WALL-E: Why Pixar is More Valuable Than General Motors
The trailer's been on YouTube since December, 2007.
Disney ran a commercial for it during the Super Bowl
A bunch of previews followed, including one shown during the last game of the pro basketball finals.
And yet I knew nothing about WALL-E until it opened to astonishing reviews. Reading them, I quickly moved past my need to go to the clue store and got excited about a "family" movie that wasn't just for kids. This produced an unusual field trip: both parents taking our daughter to the movies, doing our small part to bring the first weekend's ticket sales to $62.5 million.
Pixar's animated film, for those who have missed the tsunami of praise, "stars" a robot known generically as WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class). He's small and square, with "eyes" that suggest a cross-breeding between binoculars and the lamp that is Pixar's symbol. His job: gather debris and compact it.
WALL-E is old and beat-up. It's been 700 years since people left the earth, and he's got the dings to show for his dirty, tedious work. He's also got a personality --- he has a sharp eye for collectibles and a deep longing for companionship. So when a robot called EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) comes to earth, romance ensues --- a nearly wordless love story, a ballet of gestures and looks that will be familiar to anyone who's watched the silent films of Chaplin and Keaton.
WALL-E will surely inspire no end of critical pokes and prods. Is it an ecological parable? What is its political message? Does its depiction of a mega-corporation called Buy n' Large suggest that unrestrained, globalized capitalism can't be stopped? If the future of earth is dust-covered wind turbines on a ruined planet, what, on the deepest levels, does the film call on us to do? And how does an apparent indictment of consumerism spawn a full set of robot products, from the inevitable WALL-E Lunch Box to the MP3-compatible iDance WALL-E?
Interesting questions, but not for me. The experience of watching a film this smartly conceived and executed left me appreciating it on the primary level: as a love story about the power of even the small and marginalized. One silly robot, one small plant, a catalytic emotional connection --- they change the world. Excuse me: they save it. Which is exactly the movie that Andrew Stanton, who wrote and directed the film, wanted to make: "Irrational love defeats life's programming."
It's as a cultural product, though, that I'm most interested in WALL-E.
In 2006, Disney bought Pixar. But by all accounts, Disney didn't devour --- and devalue --- Pixar. It left Pixar alone, to go on as what Stanton describes as "a film school with no teachers; everyone actually wants you to take risks." Those risks may have consequences, but no matter. "I never think about the audience," Stanton says. "If someone gives me a marketing report, I throw it away."
I have seen --- time after time --- how marketing departments and senior executives can't stop themselves from "improving" programming. They smooth the edges, make the message general, find the inoffensive middle. In the process, they remove surprise and originality.
And not just in Hollywood.
So it strikes me as no accident that the best commercial I've seen this year is will.i.am's "Yes We Can" video for Barack Obama, which was made on no budget by a passionate amateur. Or that the best film is WALL-E, created by a cadre of fiercely independent filmmakers at a studio that values independence.
And I don't think it's coincidental that Disney paid $7.4 billion for Pixar in 2006 and that the stock-market value of General Motors is now about $6.5 billion. Pixar challenges and delights, and those ingredients, plus a bit of luck, are the recipe for creating value. General Motors plays it safe and bets on old formulas --- and erodes its value. Perhaps a pundit might like to chew on that.
At the end of WALL-E, I didn't want to leave. The Peter Gabriel song was part of it, and maybe the tears of joy streaming down my cheeks had something to do with me staying in my seat. And then there's the fact that the creativity didn't end when the credits began--- there was a lot to watch after the movie was over.
Because I stayed, I saw something many may have missed --- the film's dedication to Justin Wright (1981-2007).
I googled Wright as soon I got home. I learned that he was born with a badly defective heart, and, at 12, got a transplant. His doctor saw he loved to draw and took him to visit Pixar. And there, he saw his destiny. After college, he got in as an intern. Later, he scored his dream job: storyboard artist. "People might get mad at me if they knew how good we have it here," he wrote on his blog. Sadly, not for long: In March, he had a heart attack and died.
I thought it was sweet of Stanton and Pixar chief John Lasseter to dedicate the film to Justin Wright. Then I saw it another way --- that this 27-year-old kid was much like WALL-E. Resourceful. Imaginative. Courageous. And totally fulfilled when he could express himself.
Lot of kids like that out there. Lot of grown-ups like that too. In a dark time, Pixar has given all of them a shaft of light.
[cross-posted from HeadButler.com]
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The idea of taking a small group of highly dedicated and talented people, equipping them with the best equipment available and then leaving them alone to pursue their dream, has produced some of America's greatest technological innovations. Pixar is only the latest incarnation of this.
Another one is the famous "Skunk Works" of Lockheed, which created such legendary aircraft as the U-2, the SR-71, the F-117 and others.
And yet another one is the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which in the mid 1970s pioneered all the elements of the modern personal computer (the graphical user interface w/mouse, WYSIWYG desktop publishing, networking, etc.), at a time when "computers" meant decks of punched cards fed to giant mainframes by dedicated operators.
