How our society is becoming more like the one in WALL-E

[ShyViolet]

Interesting! And kind of depressing too:

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/fil ... pia-wall-e

[James]

While I was reading it a popup window appeared complaining I was using an adblocker and threatening they couldn't survive without advertising.

Kinda ironic since one of the bullet point was "Adverts are all around us...especially right in front of our faces"!

[droosan]

Ehh; that's hardly a 'modern' problem:

[James]

Not sure how young people choosing to have less sex is a bad thing or related to the Wall-E future. If anything it might prevent the overpopulation of the planet!

[EricJ]

The minute I see an article trying to put "Wall-E" and "Society" into the same sentence, I immediately go in knowing they're going to go for the "Fat lazy people in scooters" angle.
Despite the fact that Pixar backpedaled on the final cut of the movie, and said that the humans' inability to walk was a result of bone-loss from years in low-gravity space. (Which is a real thing.) Even put a whole scientific featurette onto the DVD.

With so many axe-grinders trying to "prove" personal social points out of it, Wall-E has become the Office Space of Pixar.

[Ben]

Haven't read Vi's link yet, but I wrote this as part of my 2008 review:

...the BNL name could well be taken for a metaphor of where we humans are heading: an insular society in which we get lazy talking to each other via flatscreens instead of face to face, by and large.

I hate that it has actually become like this.

[ShyViolet]

I agree and that's one of the biggest reasons I'm so glad 3D failed. It definitely felt like watching a movie alone and totally took away from the theater experience. (Think the people in WALL-E all watching stuff but completely unaware of each other.)
And it looked pretty stupid, too. Lol.

[Dacey]

3D didn't "fail." It just became something that studios weren't doing for every major tentpole. There are still movies like The Jungle Book which really find success within the format.

[EricJ]

It's not even fail-ING:
Disney tried to TELL us "Everyone in the industry knows 3D was failing" as an alibi for why they tried to circle the wagons on theatrical reissues after Monsters Inc. didn't get as many theatergoers (who knew it would be coming to disk anyway, seeing as it had already been announced) as they had for the 3D Lion King, and for why they could pull back on Blu 3D releases after we all threw that tantrum on the Oz disks.
Which was kind of a hard thing for them to get away with saying about "Everyone in the industry", when they were not only the ONLY studio to stop making 3D disks and releases, but Pixar and Marvel were still cranking them out under the same roof.

Like Trump's reluctantly having to admit Obama's birthplace, Disney now seems to be going back to 3D releases slowly, with their recent Blu-rays of Zootopia and Star Wars: Force Awakens. (No Jungle Book or Pete's Dragon disks yet, though, apart from digital.)
Although at this point we're probably not getting that rumored "3D Prequel Trilogy + TFA" box after all, unless it turns up as a DMC exclusive.

As it is, the only people who believed that "3D was Dead" (apart from--yep, you guessed it--the Katz-man, who wanted to explain why DWA movies weren't doing well), are those "And it looks stupid too!" folks who WANTED to believe it, because of some personal misdirected anger issue against third-party CGI movies, ticket surcharges, or having to buy a new screen/player two years after the last one...Boo-hooz. Didn't work.

(Sorry for going long, but it's a subject I was already starting to cover this week on my blog:
http://movieactivist.blogspot.com/2016/ ... f-3-d.html
Yes. I have a blog now. Why not stop by, and make smug cutesy emojis in lieu of actual comment or discussion?)

[ShyViolet]

Hmm...


https://pin.it/qfbe6jsqti37un


(To view you have to open/log into Pinterest.)

[Ben]

What’s the gist, Vi?

[ShyViolet]

Basically a pic of the floating-chair WALL-E humans staring at individual screens without seeing the world around them; next to another pic of a real person in a comfy chair/bed looking up at a tablet affixed just above him so that he can watch whatever’s on there without any distractions. “IT’S STARTING.”

[Ben]

Stanton’s final directive, that WALL•E is of course going to change the lives of those around him, in particular the human race, is abundantly apparent from the moment we see how we’ve become a bunch of baby-like fatties in the intervening years; the BNL name could well be taken for a metaphor of where we humans are heading: an insular society in which we get lazy talking to each other via flatscreens instead of face to face, by and large.

[ShyViolet]

Pretty neat and accurate article, although a bit depressing. But what’s really cool is how close that graphic is to the floating chairs in WALL-E! .

(Ben, your above description/prediction above from 2008 is becoming more and more real. )

https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw ... nd-stupid/

[Ben]

I don’t think it’s just TV that is dumbing us down. Technology on the whole isn’t really "helping" us, at least not to *think*.

What's your best pal's telephone number? No matter, you don’t need to remember it: just select your pal's name and your phone will call them! How do you get to your pal? You don’t need to remember the way: just use a satnav and that will take you right there! People are not having to actually think anymore, or even cook for themselves, or do most things for themselves. Order stuff in, throw it away, just like the way language is evolving again to retain the "easy" everyday words, and forget the harder, perhaps more erudite ones. Everything is just being reduced to its easy/simple/dumb/dumber equation. This is what I think Andrew Stanton was commenting on with WALL-E, and what I was pointing to in my review of his film.

So says a grumpy old man, anyway.