Andrew Stanton’s Wall.E will always remain a special film for me.
By Zafar Anjum
08 Sep 2008
I am not a big fan of sci fi movies. I would rather watch a western any day. This does not mean that I don’t enjoy watching sci fi. In the past, I have seen movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blade Runner, Star Wars, just to name a notable few, with great interest.
But Andrew Stanton’s Wall.E (Disney-Pixar Production, 2008), which is now playing worldwide and in theatres in Singapore too, will always remain a special film for me.
Not because Wall.E comes from Pixar and is a fantastic film but for a deep personal reason. Like many of you, I have been an ardent watcher of Pixar’s animation films. In the recent years, I remember getting my eyes moist watching some of the scenes in Cars and jumping with excitement watching the superhero comedy The Incredibles. In plain words, these films have brought great joy to millions, providing catharsis of a pure variety.
But Wall.E will remain special for me because this is the first film I saw with my two and half year old daughter in a movie theatre. This was my second attempt to show my daughter a film in a cinema hall. Before this, I had brought her to the cinema to watch the screening of The Golden Compass but she had got bored only 20 minutes into the film. Instead of watching the film, she had demanded to play hide and seek with the theatre’s curtains. Hoping to get her interest back in movie, I let her play with the curtains for a while but fearing the wrath of the patrons at choosing this unusual venue for a hide and seek game, I soon beat a retreat from the cinema hall. I told myself that perhaps my daughter was not ready for a live action film in theatres yet.
I was waiting for Ice Age 3 to make her a proper moviegoer but when I saw Wall.E hitting the theatres, I decided to take a chance. And I succeeded.
What had transpired between The Golden Compass and Wall.E?
In between these two movies, of course, my daughter had got greater exposure to a lot of cartoon and animation films (She watched Pixar’s Finding Nemo and Monster Inc. many times over at home). For all the good or bad reasons, she already spends a lot of time in front of the telly or better still, in front of the laptop screen, enjoying the antics of Goofy or Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse.
But I guess it was not just the exposure. My daughter’s interest in Wall.E has also something to do with the film itself.
In the theatre, when I was watching the movie, I was also applauding the creative genius of the Pixar people who were behind this movie. How did they fashion a narrative, a robots-led sci fi futuristic story with minimal dialogue and human beings as extras, that could hold the interest of people raging from 2.5 years to 55 years? How did they weave this magic? What was it with Pixar that they could make one after another successful and memorable films while other studios gave duds after duds at the box office?
And I got my answer when I read an article by Ed Catmull of Pixar, the studios’s President, in September’s Harvard Business Review. According to Catmull, in a nutshell, Pixar operates on three basic principles: (a) everyone, irrespective of the hierarchy or departments, must have the freedom to communicate with anyone; (b) it must be safe for everyone to offer ideas; (c) we must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community.
What Catmull has advised, in the light of the creative processes and management practices at Pixar, has the potential to make firms in the creative business achieve remarkable results. But how many have the courage to implement such peer-driven processes for solving problems.
That’s why Pixar is unique.
Meanwhile, the impact of Wall.E has been so great on my daughter that she has been remembering the robot from the movie and demanding to take her to the theatre again.
So, Ed Catmull, Andrew Stanton and all those creative geniuses at Pixar, here is a personal thank you from a family in Singapore!
Zafar Anjum is the online editor of the MIS Asia portal.
