm Hallie Kuefer. And joining us is the writer Emily St. James. Emily writes criticism, journalism, novels, and for television, which is a lot of writing.

Emily, you also have the forthcoming novel, Woodworking, coming out early next year, right? Yes, absolutely. I'm very excited it's coming. And you and I also worked together at Vox, I believe it was 500 years ago. Yeah, I was much younger then and had more energy and didn't have a toddler, and those things are not related at all.

Well, we're so excited to have you here. This is the Offline Movie Club. Every episode we discuss a great movie and how it reflects or shapes how we think about technology and the internet. This week we are talking about WALL-E, the 2008 animated Pixar film about a future in which we are so addicted to our screens that it takes a robot mutiny led by a mobile trash compactor to get us to look up and log off. Emily, let's start with you. What do you think makes this movie important for how we think about technology and the Internet? order anything you want without leaving your chair. But I do think that the thing that it is really prescient about is the ways in which we will anthropomorphize machines that maybe don't

have actual intelligence. And we're very like artificial intelligence is like a thing that we're all sort of talking about right now and feeling vaguely threatened by. But like, Wally, I want Wally to live in my house. You know, I want him to just like deal with my stuff. So I think that, yes, we anthropomorphize our Roombas and so on. And Wally sort of like taps into that quality. Right. Yeah, it was sort of like a time in which we were, because Eve, the other cute robot in it. Well, they're all cute.

That's the thing. Every new robot, I'm like, well, that one's adorable too. Even the evil robots are kind of cute. It's very charming, the evil robot. Yeah, I feel like it was because it's designed by one of the Apple designers, Eve. I didn't know that. Yeah, well, at least according to the trivia on Amazon Prime, it said their head designer designed Eve. And it was like that, like I said, 2008, like the time where technology was our friend and it was also aesthetic.

So it was like very pleased, like a puppy or something in our house and i feel like that is what our interpretation of it has been as like at least the consumers and it's interesting because we're talking about this week where i feel like the google function has fully collapsed this week i don't know if you've been googling anything and then you know it's obviously like now they have like meta ai on like instagram and facebook as well so it's like oh we were i i like the robots but they're bad at their jobs and wally's very. So it's like, oh, we were I like the robots, but they're bad at their jobs. And WALL-E's very good. So it's almost like we've moved. Well, I guess what that's like something that's didn't predict is like, well, what if the robots are

adorable, but they're not so good at their jobs anymore? That's where we've headed, I think. Yeah, I feel like I just want a computer that is basically a slightly more helpful dog. Like, that's where I want them to top out yes yeah do you think that the robot you would most want from this movie is wally i mean eve seems like she's got it going on like yeah i seem like she's a competence queen yeah and i also think that they are while he is a gay man in love with lesbian and i don't know why i'm watching i'm like this is like an intense like intense love it does feel, it feels queer, but not sexual. But I guess that's for them to figure out like what that would be.

I mean, they have a huge chosen family now of robots that can all live together. Yeah. And that's what I want for them. They do. They have a beautiful polycule at the end. Yeah, exactly. And so that way it predicted the future, I suppose. It is very 2008 where they literally took the premise of 2001, a space odyssey that the robot will like over interpret its mission and kill all of humanity. But like in a nice, cute way. Yes. That is definitely not how we would remake 2001 now.

Yeah. Another thing I was thinking about is how its depiction of eco apocalypse is very much like based in big box store Walmart. It is like it does sort of predict climate change, you know, in a fairly sophisticated way. But then it's like, we're going to get buried under all our junk from big box stores. And if you wrote this movie today and you were like, what's sort of the corporate thing you could tie in? It would not be that. It would be Amazon or something along those lines, ordering everything to your house i didn't want to skip ahead this is my concern last time i was like am i skipping ahead because i feel like that that is one of the things that gets right is like the branded future but the question is which brand is it yeah because to me it also reminded me it was like one of the big tech brands which of course we came up last time we talked about social networks like elon musk like watching this now it's like oh also a brand like he has created a technology brand that also is kind of junk like now that we see cyber trucks out and about it's like oh well that was bad you Cybertrucks out and about, it's like, oh, well, that was bad.

You did a bad job. And I think, yeah, it's like, that may be the critique of like Walmart then, but then now it's like, what is, and even Apple, I feel like people are kind of less, they're disillusioned with, or it has less cachet. The 2008 one was like, Apple was like, oh my God, like a brand that's cool and works and is the future. Well, I mean, it's Pixar at that time

is like this studio that can do no wrong. And now they're still around, but very much like they are not the cultural presence they were. Yeah, that's a really good point. They still make good movies, but they were like at the tech forefront. They were it, yeah.

I will say, I think it predicted something with Fred Willard. Fred Willard kind of feels eternal, but he does have a very like Trumpian, Muskean vibe. Yes, yes. You know? Oh, yeah.

Do we think he ad-libbed the gosh darn it's? That felt like that was a Fred Willard. I could see it. I could see it. He knows his brand. Again, it's not the brand. If he was running a third party ticket right now, I would on the podcast, I would say you shouldn't vote third party with throwing your vote away.

