Lileks On Wall-E

He loved it. It is, in my view, the greatest Pixar picture yet, although I was very, very fond of "A Bug's Life." Classic Lileks passage on how human CGI robots can get:

Note the following: At the start of the clip, and elsewhere, Eve’s eyes channel Maximillian from “Black Hole,” which is probably intentional.

How many fricken’ robots-in-love movies would stop the action to make the main character compare his hands to the elegant extremities of his beloved? Wall-E’s actions when he sits down, knocks his treads together and pats the seat next to him may, I suspect, have been vetted and discussed and considered at great length. (Or not.) It’s the most overtly human action he makes in the entire film – it’s not emulative of humans, it’s instinctive.

Eve’s vocalizations change here, if I recall correctly – there’s nothing in her previous utterances that reveal any emotion that’s not consistent with top-level programming. “No – no” is the moment that makes us see what Wall-E saw in her – and just to underscore the Pixar gift, the moment is understated.  Prior to this she’s been an impatient professional.

Bonus nerd-nexus: 2001 escape-pod reference with Ripley from “Alien” doing the countdown for self-destruct.

It's odd that a movie that predicts ecological doom can in fact make one more certain that the human race will survive our current predicament. Any civilization that can produce something as technically and artistically sublime as Wall-E cannot be doomed.