The problem comes with productization of the ideas. Lockheed's Skunk Works never had to mass-produce any of their specialized advanced aircraft in quantity and maintain them for a hundred airlines. Xerox never understood the need to productize the PARC computer technology. Instead, Steve Jobs of Apple came along and copied much of it for his own new computer (which became the Macintosh). And Pixar doesn't need Disney's help for anything but marketing. None of these efforts depends on a huge infrastructure, the way General Motors does, with its huge network of dealers, repair shops, parts suppliers, etc.
Two comments to Jesse's great article:
(1) Disney, sadly, USED TO *BE* Pixar. The techniques they innovated for breakthrough animation like Snow White and others. Amazing. That said, at least someone at Disney had the sense to buy Pixar and then leave them the heck alone!
(2) GM (hardly worth a mention in the article's title) COULD HAVE BEEN the Pixar of automakers! But they crushed that possibility literally by destroying the GM1 electric car. Instead, speaking of NBA championship TV ads, all GM has to offer are those obnoxious saturation-level ads for the Denali SUV. Oh yeah, and they still have Cadillac Escalade ads in heavy rotation! "Never say never" my arse!
Wall-E brings back so much old school film work it's kind of amazing. Makes me want to go see it at least twice more.
Charlie Chaplin & Silent films are back!
if we have to be ruled by corporations let it be PIXAR.
saw WALL-E sunday at a matinee showing (it was packed with kids). i too didn't know anything about the movie, apart from the super bowl ad, until saturday night when a friend described the general premise to me.
after watching it, i was most surprised with how bleak and dystopic the themes were... if it weren't so cute, it would register as a pretty frightening vision of humankind's destiny.
it is dystopic because the animators and story people believe that, left to their own devices, humanity will destroy the planet. It is cute because those same story people and animators are absolute geniuses. I for one will enjoy watching this movie because of the Pixar story, not the dystopic vehicle it drives.
And you're arguing that we're not already headed down the path it depicts?
Dystopia's very real.
I saw the film this weekend, also. I was moved and entertained. At least 30-40 people stayed after the film ended for the beautiful song and credits. That song is a shoe-in for Song of the Year at the Oscars. No others need apply.
Your article seems like an ad for Pixar and the film. As if they and their film can do no wrong.
"created by a cadre of fiercely independent filmmakers at a studio that values independence"
Uh, maybe when you wrote that line, you forgot about one you wrote earlier ...
"In 2006, Disney bought Pixar."
They are not independent. The only reason Disney leaves them alone is because they are the new wave of how animated films are being done. Disney bought them to stay ahead of the competition. And while many might revel in the so-called technical accomplishments of their movies and chalk up their success to solely that, tell me how many truly independent films and studios benefits from an ad placed during the Super Bowl? Being owned by Disney sure helps that along.
I'm probably in the minority, but I don't find any of their films interesting, from either a technical or story point of view. And I certainly don't want my kids to get sucked into these movies, as all that really results is them wanting to buy endless Disney merchandise.
If you go to see Wall-E, you will also get to see previews of Disney's new "movies". Talking Chiuauas! Talking superdog actor dogs. Now that is the bottomless pit of unimaginat
Pixar owns the medium of computer animated movies. They own it technologically and they own it in the artistic space. Is there better art in animation? Absolutely. There was always better art in animation. But we are not talking about an animated short movie that wins a price at a all major European film festivals and then disappears to be never shown again. We are talking commercial animation. And there Pixar, once again, got it right.
And yes, I do love artistic cinema. I have been sitting through a Kurosawa adaptation of Dostojevski in Japanese which had Russian subtitles of which there were only two known cinema copies to exist and which attracted exactly two visitors on that day.
But I also love to be entertained with good mass entertainment. And Wall-E is just that. It's not going to make the hundred best movies of the century. At least it shouldn't. But it makes for a heck of a good time.
Dude, lighten up. You're way to tense. You should go see a good movie. How about Wall-E?
Aw, get off your high horse. I can't dictate your taste, but only a Luddite can dismiss the technical prowess of Pixar.
As far as being owned by Disney, so what? They were bought with the stipulation that Disney would not interfere with the "Pixar Way." It was actually in the contract. They operate like an independent studio, but with a Disney-size budget. To quote Jeff Garlin, a veteran actor and a voice in Wall-E:
"I've been an actor/come
And what's wrong with the messages of Pixar movies - the importance of friendship, love, family, team work and excellence? To dismiss these movies as mere marketing propoganda shows a level of cynicism that makes me wonder about the joy in your own life.
Disney bought Pixar because they tried doing by themselves and failed so fundamentally that they figured it was just better to 'own' Pixar and gain some of the profits themselves.
They leave Pixar alone creatively because it's how PIxar's always operated best: independent of the conservative tripe machine that is Disney.
If you truly don't like any of Pixar's movies (not even Finding Nemo), then you are truly in the minority, yes.
And in 2005, Ghibli recreated a tiny part of Pixar at their museum in Mitaka, Tokyo.
Totally looking forward to Julia Roberts promoting the American Girl Kit movie, it opens July 2nd.
There's a film released by Ghibli Studios called "Thank You Mister Lasseter" that shows how much he is valued. He was the one who made the Disney-Ghibli deal work. He's a wonderful human being.
John Lasseter is a wonderful person. That we get films from him is a bonus.
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