But in the booth, I would consider voting for Fred Willard. Oh, I think virtually anyone on there other than RFK that it's like, well, that was, yeah. I think like, I think like he would do good bits as president and like that would tempt me. I'd be like, but the bits, I don't know what his policy is, but. That's a good bit president. That's not the best kind of president you can have, but it's not the worst. It's certainly not the worst. Not the worst we've had. I lived through George H.W. Bush, so I remember i remember yeah his bits were not very good i never felt like he had the choking on the pretzel that was a classic george hw oh george hw sorry threw up on the japanese japanese yeah that is good that's a good bit yes okay well let's get

into what do we think is the biggest thing this movie gets right i will throw out i don't know if this was deliberate or not, and I'm curious what y'all's reading this is, but the movie, like, in retrospect, is really prescient about this idea that, like, we have these new gadgets, and they're so convenient, and isn't that so great, but at some point you will be absorbed into your gadgets and into your screen to the point of losing your humanity. I definitely didn't get that message from it in 2008, but, like, watching it now comes through really clearly. It's a weird post pandemic movie. It's very much like that. The vibe on the Axiom, all those people like in their chairs looking at their screens and like tapping buttons to change the color of their clothes is very much how I felt for much of 2020, 2021, how I still kind of feel because so much of our lives has moved indoors now. Like I'm recording this podcast in person,

but I do a lot of podcasting. And when I do, I'm usually on a Zoom screen. It's just very strange, you know? I get that feel from this movie. And I think, yeah, like the idea of not simply like the branded future, it's almost like we can envision the future through branding, but then we'll also find solace in like finding brand that represents us and how that pervades everything.

Because in the reality of this, there'd be Axiom, but there'd also be 20 other, whatever the other brands are. And it'd be like, okay, but who's going on what? It would be the capitalism of it. We'd have more options. Competition of the marketplace. Yeah. I think like one of the things I find interesting about this is also the degree to which it is cynical about the idea of corporations becoming basically our overlords in a way that is like not unprecedented in 2008, but especially in animated films is like, especially coming from Disney, which is a very corporate environment.

Yeah. I had never, cause you're right. It has shown up in other places, like Blade Runner. It's kind of like the corporate oligarchy future. But the idea that it got to the point where it's like, well, in a Pixar movie, of course, the corporations were rural and also destroy the world. Yeah. It's like a wild premise to just have in there. Yeah. And I think Andrew Stanton, the director, wanted it to sort of be an all-purpose apocalypse.

You know, he wanted there to be an ecological element and a commerce element. And he sort of accidentally created something very precious. Oh, that's interesting. So the trash thing was meant to symbolize kind of this, like, omni-apocalypse. And to some degree, like, I think that it is a good visual signifier of the end of the world.

You know, if it's just a robot rolling around a desert, then you're like, oh, that's kind of depressing. But he has a job to do, you know. it's just a robot rolling around a desert, then you're like, oh, that's kind of depressing. But he has a job to do, you know. Yeah. It's so funny because I had just assumed, and I guess wrongly, that they used the trash apocalypse just because it's, like, less upsetting for kids. But that we were supposed to take it

as, like, sotto voce, like, it's really the climate apocalypse is what's happening. I think, like, it's all in there. But I definitely, like, I think about this when I'm doing screenwriting. Like, you have to figure out a way to depict it visually. And one of the one of the struggles with making films about climate change is like they're not visually very exciting outside of like you have a huge storm. This is kind of a way to depict environmental collapse in a way that's visually engaging and instantly readable to anyone. What do we think was happening to President Fred Willard at the end when he's putting on that like mask and he's saying, let's get out? Like, where is he going?

He was in Alex Garland's film Civil War. Like that was just off camera. Okay, that checks out. I haven't seen it yet, but I assume that he's in it. Yeah. Something else that I was really struck by in this movie is that the like robot driven, autonomous convenience culture is depicted as this kind of permanent underclass like this movie is really marxist in a way like the third act is the proletariat uprising against the bourgeois robots who are invested in protecting the class hierarchy and then also they're the robots are still so moral as to protect them. Like, it's like the robots are only the best parts of ourselves. Well, I guess it's either it's an evil robot or a good robot,

and there's no in between. Versus, like, the robots would never abandon them. You know what I mean? It is the robots do develop a weird, like, class solidarity. And then also with most of the humans, actually with all of the humans, it's like literally we just have this one evil robot we all hate.

And he's sort of like, it's almost like you kind of understand like he was just given bad information, but he's really committed to it, which I guess is what evil is on some level.

He's just sympathetic. Yeah. Committed to the bit. He's committed. He's too committed to the bit. They do at the end, they establish the proletariat workers paradise

where everybody lives in a perfectly horizontal system. I do did i do always like that the last image has the plants on the hillside because you're like well they found one plant i don't know there's other stuff okay yeah it is the like prescience of the app economy and convenience culture in this just like continues to blow my mind that we ended up with exactly what they predict like door dash and like the door dash robots and the amazon delivery drones makes me wonder if like on some level people were taking cues from this movie and watching the apocalypse and being like we could make a lot of money with this yeah yeah i think like uh uh pixar of course steve jobs was famously on their board he was an investor and it

does feel to me like there's a lot of cross-pollination between Pixar and Apple. So I do wonder to what degree they were cognizant of how big the iPhone would become and change our lives. Yeah. And I feel like they probably are people that back then, like Steve Jobs, I'm sure, was like delivery robots. He was someone who was probably pitching that stuff from the beginning at a time where that was really exciting. And now it's like I see the robots and I want to kick them. So I'm like, get out of here. You're taking somebody's job. I did some research on Netflix for something else when I was a journalist. And like they back way back when they launched the company, their ultimate goal was we're going to be a streaming

