You’ve already been told, but I’m gonna tell you too. See it. We went last night, and about 30 seconds into the film I leaned over to Liz and said “yeah, this movie’s gonna make me cry.”
It’s not rare for a Pixar movie to make me cry, but I’ll go ahead and agree with Cabel that this movie has one of the most memorable first acts of all the movies I’ve seen.
Also of note, this movie employed one of my favorite visual effects of the past decade. I first saw it in the TV series Firefly. In that show, they would often show a spacecraft from far away, perhaps in orbit over a planet, and they’d suddenly zoom in on it. But rather than just zoom in, they’d try and re-create reality: the “camera” would be slightly off-center and out-of-focus, so you (the viewer) would watch as the focus and position were re-composed, as if there were a real cameraman between you and the scene. It’s such a subtle thing, but when you’re dealing with 100%-computer-generated visuals, it adds a sense of realism and dynamic range. It adds emotion and grit to an antiseptic visual medium.
Anyway, they did this sort of thing in WALL•E. Apparently, from what I’ve read, it was the director’s goal from the outset to treat the visuals with a good deal more attention to “reality detail.” They employed lens flares, tricky focus, hell, they even used atmospheric effects like the “shimmering” you’d get on a sweltering-hot day.
I remember being in awe of the translucent leaves, genius textures and atmospheric haze that was used in A Bug’s Life. And these people are just getting better and better at what they do. I work in an office that’s about five miles from Pixar’s home base in Emeryville, CA. I’m gonna be sad when I eventually have to move away.