Jul 20 2008
WALL-E and Exposition
So what can we learn from a story in which the main characters have a vocabulary of six words between them? A lot, apparently. The movie’s writers may want us to question what is human, to look into the idea of love and loyalty and duty, to see the dark path down which consumerism and laxity may take us, and we can cheerfully learn these things. But for us there’s a more directly applicable lesson in this movie: How to get world across. I haven’t seen anything that exposits quite as cleanly as this movie in a while—though I’ll admit, once the captain gets involved, there start being a few words too many.
The beginning of the movie paints a dour picture of a post-apocalyptic Earth, starting with a junk-ridden atmosphere and then leading into the area around its title character. Somehow, it manages to get across backstory—centuries of it, though we don’t realize that until later—with fifteen minutes of smooth panoramic shots and two commercials.
The first sign, of course, is the color. The atmosphere and everything under it range from smog-brown to Sahara gold, and the air is hazy. Little sheets of paper or something like it constantly blow through the air. The brightest colors are the signs for the universal company, Buy and Large, and even those are dusted over with the ubiquitous gold; likewise, the titular character’s little salvaged trinkets are also dimmed by the ever-present dust.
One of the strongest panoramic images is the skyline. It certainly appears intact when it’s first brought in, with plenty of skyscrapers partially obscured by the haze. This increases the dramatic effect after WALL-E is first introduced, as it pans away from his current work to reveal that some of these skyscrapers, rather than being the original buildings, are solid piles of little bricks of trash.
Our next major expository shot is the commute home. This one establishes Buy and Large as the all-encompassing retail giant that it is—the signs are everywhere, and cover everything. In some order (I waited too long to write this article, and I’m sorry about that), we see three things that establish the rest of the situation. Two are motion-activated commercials, both sponsored by Buy and Large. One establishes the sheer overwhelming presence of the corporation and the habits that got the humans into the overconsumption mess that they were in. The other, and this is more important, is an advertisement for a basically world-evacuating cruise, inviting the people of Earth to relax and be waited on hand and foot for a five-year cruise while a small army of WALL-E units clean up the mess they’ve left behind. Apparently they have indeed all left; they certainly don’t seem to be anywhere around, and there aren’t really signs of a massive die-off. The other element, perhaps the most poignant from this section, is the appearances of said other units, as picked-over metal skeletons sticking up out of the rubble on either side of the pathway. This establishes the main character’s solitude; moreover, between it and the fact that there are multiple skyscrapers of sheer rubbish, we begin to get the hint that it might have been a little more than five years since the departure of the ship.
Full backstory. Fifteen minutes. Two commercials. Not half shabby, is it? The next trick is emulating it.
Granted, we have a certain limitation in having to describe this scenery rather than showing it. It doesn’t make this impossible, just a challenge. Like I said in my riff on scening, you just need to start with the important stuff, and work downward from there. If you can get in the habit of making sure every detail in your descriptions means something, either establishing the mood or location or having some sort of effect on the characters, people will be less inclined to skip through them and more likely to start reading them over looking for Easter eggs.
The key is to choose your details carefully. If you introduce a point of description, take a few minutes to figure out exactly what it implies. Describing the floor of a room, for instance, can get across everything from how much the builders spent on it to how recently it was walked on. A pair of shoes means different things depending on whether it’s in the closet, or under the bed, or at the foot of the computer desk, or one’s out in the main hall with tooth marks in it. Make a checklist of things you need to get across, and then mark them off as you find ways to imply them. Doubling up isn’t forbidden, but if a particular point of description doesn’t introduce anything that hasn’t already been covered, do you really need it?
Above all, have fun. Talk less, display more, paint with broad strokes, and just keep thinking!