site online, even though they were mailing you DVDs. They had in their like initial pitch to investors. There's this thing about like, and someday we'll be able to just put the movies online and you can watch them there and you're like oh they saw this coming and i do wonder to some degree yeah that's a really good point steve jobs being on the pixar board is a great point i had never made that connection but he is very much of this silicon valley generation that is simultaneously like we want to sell you as many iphones as possible but also like think of themselves as these kind of old school sixties communitarian back to the landers. So like, I feel like you can see deliberately or not that kind of contradiction in the world point or the worldview like in this movie. And I think also this is a period in which Pixar seems like they're going to split off from

Disney forever because Disney doesn't want to pay them enough money to keep releasing films. I believe WALL-E was going to be the last film released by Disney under their original deal. And then Disney buys Pixar in a very lucrative deal for Pixar. So it is like this thing of like, the anti-corporate sentiment in this feels like it's very baked in, just in the culture of Pixar at the time they were making this.

Oh, I see. That makes sense. Yeah. And you're right. It was Pixar movies like this used to feel like big cultural moments. And yeah, like it felt important that Pixar was coming out and saying, like, your devices are robbing you of your humanity. Watch out, which is a lesson that we all took to heart. And that's why nobody is ever addicted to their phone now. Absolutely. Yeah, that's true. And this was like for me as a big Pixar fan, this was for me kind of the end of their can do no wrong period.

Up is the next year I really love Up, but it does feel like they're shifting into another gear with that. And this is like, this was almost nominated for Best Picture

in a much more complicated lineup. It's such a big movie. Yeah, it was nominated for six Oscars. Oh, wow. And just missed out. It and wow. And just missed out. It and The Dark Knight just missed out

in the top category. And the nominees that year were very boring. What were, I don't remember. Slumdog, I'm going to do this off the top of my head.

Let's find out what happens. Slumdog Millionaire, Frost Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and, Oh, The Reader. What's the other one?

I'll think of this. I forgot. This is truly an all-time lineup of movies I do want to watch. I'm going to look this other one up. You keep talking. I did kind of enjoy Milk. I think Milk is a lovely watch. That was the best Oscars

opening, if you remember, because it was the Recession Oscars and it was Hugh Jackman doing a montage of all of the movies. And it was sort of like a Michelle Gondry cardboard setup. And I do remember that is the best Oscars opener. If I'm trying to remember the reader. Yeah.

The wrestler. Oh, Benjamin Button was that it? Benjamin Button was the other one. And you know what? What a weird year. I like Milk. I like Benjamin Button. I like Slumdog Millionaire. The Reader and Frostnicks and I can take our leave. But like you put Dark Knight and WALL-E in there. Yeah, absolutely. i have tried so many times to watch fucking benjamin button and

i've never no i don't care for it it's not for me it's not good i love david fincher but i'm sorry i like that movie a lot but uh we're that that movie predicted the future very well we're all aging backwards now okay wait how are we all aging backwards? Look at us. I mean, the three of us, obviously. But we have the technology now. That's true. It's the Badoo Zempik. Yeah, that's right. One other thing I think this movie got right is that with the benefit of hindsight, it is a movie about the perils of China shifting from an export to a consumer economy and therefore curbing its imports of recycled plastic.

Okay. This movie is Hu Jintao Thought, top to bottom. We really did, again, as someone who grew up with recycling, we did at a certain point say, eh,

we're just gonna make everything plastic. We sorry everybody. You know, like, and I don't know when this would have fit in, but like,

I don't know. Like, I don't know, even Apple, we really shifted into another gear of consumerism, but I don't know

what year that would have happened, but I don't know. With the explosion of plastic? Yeah. We're definitely still in it. Yes. Oh, absolutely.

And it does feel a little bit like this movie does feel like... This movie feels like collecting your recyclables. It feels like what Wally's doing and being like, this is making a difference. Exactly, yes. And they're just throwing it right in the ocean. And then it's ending up at our testicles and our fetuses. What is the biggest thing this movie gets wrong? Hallie, what do you think? I do.

The concept that technology will save us. And then the fantasy. Oh, I already said this. But the fantasy of technology is the best of us or the worst of us. When in reality, it is us. Which means it is also constantly failing again because of Google. But I feel like the idea that technology like the technology will save us when in fact technology is used to make people money because technology is being made in a capitalist system so it's sort of like yeah like i could see the axiom being built

but wally draws from a pool of like moral fortitude that like we give like that that's a real tip of a hat to us and obviously it's pixar so of course he has to be like a wonderful person but it's like i don't know if chat gbt is going to be wally i don't because i don't know if we're building that technology into that technology because we're not that like i'm not wally like i i'm i'm someone you don't even i'm on the ship you're not i'm not even doing anything like i'm not even interesting enough to show but um yeah i don't know i think a lot of the idea of technology, especially consumer technology, is like, oh, look at all this stuff and, like, the world's going to be so much better. It's like, we didn't resolve all that other stuff.

We never dealt with the past. So now the technology is just entering the stream of history with us. I was thinking as I watched this about how one of the early AI models was named Dolly, D-A-L-L-E. Sure, yeah. And I— The one that images, right? Yeah-L-E. Sure, yeah. And I- That's the one that images, right? Yeah, images. Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that.

