Introduction
I chose Wall-E and Avatar as my topics for my final compare and contrast essay. Wall-E is an animation film directed by Andrew Stanton under Disney Pictures and Pixar. This film is about a recycling robot that is abandoned on earth with all the trash until he meet a high technology robot named ‘EVE’ and together they try to save humanity. On the other hand, Avatar is a science fiction film movie that is directed and produced by James Cameron under 20th Century.
Avatar tells us about a story of a marine, Jake Sully, who cannot walk because of his injuries in the past. He is sent to a planet named Pandora for a military purpose – to take a sample of the mineral that was located in the tree of life. However, at the end, he decides to protect the natives of The Pandora planet and betray the military. In my opinion, both of these films are worth watching because they are inspiring and can improve people’s imagination especially for children. Both of these films offer several moral messages for us.
Comparing and contrasting various features of the Films
Plot
According to the Wall-E, I discovered the movie has a linear narrative style because it has beginning, climax, and ending sections. The beginning part explores the daily life and work of Wall-E. The climax part comes in when EVE succeeds in putting the plant inside the machine and brings all the humans back to earth, and when EVE manages to repair Wall-E and brings Wall-E back to life, marks the end. While on the other side, I discovered that Avatar does not have linear narrative style like Wall-E does. The way the story is told can confuse the audience because the movie opens up in the middle, goes back to the beginning, and all of a sudden goes to the future; therefore, I conclude that Avatar has non-linear narrative style.
Characters
In Wall-E and Avatar, the main characters have obstacles. However, in my opinion, Avatar has more complicated obstacles than Wall-E. According to the Avatar, Jake Sully must decide which side he wants to belong. He knows that all the things the military does and plans to do are wrong; however, he can also betray the military and cause a war to his own race if he decides to help the Pandora’s natives. Jake finally decides to become a Pandoran native and fights against the humans. At the end, he wins the war and lives happily ever after. On the other side, Wall-E does not have such complicated obstacles like Avatar.
The protagonists of both films have different feelings and actions. In Wall-E, Wall-E faces a problem connected to earth. Wall-E is alone on earth until EVE appears and falls in love with her. Together, fate joins them in a mission to restore life on earth and give humans another chance to live the way they should by being active and functional. In Avatar, Jake on the other hand is forced to abandon his human calling of being a soldier when he sees the destructive potential of the mission that the military plans to undertake in Pandora.
He eventually forgoes his human nature and decides to live with the Navi people. Both Jake and Wall-E concern themselves with the ultimate goal of preserving life forms, with Wall-E aiming to preserve life on earth and Jake laboring to preserve life in Pandora and for the various places that are sacred to the Pandoran natives.
The use of Robots in the Wall-E has the special effect of making the film appealing to a cross section of viewers. The use of robots to perform a task that should be primarily done by humans – conservation, helps to inculcate a sense of awareness on the harmful potential of today’s generation practices that are harmful to the environment. The use of robots – a form very popular with kids – also helps to create awareness in kids on the dangers of practices that have the potential of destroying the environment for future generations.
It helps create a sense of environmental awareness early in kids. On the other hand, the use of 3D cinematographic technique helps create a much more ‘real’ experience when watching the movie, compared with other films using 2D technology. The 3D effect on the film Avatar helped to popularize it and made it one of the highest grossing films of all time. Through 3D, the viewer is taken to the lush green environment of the Navi people, as opposed to the ‘glass-wall-timber’ environment shown on earth.
This clear contrast in the two environments creates an idea of the kind of environment that people on earth can choose to maintain or destroy through their irrational and profit centered quest for precious minerals at the expense of the environment and even lives. Both films depict a futuristic earth, with Wall-E depicting the world, as it would be in the year 2805 and Avatar depicting the world in a future date of 2154.
In the film Wall-E, the most powerful scene in my view is whereby the human beings in the spaceship Axiom are able to stand and perform tasks like walking for the first time in their lives. The scene is powerful because it shows how the tasks that we tend to take for granted today, like walking, are not a ‘given’, that our own excessive consumerism and greed may one day render humans functionless (Shaw 397). In Avatar, the most powerful scene for me is when Jake decides to abandon his avatar to become a Pandoran henceforth.
This scene shows how greed and irrational desire for profits at the expense of compassion and such qualities can alienate others. Jake chooses to live with the Navi because to him, they exhibited qualities that he identified with; care for the environment, and for each other, as opposed to the materialistic humans like Selfrigde, who lacked compassion.
Analysis of Avatar
The film Avatar made a bigger impression on me. The theme of environmental conservation portrayed in the film is a concept that I have always felt strongly about. I feel that the film is trying to urge people, and especially large corporations, that the desire for profits at the expense of environmental conservation is a wrong approach. In the film, when Jake chooses to fight alongside the Navi in repulsing the humans, a poignant point is made – the scene depicts the triumph of values over profits.
The director of Avatar, James Cameron, made the film to highlight the dangers of environmental degradation against the backdrop of blind pursuits for profits (Holtmeier 420). The film was made to create awareness on the need to regulate the activities of corporations as they explore the earth for precious minerals. I feel this was not achieved because whenever discussions on the film are conducted, rarely is this theme mentioned. The theme of environmental conservation was sacrificed on the altar of the films’ animation features.
Conclusion
Both films made me think differently about certain issues after careful watching. Wall-E made me think differently about wastefulness in resource use, and Avatar made my resolve to participate in environmental conservation projects to go a notch higher.
Works Cited
Holtmeier, Matthew. “Post-Pandoran Depression or Na’vi Sympathy: Avatar, Affect, and Audience Reception.” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture 4.4 (2010): 414-424.
Shaw, Ian Graham Ronald. “WALL-E’s world: animating Badiou’s philosophy.” Cultural Geographies 17.3 (2010): 391-405.