Post by MidgardDragon on Sept 1, 2008 10:38:52 GMT -5
www.scriptfactory.co.uk/go/News/Reviews/Article_21.html
Getting the most from the set-up
Surprise is a key element in the very first moments. We’re seeing the Earth from space, we know it’s a story about a cute little robot, so why are we hearing an old showtune? Friends of Barbara will, of course, recognise a number from Hello Dolly! , but the rest of us will probably just pick out a few unfamiliar phrases. Something to the effect that ‘There’s a great big world out there’ and ‘we won’t come back until we get the girl’. No idea what this means at this stage, but certainly something for the audience to store away.
The rest of the opening section is all about setting the agenda for what’s to come. Who’s Wall-E? A lonely robot who seems to be the only survivor of a mechanised clean-up crew left to tidy up a detritus-choked planet while the human race takes a break in outer space. What does he want? Well, he’s feathering his nest with a range of nick-nacks which express his individuality, but what’s missing is that special someone. His pal the bug provides companionship, but, as his trusty VHS of Hello Dolly! makes clear, it only take a moment to fall in love. We’re only minutes in, but a clear understanding of Wall-E’s goal, an emotional objective the audience is right behind, is already in place.
The discovery of a little plant somehow surviving inside an old fridge is next up, the moment where everything changes, an indication of hope perhaps. Somehow there’s a talismanic power to this little green shoot, but we don’t yet know why. Trying to work this out, and at the same time empathizing with Wall-E’s need for a life partner, are the key elements of the story which get us eager to know what’s next. Simple but very effective.
The arrival of a spaceship depositing Eve, a robot of elegant lines and a fierce temper, provides the answer to all Wall-E’s yearning. This section is like a mini-movie in itself, as initial frostiness gives way to communication – she loves his nest, she gets him, so he offers her his most precious gift, the plant. This surely will set the seal on their happiness…
Can’t be that easy? It isn’t
The writers here really understand that if anything bad’s going to happen to the protagonist, you get maximum dramatic value out of it when the audience is expecting something happy. Ergo, Wall-E gives Eve the plant, but instead of loving him forever, she pockets it then shuts down entirely. Now that he’s had this brief moment of bliss, being alone again is so much worse, as he tries to hold her hand by wrenching it free from its sleep position.
And the effect on the audience is? To make us want what Wall-E wants with even more intensity. We’re touched by his standing by the dormant Eve, sheltering her from the rain and so on. It looks like there’s no hope, but his instinct to love and nurture refuses to admit defeat. Indeed, the stakes are raised even higher when he hangs on to the spaceship which has returned to collect her: he might even die to preserve his hope of reviving his beloved. This series of beats ramps up the emotional intensity of Wall-E’s quest and prompts suspense as we wonder what awaits Wall-E, Eve and the plant up there in the stars. It’s all build, build, build.
Taking it to the next level
While the script is incredibly economic in setting up Wall-E’s dream, giving him a tantalising sniff of happiness, then putting him in more jeopardy than he’s ever known, what’s really special about it is the way it widens its scope once the action shifts to the massive space cruiser Axiom. On Earth Wall-E did his own thing, but here it’s all incredibly mechanised and regimented as the very logical-sounding name of the ship suggests. Now it’s not just about one little robot and his plight, it’s a matter of two opposing worldviews: winging-it individualism versus rigid conformity.
Once we get inside the ship, the POV moves away from Wall-E for the first time. We see the humans on the ship in total thrall to the mechanized consumerism which is all laid on for them. Hopes are not high that Wall-E will find any help here in getting back Eve and returning her to life, but the story now has thrown up new issues which reflect back on our own lives. Might this satiric image of bloated consumption not be so far from our own experiences? With the suspense over Wall-E’s plight strong enough to keep us watching, the writers take the opportunity to widen the issues, but it’s precisely because they’ve set up a gripping suspense situation that they can take the time to do this.
Furthermore, when we do learn Eve’s purpose (the writers hold back as long as they can for dramatic effect), it’s made clear that the survival of Wall-E’s little plant is actually pivotal for the whole of mankind, since ‘Operation Recolonize’, by which the Axiom’s Captain will set a course back to Earth is predicated on the plant illustrating that the planet is once again capable of supporting plant life. The stakes are raised yet again, because we’re not just rooting for Wall-E, but the entire human race.