I was thinking about how our, this we're living through the week of Google launching AI Surge, and it is just like, it's a very human archetype. It's somebody who very confidently says the wrong thing very loudly. And so it is like one of the things that we don't like about it is it's a thing we don't like in ourselves as a species where we're like, I have been wrong and just been so sure I was right a billion times

about how you're supposed to put glue in a grilled cheese. It is satisfying, but should we be eating it, you know? Yeah, your point about the technology presented as somehow better than us was I feel like something that showed up a lot of movies that like we did her, which is very different now because it's like Scarlett Johansson is like this being of pure generosity and compassion and wisdom. And now that we have the early versions of this, we definitely know that's not what they are.

They're just like money making machines. Right. definitely know that's not what they are they're just like money making machines right like i feel like if we were not to like step on too much what would be different if they made this now like wally would just be giving pop-up ads to all the people on that ship and trying and giving them some like clickbait to click on i do think like wally is very much in the et mode which means he's very much in the jesus mode like that's that's the character lineage there absolutely but it is and that is one of the things about E.T. is like he's just human enough to appreciate him. And I feel like Wally has a similar quality,

but the movie never bothers to explain where that empathy intelligence is coming from. I don't think it needs to, to be clear. I don't need a scene where Fred Willard's like, and Wally, I give you all my joy. But like it is a very interesting sort of thing is like, we imbue our machines with this sense of, of goodness. You know, I, I, we did at that time. And now I'm just like, ah, I have so many things that are buzzing

right now. Cause I got one text from my wife, you know? I feel like what we're doing instead of machines now it's dogs. I feel like everyone's putting so much on the dogs. The dogs are like, please, we're just out here. We're not babies. We're not you. We're just taking a poop on some grass. We're just animals. But yeah, that is our tendency.

I think the movie does have a theory for what makes WALL-E good. I think it's Hello, Dolly. Yes. I think that we're supposed to. The message I took from it is that having this tape on over and over again over the thousands of years that WALL-E is on Earth imbues WALL-E with all the goodness and purity from this Fred Astaire musical, which I buy a little bit. And I think that is also something that the movie gets wrong is because of planned obsolescence, WALL-E wouldn't work that long. They wouldn't build WALL-E to last like that. Because they got to sell more WALL-Es.

Yeah, we got more WALL-Es. We got a warehouse full of WALL-Es. He is like that Mars rover that. Because they got to sell more Wallys. Yeah, we got more Wallys. We got a warehouse full of Wallys. He is like that Mars rover that just kept going. And I do think that the plan is like by and large is going to like

exit Earth and so they have all these little guys to just do the thing. But I like when we see the big Wallys at the end that's neither here nor there. I thought that was cool too.

Yeah. I love seeing Papa Wally. It makes sense. One way where I think this movie actually turned out to be a little too pessimistic is the like watching it after the pandemic element because there's this kind of implication that if like you're ensconced in your bubble and you have your, you know, futuristic door dash, you have all your needs taken care of. white collar jobs who didn't have to go out and work like experimented with that. And we all went crazy because I feel like there is some basic irrepressible human need to connect with other

people or to feel like you're doing something meaningful that like really will push out. I do think we've gone through a decade in which our lives largely moved online to a real degree, especially during the pandemic, which accelerated a lot. And it feels like it drove the entire world insane yeah just like everyone on the planet now feels like we've bumped up against what happens when we don't have human contact and to be clear in wally these humans have not have been evolving in a different direction for 700 years or something but it is yeah it does feel like they would still you know hold hands occasionally yeah like there's one woman where she's complaining to her girlfriend about like her video date went badly and it's like well he can't live that far away like it's like oh right you could meet him but it also makes sense that you would be dating online

even within the same ship you know and like there's babies where the babies come from that's my question if these people are not like somebody's question that question too. Yes. Do we have some test tubes? Like what's going on here? Also, at one point, this is an annoying sci-fi nerd nitpick. At one point, the ship turns and everybody slides out of their chairs. That's not how that works. They had to have something. They had to have like a third act. Like, oh, no, all the babies are gonna be crushed.

Yeah. Yeah. I will say that my problem with this film has always been the third act, which is not like a new criticism, but I liked it much more this time for reasons I'm sure we'll get to in a second. But yeah, I feel like the movie drove me insane. And then also I did tear up multiple times when something touching. I'm like, oh, you got me again. When Wally almost dies like E.T. and Jesus before him.

Yeah, it is just like so gut wrenching. I never made the E.T. connection before, but you're right. Everything down to the sounds. And I feel like it's also clarifying for why E.T. is so purely good. Because, of course, E.T. is designed to be both Steven Spielberg's baby and also Steven Spielberg's dad. And like Wally is kind of both baby and dad. Yes. That's all we want is we want a baby dad.

All right. What is a moment you most related to personally also Emily I'm amazed you're doing this without notes I don't need notes I'm incredible I've been doing this a long time now

yeah go ahead so I wrote living in trash using the fantasy of romance as a placebo to get through your job and the end of the world and also i do think love is the only reason to be alive which is why he was brought back to life by true love's kiss at the end it's nice um so i feel like i related to that and everything else yeah obviously an indictment of my whole life for sure um but yeah i think

there was something where it's like yeah he had to watch the same movie over and over again to not go insane i've certainly again that was the pandemic you know yeah what was your pandemic watch over and over again um good john carpenter's a thing i i feel like it was horror just over and over again yeah why horror do you think oh i just love that's my favorite genre so it's just my comfort uh movies were all horror movies it is a great one i watched midsommar a billion times in the pandemic. What is wrong with you? Both. I don't know. The pandemic, way too stressful.

