What Have I Seen?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
I've seen Iron Man, Indiana Jones, The Incredible Hulk, Hancock, Hellboy 2, and now Wall-E. The latter started with a truly insanely racist trailer featuring chihuahuas who go from Beverly Hills to Mexico and dance around a Mayan statue singing a song about how fertile and lazy they are, or something. They still dance in my mind. You could tell the girl chihuahuas from the boy chihuahuas by the way they were digitally manipulated to walk (the girl chihuahuas all walk like Marylin Monroe). Wall-E runs around picking up trash 700 years after the end of the world. He watches Hello, Dolly! on a VHS tape at night. I feel duty-bound to point out that 700 years into the future, humanity has become fat: it floats in space on a massive ship called the Axiom (why?) and drinks protein slurpees and communicates entirely through these weird floating screens, and they just generally and very broadly satirize consumerism, the little babies. Wall-E doesn't judge them, even though he's developed a Hello-Dolly!-based personality. He so identifies with the little trinkets he finds on earth -- sporks, jewelry boxes, lightbulbs -- that he actually folds himself up and shelves himself next to them. And when fatty wants to make a political change (i.e. go back to the now black-lung-y Earth and sow seeds, farm, take responsibility, etc.) he has nothing more to do than push a big, green button with a picture of the Earth on it. It's like voting for Obama! I do love to notice these things, though it makes me sick. I'm still thinking of the way Harrison Ford's pants fit him -- baggily, like an old man -- and of the way he was still able to sprint gazelle-like, pants and all, out of harm's way. Or of Tim Roth's spine as he turns into the Abomination (I still prefer the way Nick Nolte turned into The Absorbing Man in the first Hulk, by doing that Nick Nolte blustering thing while biting hard on a thick electrical cable.) So many millions of movie dollars! How can I possibly go see Batman now? I'll puke, for sure. But I will, because my eyeballs are set for maximum absorbency right now. Batman will enter into their already supersaturated state and cinematic colors will run down my cheeks. I'll watch the trailer for The watchmen, directed by that guy who directed 300, and I will be instantly critical of that and of everything else, and said criticism will plug up my ears with golden wax, and I'll have to go get antibiotics. Yay collegiate America! Hooray for bursting!
posted by Greg Purcell @ 11:15 PM,