The ripple effect
Perhaps the most striking structural device in the screenplay is the way it uses a sort of ‘ripple effect’ by which Wall-E’s spirit of individualism rubs off on and changes those he encounters on the Axiom. This is worked out in some detail in the story’s mid-section on the ship, and by giving Wall-E some cohorts who now share his values, it enables the battle to be won in terms of saving the plant and getting the Axiom back to Earth. So how does it play?
The Captain: He’s content to stick to routine until Wall-E arrives and he gets the computer to analyze the soil the lifter-loader’s tracks leave behind. He’s never seen dirt before, and soon he’s asking the on-board computer to define ‘Earth’, the first question in a new thirst for knowledge whereby he discovers the idea that you can grow real food from plants in the ground. It’s the seed which grows into a determination to get back to Earth.
John and Mary: An encounter with Wall-E jolts these previously passive passengers out of their torpor, soon they’re splashing in the pool in defiance of the rules, and saving the toddlers from harm when the ship is later thrust into chaos. The nurturing urge is reawakened…
The cleaner robot M-O: Single-minded in his determination to clean up Wall-E’s muddy tracks and save the ship’s shiny floors, he eventually rescues the situation by ignoring his programming and saving the plant when it’s at risk of being trampled in the crowd.
The dysfunctional to the rescue: Sent to the repair bay, Wall-E encounters a whole gaggle of devices who follow their own rules, and it’s this crazy gang who ride to the rescue when powerful Otto the auto-pilot (whose single red ‘eye’ the grown-ups will instantly spot as a witty pointer to treacherous HAL 9000 from Kubick’s 2001) threatens to keep the Axiom in deep space.
Each of these individuals and devices have their own little character arcs woven into the fabric of the story, but it’s the effect that Wall-E has on them which turns them around, thus providing the support-group which enables him to keep on fighting the good fight. It’s a model of how to use supporting characters to widen the scope of the story and keep the plot moving.
To nurture is human
Clean and coherent though it is, it’s arguable that the elaboration of the story means it spends a bit too much time on the to and fro of changing fortunes within the ship. There are however moments within this substantial section which are worth pointing out. It seems an odd time, for instance, when in the thick of things Eve plays the video footage which shows how Wall-E looked after her while she was shut down and holding the plant, but we eventually come to realise that this scene has important ramifications. For one thing, it’s a reminder of the idea of nurturing which seems absolutely central to the script, and here foreshadows the moment where the Captain realises that just as the rather wilted-looking plant needs someone to care for it, so does the Earth itself. It’s also planting a seed in Eve, for the later sequence where it will be her turn to look after Wall-E (even if we in the audience don’t realise this just yet). Scenes like this, which look back and forward, can really help to give the story a feel of thought-through coherence which sustains the audience’s confidence in the storyteller.
Can it be that easy? It isn’t (part 2)
The confrontation between individualism and conformity seems to be won when the Captain at last realises that the plant is a signal to take the ship back home to Earth, where a bright future awaits Wall-E and Eve, and indeed the whole of humanity. Again though, the writers hit us with a killer blow: Otto the auto-pilot has secret orders to over-ride ‘Operation Recolonize’ and keep the Axiom in space rather than let it return home to a future its unyielding logic still deems uncertain. He’s also powerful enough to shut down Eve and zap Wall-E. From potential joy to imminent disaster in seconds. It’s great drama, great screenwriting. Learn from it.
Decision time
Of course, we know that Wall-E and Eve aren’t done for entirely, so when they regroup in the bowels of the ship (with the plant still in their grasp) it’s decision time. Save themselves and flee back to Earth, or accept the fight and ensure that the plant fulfils its purpose of saving humanity. Eve chooses the former, but Wall-E over-rules her and they accept the mission. Why put her ‘wrong’ reaction first? Well, it reinforces the value of the ‘right’ decision by having it directly following the heart-in-mouth moment where Eve chooses selfishness over selflessness – evidence again of the writers using every little trick to keep pumping the story’s dramatic intensity. It leaves Wall-E and Eve with another mountain to climb, having to defeat the formidable Otto before uniting the twin objectives of saving the Earth and making a new home for themselves.