I think it's a release. It's a horrible story that is resolved when we're in an unresolved horror, I think. I was watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That was what was nice for me. Great. As for a moment I related to in WALL-E, I really feel like his relationship

with the cricket is just, or the cockroach. Yes, yeah. His relationship with the little cockroach is like, yes, I have had a million times when I've just been like, I like you little thing

that lives in my house and I'm going to let you stay. And I could easily see if I was the only person on earth that advancing to, I found a cockroach. This is my friend. Did you have one of those during the pandemic?

We had a spider that lives right outside our apartment that has a very elaborate web. And we just kind of let that spider live and do its thing. And I would every so often look at it and be like, hi, spider. How are you doing? And he looks like you're eating well. So it's, yeah, I did weirdly have a pandemic cockroach friend. I have a rat that runs across. There's like a chain link fence next to my bedroom windows. And so at night, like when the shade is down, I can see the rat running in the security light of the building.

And I do like it. I wish it well. Do you think it's the same rat? No, it's probably multiple rats. But that's none of my business. I don't need to know. It's the same rat. Do we ever learn the cockroach's name in this movie?

Oh, does it have a name? It doesn't really have a name. No. No, I guess, yeah, Wally doesn't name it, I don't think. It is a nice way to show Wally's need and desire for love. It is funny that the robot is the one who feels need for love in this time of disconnection and collapse, and it's all the humans who just really couldn't care less about it. Which is often a theme of movies about robots in this period in time.

Like, AI is similarly about this. It's very much about the robots will remind us of what's good. It's a very boy and his dog type thing, where it's like you have a dog and the dog reminds you, and we're sort of swapping robots in there for a sci-fi thing yeah i guess i guess the difference is it was a time when we thought the robots were going to be designed by apple so it would be friendly and nice and now we know in fact they're going to be designed by facebook that means they're just here to like give a shit posting yeah i related to when the woman in the chair gets turned around and says i didn't know

we had a pool i just the number of times that i've looked up at 2 p.m. and said like, wow, it's actually a really beautiful day out. I had no idea. I really related to that. She was taking the offline challenge, it turns out, by trying to get down to her screen time. Also, Wally the hoarder, that echoed for me. A hundred percent. I had my little stack of Blu-rays next to the TV and I kept thinking like, that's me, that's my boy. Underrated character in this movie who I related to is Moe, the little cleaning robot. Oh, yeah. He just follows Wally around.

He's the hero. He is the hero. And I also was like, that's how I feel when I have to clean things. It's just like an endless stream of things that never goes away. I like the idea of motivating yourself to clean by imagining that you've got the little Terminator over there for like how much dirt is on it. Yeah, it's all part of the proletarian workers' paradise. Okay, most unintentionally revealing moment. Well, I do think like the fatness in this movie is sort of just like,

it's, here are my notes, a fatness is a sign of failed society. The fact that they're fat, but they're also giant babies. Like that they have become, their fatness is emblematic of their babiness. Yeah. And I think that that to me is very 2008. Because I feel like I don't know when like body positivity and now body neutrality started. But there was a period of time and it feels like it was around this time where like, you I don't know, it wasn't even like fat jokes, but like fatness as like character defining. And it's sort of like, oh, these the idea of fatness is like, oh, you're fat because you're being tended to too much. When in fact, oh, a lot of people who are obese are

not being tended to. And also, I have been on a weight loss journey medically over the last nine months. So it's also been like, weird to see how literal everyone is about fatness. And then to see in the movie, it's like, yeah, people think this on some level or like that, that like fatness has a moral meaning that, you know, like at the end where he's like, I don't want to survive, I want to live. And that there's something in that, like them being fat is like,

well, this is just survival. It's not really living. And that's, I've obviously bringing a lot of my own stuff to this. But again, 2008, I just feel like, I don't know if that, if you made it now, I don't think we'd be doing it quite that way. The big knock on this movie, even in 2008, is this idea that it's depicting fatness as somehow lesser.

And also like that gets tied into once they get to the ship, the movie does lose a little bit of steam, but not like in a way that cripples it. But it is kind of coasting off the first half. I have always and I'm normally very sensitive to this sort of thing. I've never been as bothered by Nwali to the sense of fatness because I think, and this speaks to, I was watching this movie with my daughter who's 19 months. My daughter who's 19 months. That was a real fake out. I was like, oh, okay. Oh, she doesn't understand that she's a baby.

This is very different. This is very different if she's 19 months that was a real fake out i was like oh okay oh she doesn't understand this is very different this is very different if she's 19 yeah uh and when the people came on screen she pointed at them and said baby and i just was like i do think that we're meant to read them as babies first and for me that kind of saves it and i was reading more about this film and stanton originally was like they were going to be enormous gelatinous things. That was like humanity had evolved into a new life form because when you're in space, you like whatever your body like changes because your bone density collapses. And so they were going to have evolved into basically boneless things. And then he was convinced not to do that because it was not very, like, it didn't make a very interesting picture on screen. But, like, I absolutely understand, you know, especially with the culture of the time, the way in which this movie played into that.

I do think that I can get with it because they seem like babies before they seem like fat people, but they are both. And I do think they're cute and we are sympathetic to them. We're obviously not depicting them like, oh, we're disgusted by them. Like, we are supposed to believe that we are them. It's just funny. And I just think, like, if we were to make this movie now, like, it would be something different. I agree. I think that we would also have more ways to depict that, too.

Like, I feel like we're so familiar with the idea of falling into your screens and being addicted to technology now that it would be very easy for us to come up with another way to represent that. I think at that time, people were very much like, well, you know, babies stare at screens because like, that's the first kind of iPad baby generation. So it's like, yeah, would they stare at the screen, et cetera, et cetera. Does your baby stare at the screen? My baby loves watching stuff and we do kind of put rules on it, but um you know she's digs sesame street and bluey and we're starting to introduce her to movies and this one i thought was going to freak her out and it did not she had a good time um but yeah i think uh i think the baby aspect of it uh saves it for me and also uh what other movie has a love story between john ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy. Biggest real-world impact? I mean, the obvious one, it's not the most exciting one,

but a lot of those delivery robots clearly are modeled after WALL-E. You see them everywhere in LA. They're little WALL-Es. I hate to say it, they work on me. Because they gave them names now. And so you'll look and they'll say, like, Fatima on the back. And I'm like, well, you gave it a name. I want it to be okay. I want it to be okay. I want it to be well.

You want it to succeed. Yeah. We have a little cleaning robot in our building that is very obviously modeled on WALL-E. And I am like, it is not very good at going over the tiny, like, ridges in the floor where the fire doors are. And I always help it. And I call it my box son. So, yeah, I guess this movie worked on me because i love my cleaning robot i kind of feel like on some level this movie's biggest

cultural impact is yet to come like i feel like we need a little bit more time before we can recognize ourselves in this idea that we have like truly lost ourselves in some meaningful way as human beings by attaching ourselves so much like falling into our technology. It does have like kind of an ending that I think is correct. It feels like we're going through this moment of like we want to get back to trad, you know, going traditional. I want like I don't want to be a trad wife because there's a lot of terrible things associated with that. But I do kind of want to just like stay home and cook and make candles, you know. And I think that's like that's a fantasy that's built on the fact that like none of us can stay home and do anything. Like we're all working all the time. So of course

that is the fantasy. Yeah. Mine was just like, we already discussed this anthropomorphizing technology and then making us less like dubious of it. Like, I think if it was like this hostile idea of technology, we wouldn't have invited us in into our homes in the way we have, which is fine. But then again, when Google's falling apart, it's like, well, I guess we should have been a little more critical of everything. But they were so cute. What do we think would be different if this came out today? I think that the metaphor would be more obviously climate change. And I think it would be less

driven by, I talked about this already think it would be less driven by i talked about this already it'd be less driven by like a walmart alike and more by some sort of social media tech thing a movie that's somewhat similar to this as uh ralph wrecks the internet the uh ralph breaks the internet the second wreck at ralph film which is he goes into the internet and that feels like it's doing some wally style. It's not a movie on the level of this, but it's like an interesting examination of 2018 opinions on the internet. It's kind of like that classic Simpsons episode where Homer goes into the internet. Yeah. Which turned out not to have giant triangles in it.

I do feel like if we made this now, there would be way more screens. Yeah. Like you would have, there would just ipads out the wazoo also it is so strange to see them now all on their screens and nobody's doom scrolling yeah like i feel like it's a very like pre doom scrolling era depiction of technology like right now if we were going to make this movie everyone on that ship is a posting addict yeah like they are developing red pills that you and i have never imagined yeah i was gonna was gonna say, I feel like the only difference is, well, one with the climate change, I think there would be a certain other edge to it where like, again, like the quote,

like, I don't want to survive. I want to live. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if we're going to be doing either of them. But like, you know, and then also I think like there would be a lot more aggression in the people in the ship. Like I think like because they're babies, like they're likable, but there it would be a little more. I feel like we'd be a little more aware of how insane everyone would be or like there'd be more. Maybe they hated Wally or like was against Wally. Like there'd be maybe more of a little like they're getting reverse polarized against Wally by memes they saw on the ship. Well, you know, they probably would, you know, like exactly. I do like and part of this is like me imagining what does the kids movie version of this look like now?

And like kids movies rarely will dig that deep, but it does sort of feel to me like it probably would have more interest in class. You know, like a kids movie is like, it does feel like Pixar especially is interested in some of those themes. It does feel like they would make that slightly more overt. Obviously this film has that in there already. But I do feel like there would be a little bit more about like... A class divide among these. Yeah. Disney-friendly versions of like, well, you have to remember the workers, which means basically just, you know, slightly nicer capitalism. I feel like that is kind of what the movie is about. Like, I feel like Wally and Eva,

like, are the workers who ultimately are the heroes of the story and save everybody. But I think you're right. We would be more... The humans would feel more compelled to make a choice between the status quo and whether they're going to side with the workers. But yes, it is very strange to see all these thousands of people who are on the internet all day and nobody's mad.