Can it be that easy? It isn’t (part 3)
The most accomplished screenwriters know that a climax has to feel like a climax, so the largest scale action set-piece in the whole movie pieces together the battle to overcome Otto and initiate ‘Operation Recolonize’. Having accepted the challenge of the fight, Wall-E and Eve now find the dysfunctional devices, the Captain and even M-O the dinky little cleaner robot coming to their aid. Textbook stuff, and, naturally, the combined good guys win. All back to Earth and lets get planting, except…the writers have their most fiendish trick yet in store for us. Almost crushed in the fight against Otto, Wall-E’s in bad shape, but by following the repair process she witnessed him performing on himself in one of their early scenes together, Eve’s able to repair him. A healthy Macintosh-style ching! later and he’s rebooted. But, to guaranteed gasps from the viewer, he’s not the same. He’s just a machine following his programming. No reaction at all to his favourite nick-nacks. From the story’s greatest triumph to its gasp-provoking emotional nadir in mere instants. This is rollercoaster writing at its finest.
To nurture is human (revisited)
They’re not really going to leave Wall-E like a zombie, are they? Of course not. With a few notes of ‘It only takes a moment’, his favourite song from Hello Dolly! , and a touch of her hand in his little gripper, Wall-E is himself again. When all hope seems to be lost, it takes an act of individual thinking outside the box to nurture the return of life. We saw it when Wall-E preserved the plant in the first place, when he stuck with Eve through thick and thin, now we’re seeing it as Eve revives him in turn – and indeed as the returning humans start to care again for the planet they so nearly destroyed. There’s clearly a recurring theme here, cannily underlining the message the writers would like us to take away, an idea that’s been put to the test by the dramatic obstacles the characters have overcome, and one that feels fully earned by the time the end credits roll on another Pixar screenwriting masterclass.
Hints and Tips
• Framing the protagonist’s objectives early on and delineating the scale of the obstacles they face can help get the audience on board from the outset.
• Looking at the hero’s plight not just in terms of plot points but a whole value system under threat can expand the scale of the story to a satisfying degree.
• Allowing the protagonist’s influence to impact on supporting characters can be effective – since help may be needed to face down an all-powerful antagonist.
• Scenes which visualize the key themes can be usefully dropped into the story at various points providing they don’t hold up the flow – it can be worth reminding the audience of the message because they can lose sight of it, particularly in a busy action-oriented narrative.
Surprise is a key element in the very first moments. We’re seeing the Earth from space, we know it’s a story about a cute little robot, so why are we hearing an old showtune? Friends of Barbara will, of course, recognise a number from Hello Dolly! , but the rest of us will probably just pick out a few unfamiliar phrases. Something to the effect that ‘There’s a great big world out there’ and ‘we won’t come back until we get the girl’. No idea what this means at this stage, but certainly something for the audience to store away.
The rest of the opening section is all about setting the agenda for what’s to come. Who’s Wall-E? A lonely robot who seems to be the only survivor of a mechanised clean-up crew left to tidy up a detritus-choked planet while the human race takes a break in outer space. What does he want? Well, he’s feathering his nest with a range of nick-nacks which express his individuality, but what’s missing is that special someone. His pal the bug provides companionship, but, as his trusty VHS of Hello Dolly! makes clear, it only take a moment to fall in love. We’re only minutes in, but a clear understanding of Wall-E’s goal, an emotional objective the audience is right behind, is already in place.
The discovery of a little plant somehow surviving inside an old fridge is next up, the moment where everything changes, an indication of hope perhaps. Somehow there’s a talismanic power to this little green shoot, but we don’t yet know why. Trying to work this out, and at the same time empathizing with Wall-E’s need for a life partner, are the key elements of the story which get us eager to know what’s next. Simple but very effective.
The arrival of a spaceship depositing Eve, a robot of elegant lines and a fierce temper, provides the answer to all Wall-E’s yearning. This section is like a mini-movie in itself, as initial frostiness gives way to communication – she loves his nest, she gets him, so he offers her his most precious gift, the plant. This surely will set the seal on their happiness…
Can’t be that easy? It isn’t
The writers here really understand that if anything bad’s going to happen to the protagonist, you get maximum dramatic value out of it when the audience is expecting something happy. Ergo, Wall-E gives Eve the plant, but instead of loving him forever, she pockets it then shuts down entirely. Now that he’s had this brief moment of bliss, being alone again is so much worse, as he tries to hold her hand by wrenching it free from its sleep position.