Nobody's fighting with each other. They have all their needs being met is the thing. They just placate. That's where we are now. Yeah. I feel like the people who were the biggest super posters are the people who are the most bad online

are the ones who have all their needs met. I think that's part of why people do it. That's true. I'm constantly telling everybody secretly. I was going to say, I wonder if the villain, not the villain, but I wonder if Fred Willis' character would be a little more Trump-like.

But I don't know whether that's. He's already pretty Trump-like is the weird thing. They would dial it up. They would dial it up. Man, I would love to see Fred Willard's Trump. I would really enjoy seeing that. Is he still alive? He's dead.

Okay. Well, then we're never going to see him again. We'll wait for the AI Fred Willard to come back. And we'll have him on this very podcast. This podcast. You said that you thought that there were issues with the third act that you went into i just think that the third act is it's sort of shoehorns a standard action climax into a film that maybe doesn't need one quite that much oh they're fighting through this yeah it does need like it obviously needs a big action-packed ending it feels like

it's building to that but it certainly does sort of have this sense of oh now we're fighting and now you know i think when uh i think there's maybe one beat this is just screenwriter brain i think there's maybe one beat too many of where's the plant we have to save the plant that's like a thing that you kind of it feels like once the plant goes down the trash chute we should really kind of just get it back up one more time but i'm not like i don't think it's a bad third act i think it's quite good i think the ending of it is very lovely but it does feel like there's a little bit of uh busy work on the way to you know eve uh resurrecting wally and then the humans being like let's put these plants in the ground and see what happens. I do like the Tradwife ending aspect of it is so funny.

And I do wonder if that would feel more loaded now, if they would be more careful or like thoughtful about that. Because it is a like, I thought that the existing versions of Tradwife that you see on social media were idealized. But the version where the robots do all the work for you, but you just get to like be the trad wife passively. No, I get it. Oh, it looks great. It's yeah.

It's cause I'm, I'm, I'm there. I'm there. If we could pull it off and we won't, it would be great. The robots would definitely have an uprising because they, and we couldn't blame them.

That's no, absolutely not. This is the prequel to the matrix. This is, there's one crop failing and the robots are like, you know what? Screw you guys. Why do we need to be planting all these crops? We've got our solar panels. Not to criticize,

what was the last Matrix? Was that Resurrections? Resurrections. Yeah. But there are two adorable robots in it. And I remember, I had not seen any of the Matrix movies for like 20 years. And then I watched The Force One, which was the stupidest idea. I was just like, who's that guy? Who's that guy? And there's two robots in it.

I think it's Sebulba. And I was like, great. This is going to be about cute robots. And then you were like, don't see them again. I was like, no. I was so invested in these robots. They're in like one other scene. I needed them to come. I was like, they have names. They're cute. I've seen a movie before and then we don't get

it back. And I do wish we had more with them. one of the nice things about that movie is it posits that it's not just humans versus machines anymore and that's a great idea and then you're like but also we have these cute robots and you're like oh are these here to be toys and no they're not yeah they got me they got my ass they just are there they're just there to be cute they're on the side of the humans they're like we just have a couple yeah i think they're like comrades i think they're on our side they do end up like one of them we just have a couple. I think they're like comrades. I think they're on our side. They do end up like one of them does end up doing some sort of thing where they she helps or it helps Priyanka Chopra Jonas like hack into the Matrix or something. But yeah, it's been a while since I've seen that movie, which I very much enjoy.

It's it's good. It's good. It's very good. I love all the matrices. It does feel like robots, whether in WALL-E form or her form, have not been featured in movies that much lately. I mean, if just the technology is moving too fast or a relationship to it is too complicated, it's a little too raw, too real. I also think they're not making movies that aren't making $500 million. Well, you have way more experience in this world.

Every movie that comes out, that was a decision made by an algorithm filtered through the mind of a 56 year old billionaire you know so it's not even like oh the technology is giving us ideas it's like that technology is giving it to somebody who we hope has some kind of taste and we have no idea i mean i think the last really big robot movie there have been others but the last one that really gripped the culture was x bacana oh yeah 2015 film where film where Alicia Vikander is a robot who may or may not have bad aims for humanity. That's almost 10 years ago. Yeah, almost 10 years ago. I mean, obviously you have things like there are various robots in the Marvel Universe, but they don't feel like classic movie robots.

The Transformers are robots, let's be honest. That's true. You're absolutely right. And you're right to say it. Now that the algorithms are in charge of what we watch, maybe they've decided to take all the robots out so we won't be scared of them when they finally sky net us all. That's true. Well, it's working. I'm scared of us. I'm scared of all humans. I did want to ask my wife if she thinks Transformers are more robots or more aliens. And she said, I think we should get a divorce. We didn't, but I did ask her that question. I think, Halle, your point about we're more scared of us now, I think is actually like

gets at the thing I couldn't quite articulate about what feels weird about this movie, which is that I feel like now, if you have like the robots come after us, it has to be some reflection on because we built something in ourselves into the robots that was bad that is now being manifest. It's almost like an old 50s sci-fi way of looking at technology as a way to kind of manifest and explain our flaws and problems that we're facing. Or the villain would just be a human. Like the robots would be right and we would be wrong.