And the effect on the audience is? To make us want what Wall-E wants with even more intensity. We’re touched by his standing by the dormant Eve, sheltering her from the rain and so on. It looks like there’s no hope, but his instinct to love and nurture refuses to admit defeat. Indeed, the stakes are raised even higher when he hangs on to the spaceship which has returned to collect her: he might even die to preserve his hope of reviving his beloved. This series of beats ramps up the emotional intensity of Wall-E’s quest and prompts suspense as we wonder what awaits Wall-E, Eve and the plant up there in the stars. It’s all build, build, build.
Taking it to the next level
While the script is incredibly economic in setting up Wall-E’s dream, giving him a tantalising sniff of happiness, then putting him in more jeopardy than he’s ever known, what’s really special about it is the way it widens its scope once the action shifts to the massive space cruiser Axiom. On Earth Wall-E did his own thing, but here it’s all incredibly mechanised and regimented as the very logical-sounding name of the ship suggests. Now it’s not just about one little robot and his plight, it’s a matter of two opposing worldviews: winging-it individualism versus rigid conformity.
Once we get inside the ship, the POV moves away from Wall-E for the first time. We see the humans on the ship in total thrall to the mechanized consumerism which is all laid on for them. Hopes are not high that Wall-E will find any help here in getting back Eve and returning her to life, but the story now has thrown up new issues which reflect back on our own lives. Might this satiric image of bloated consumption not be so far from our own experiences? With the suspense over Wall-E’s plight strong enough to keep us watching, the writers take the opportunity to widen the issues, but it’s precisely because they’ve set up a gripping suspense situation that they can take the time to do this.
Furthermore, when we do learn Eve’s purpose (the writers hold back as long as they can for dramatic effect), it’s made clear that the survival of Wall-E’s little plant is actually pivotal for the whole of mankind, since ‘Operation Recolonize’, by which the Axiom’s Captain will set a course back to Earth is predicated on the plant illustrating that the planet is once again capable of supporting plant life. The stakes are raised yet again, because we’re not just rooting for Wall-E, but the entire human race.
The ripple effect
Perhaps the most striking structural device in the screenplay is the way it uses a sort of ‘ripple effect’ by which Wall-E’s spirit of individualism rubs off on and changes those he encounters on the Axiom. This is worked out in some detail in the story’s mid-section on the ship, and by giving Wall-E some cohorts who now share his values, it enables the battle to be won in terms of saving the plant and getting the Axiom back to Earth. So how does it play?
The Captain: He’s content to stick to routine until Wall-E arrives and he gets the computer to analyze the soil the lifter-loader’s tracks leave behind. He’s never seen dirt before, and soon he’s asking the on-board computer to define ‘Earth’, the first question in a new thirst for knowledge whereby he discovers the idea that you can grow real food from plants in the ground. It’s the seed which grows into a determination to get back to Earth.
John and Mary: An encounter with Wall-E jolts these previously passive passengers out of their torpor, soon they’re splashing in the pool in defiance of the rules, and saving the toddlers from harm when the ship is later thrust into chaos. The nurturing urge is reawakened…
The cleaner robot M-O: Single-minded in his determination to clean up Wall-E’s muddy tracks and save the ship’s shiny floors, he eventually rescues the situation by ignoring his programming and saving the plant when it’s at risk of being trampled in the crowd.
The dysfunctional to the rescue: Sent to the repair bay, Wall-E encounters a whole gaggle of devices who follow their own rules, and it’s this crazy gang who ride to the rescue when powerful Otto the auto-pilot (whose single red ‘eye’ the grown-ups will instantly spot as a witty pointer to treacherous HAL 9000 from Kubick’s 2001) threatens to keep the Axiom in deep space.
Each of these individuals and devices have their own little character arcs woven into the fabric of the story, but it’s the effect that Wall-E has on them which turns them around, thus providing the support-group which enables him to keep on fighting the good fight. It’s a model of how to use supporting characters to widen the scope of the story and keep the plot moving.
To nurture is human
Clean and coherent though it is, it’s arguable that the elaboration of the story means it spends a bit too much time on the to and fro of changing fortunes within the ship. There are however moments within this substantial section which are worth pointing out. It seems an odd time, for instance, when in the thick of things Eve plays the video footage which shows how Wall-E looked after her while she was shut down and holding the plant, but we eventually come to realise that this scene has important ramifications. For one thing, it’s a reminder of the idea of nurturing which seems absolutely central to the script, and here foreshadows the moment where the Captain realises that just as the rather wilted-looking plant needs someone to care for it, so does the Earth itself. It’s also planting a seed in Eve, for the later sequence where it will be her turn to look after Wall-E (even if we in the audience don’t realise this just yet). Scenes like this, which look back and forward, can really help to give the story a feel of thought-through coherence which sustains the audience’s confidence in the storyteller.
Can it be that easy? It isn’t (part 2)
The confrontation between individualism and conformity seems to be won when the Captain at last realises that the plant is a signal to take the ship back home to Earth, where a bright future awaits Wall-E and Eve, and indeed the whole of humanity. Again though, the writers hit us with a killer blow: Otto the auto-pilot has secret orders to over-ride ‘Operation Recolonize’ and keep the Axiom in space rather than let it return home to a future its unyielding logic still deems uncertain. He’s also powerful enough to shut down Eve and zap Wall-E. From potential joy to imminent disaster in seconds. It’s great drama, great screenwriting. Learn from it.
Decision time
Of course, we know that Wall-E and Eve aren’t done for entirely, so when they regroup in the bowels of the ship (with the plant still in their grasp) it’s decision time. Save themselves and flee back to Earth, or accept the fight and ensure that the plant fulfils its purpose of saving humanity. Eve chooses the former, but Wall-E over-rules her and they accept the mission. Why put her ‘wrong’ reaction first? Well, it reinforces the value of the ‘right’ decision by having it directly following the heart-in-mouth moment where Eve chooses selfishness over selflessness – evidence again of the writers using every little trick to keep pumping the story’s dramatic intensity. It leaves Wall-E and Eve with another mountain to climb, having to defeat the formidable Otto before uniting the twin objectives of saving the Earth and making a new home for themselves.
Can it be that easy? It isn’t (part 3)
The most accomplished screenwriters know that a climax has to feel like a climax, so the largest scale action set-piece in the whole movie pieces together the battle to overcome Otto and initiate ‘Operation Recolonize’. Having accepted the challenge of the fight, Wall-E and Eve now find the dysfunctional devices, the Captain and even M-O the dinky little cleaner robot coming to their aid. Textbook stuff, and, naturally, the combined good guys win. All back to Earth and lets get planting, except…the writers have their most fiendish trick yet in store for us. Almost crushed in the fight against Otto, Wall-E’s in bad shape, but by following the repair process she witnessed him performing on himself in one of their early scenes together, Eve’s able to repair him. A healthy Macintosh-style ching! later and he’s rebooted. But, to guaranteed gasps from the viewer, he’s not the same. He’s just a machine following his programming. No reaction at all to his favourite nick-nacks. From the story’s greatest triumph to its gasp-provoking emotional nadir in mere instants. This is rollercoaster writing at its finest.
To nurture is human (revisited)
They’re not really going to leave Wall-E like a zombie, are they? Of course not. With a few notes of ‘It only takes a moment’, his favourite song from Hello Dolly! , and a touch of her hand in his little gripper, Wall-E is himself again. When all hope seems to be lost, it takes an act of individual thinking outside the box to nurture the return of life. We saw it when Wall-E preserved the plant in the first place, when he stuck with Eve through thick and thin, now we’re seeing it as Eve revives him in turn – and indeed as the returning humans start to care again for the planet they so nearly destroyed. There’s clearly a recurring theme here, cannily underlining the message the writers would like us to take away, an idea that’s been put to the test by the dramatic obstacles the characters have overcome, and one that feels fully earned by the time the end credits roll on another Pixar screenwriting masterclass.
Hints and Tips
• Framing the protagonist’s objectives early on and delineating the scale of the obstacles they face can help get the audience on board from the outset.
• Looking at the hero’s plight not just in terms of plot points but a whole value system under threat can expand the scale of the story to a satisfying degree.
• Allowing the protagonist’s influence to impact on supporting characters can be effective – since help may be needed to face down an all-powerful antagonist.
• Scenes which visualize the key themes can be usefully dropped into the story at various points providing they don’t hold up the flow – it can be worth reminding the audience of the message because they can lose sight of it, particularly in a busy action-oriented narrative.