I could see them doing that. Very often robot movies are a way for us to talk about um slavery through like a lens of right you know making it more generalized as opposed to the specific american history with slavery this right tendency for humans to create an underclass that we don't pay and forced to work and you know blade runners about that the matrix is the flip, but, like, that's in the backstory of that. This movie is... I, Robot. This movie exists in that universe and is like, but let's not think about that too hard. And I think that that

is, yeah, I do feel like if we were making the movie now, there would be more of a thought process around that. I think we'd still be like, Wally and Eve are cute and they're in love. But, you know. Yeah. And we need that. We do need that desperately. I really felt like this was Pixar's Das Kapital.

I really felt like the class conflict was in there. But I take it. It's very, it's hidden beneath the cuteness. And it is like, it is a kid's movie. I don't think that they were going to, this movie, if you made it today, would not have Fred Willard come out and be like, listen, Karl Marx was right. I mean, yeah. All right.

Well, let's wrap things up with the segment true or false. I'm going to read out a series of rapid fire quotes or plot points from the movie. And you tell me whether or not you agree with that statement or quote or whatever that is from the movie. True or false. The cupcake in a cup. It sounds pretty good. True. True.

Absolutely. 100%. I would consider surrendering my humanity for it. True or false, if you wanted to teach a robot to love, and you could show it only one piece of art of any medium to do it, your best choice would be a Gene Kelly musical.

Depends on the one, but I'm going to say false. Really? Depends on which one. I think I'd have to have a robot teach me how to love. So I'm going to pass. Okay. Can I pass?

I wouldn't know. Do you have something specific in mind? No. I think like, okay. So we have to teach. It's Benjamin Button, right? Yeah. It's Benjamin Button.

That's the great love story of our time. No. I do think like a musical is a good choice. I'm just struggling to think of the right one. I don't know if it would be Gene Kelly. As a La La Land apologist. Oh my God. Wait. Really? I struggling to think of the right one. I don't know if it would be Gene Kelly. As a La La Land apologist. Oh my God. Wait, really?

I like La La Land. Come on. I don't. Yeah, but the only excuse I had La La Land, I had a screener, I go home for Christmas,

my entire family watched the opening sequence and in dead silence and then my brother goes, do you guys want to watch Con Air? And we put on Con Air and I've never seen the rest of La La Land

and I feel absolutely fabulous about that. It's a beautiful ritual. It's a good movie. I think, now that I think about it, I think Moulin Rouge because that is a movie that like, not only will you learn about

a beautiful, tragic love story, but also you will learn like roughly 50 years of 20th century culture in like two hours. It's a good way to catch up. I'm going fan of the opera. Just teach them something deeply fucked fucked up if we're fucked up you're fucked up sorry robots i think my answer would be a progressive news podcast i've listened to enough of your shows to know there's some long-term romantic arcs that are

okay okay uh true or false uh fred willard would have been a great president covered this yeah absolutely uh true or false if you have a crush on someone and they slip into a coma it would be so nice and sweet to drag them around on lots of romantic dates that they are not conscious for true or false i'm gonna say i'm gonna say false yeah um although if you're a robot i think the rules are slightly different okay but i'm not a robot the fact that eva is so strong and powerful makes it a little bit less creepy um i'm gonna say true but only because i'm imagining myself in a coma and if someone want to do that i'm fine with that yeah okay prop me up bring me i want to be i want to be in the mix well we've got that on the record now yeah so now we know

what it what's the when you see my my comatose body wrapped up around christmas lights yeah that's fine big thumbs up for that. Okay. True or false, directive classified is a great pickup line. True. True. Yeah. I think true.

Feels right. I think it's a cool one. Having lived in DC, I've seen that one a lot. Oh, yeah, yeah. I bet. True or false, if you went to someone's home and they had a big mouth Billy Bass on the wall, you should do what Eva did and shoot it with a gun. False. I love big mouth Billy Bass. Yeah, I you should do what Eva did and shoot it with a gun. False.

I love big mouth Billy Bass. I want them to make a comeback. It's been enough time. Did either of you own a big mouth Billy Bass at any point? I did. Was it on the wall? I got one for my high school graduation. Oh, cute. It was on the wall in my

college dorm room and it mysteriously went missing shortly after I got married. So, it's great. So, you can see your wife just throwing it in the garbage disposal. No, I think, as I recall, it broke so it no longer turned out to sing. It was just like, it was not like its mouth was not moving. It was just like music was playing. It was very eerie.

They all, after a year or two, they become like big, creepy, uncanny valley, big mouth belly dust. And then you put it on a big pile of garbage and then Wally comes later and cleans it up. True or false? Last one. The key to reclaiming your humanity is houseplants. Yes. True. True, 100% true. Pandemic, I feel like proof that went out.

Absolutely, yes. That was how I did it. Or cats. I'm still doing it. Or cats. They're both great choices. If Wally had had a cat, man. Although then there's no reason for Wally to leave the planet.

No reason to bond with Eva. If he just left a cat behind to wait for him, I'd have a lot more questions. Cockroach, I'm like, well, not cockroach. Alright, well, this was Offline Movie Club. Emily, Halle, this was great. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me.

Offline is a Crooked Media production. Our movie club episodes are written and hosted by me, Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Charlotte Landis. Audio support from Jordan Cantor and Kyle Seglin. Kenny Siegel and Jordan Katz wrote our show's original theme music, and the remixed movie-specific bangers you hear at the top of each movie club are composed by Vassilis Vatopoulos.

Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Reid Cherlin for production support.