When Wall-e first starts the first thing an audience member hears is the old classical tune of “Put on your Sunday Clothes” sung by Michael Crawford in the 1969 film version of the musical Hello Dolly. Now whether an audience member had heard that song before or not doesn’t matter, because it has a very upbeat tempo, happy lyrics, and a good classic vibe. This is in the film to show total contrast to the whole world literally being covered in trash. That is what this opening scene is all about, creating contrast from Wall-e and his attitude from the desolate and dead planet that used to be Earth. 

The first thing an audience member sees when the movie starts is an extreme wide shot of the entire universe. The universe is depicted as vast and beautiful and over the first roughly 30 seconds the camera gradually zooms in. Then the audience member sees a brown and ugly earth with trash and debris all around in the middle of a beautiful space full of stars. Suddenly, the camera zooms in through a mass of ruined satellites above Earth and the viewer sees the trash pile that has become the world. There are wind turbines barely poking out above huge piles of trash. There are ruined buildings and trash over the entire world with no green to be found. Then the camera zooms in on a city with lots of very tall buildings. However, as the camera gets closer it reveals that half those skyscrapers are ruined, and the other half are huge piles of trash. The shot then changes to an overhead view of the whole empty and desolate city. Until we see something suddenly move quickly through a street. The camera zooms in on an empty and desolate street full of trash and then suddenly cuts to the bottom half of some dirty machine taking the trash and scooping it into itself and making a tight cube. This machine, of which we still haven’t seen even its top half, then takes the cube and rolls off somewhere, but not before a little roach gets out of a can and starts to follow him. This machine then takes that cube and puts it in a wall of cubes just like it and we finally see that this machine is Wall-e. Wall-e then notices a shiny metal object so he picks it up and collects it and notices the little roach and is nice to it and lets it crawl on him. Wall-e then rolls off and the camera zooms out to reveal that he has been working on one of those trash piles bigger than a skyscraper we saw earlier. Then the title screen pops up and the scene ends. 

This scene most notable quality is the music that plays throughout the entire scene. The song starts as the movie begins and doesn’t stop till the end of the scene when its revealed that it’s been playing from Wall-e the whole time, who then presses stop on himself to make it stop. The song is there to make contrast against the world Wall-e lives in and too connect the audience to Wall-e’s personality. The song is also timed with the scene as well so that during key moments of the scene the song plays certain parts. For example, when the Camera zooms in on the desolate and dead world that is now Earth, the song’s lyrics are saying, “Put on your Sunday clothes there’s lots of world out there.” It does it again by saying, “Put on your Sunday clothes were gonna ride through town,” when the camera zooms on the dead, brown and empty city with trash piles higher than the biggest building. 

This scene introduces the main character to Wall-e, whose personality is a complete contrast to the world that he lives in. Wall-e is the last thing on a dead, abandoned, grey, rusty, and ugly earth, but for some reason Wall-e is nice to a bug, collects shiny things because he wants too, and plays happy music from the 60’s. He rolls around all day with the same happy up beat song playing as he tries to clear all the trash from earth by himself and yet he never gets down. He sees a bug and is nice to it and takes it home with him as a pet because as the movie later explains, he is very lonely. Wall-e also carries around a lunchbox on his back, which not only makes the audience think of him as even cuter and love him more, but it also contains all the things he collects. He is like a child who collects anything he thinks is cool. He is a rusty robot on a dead world, but he acts in complete opposite of that. Wall-e shouldn’t be acting like that, but for some reason he is and this scene introduces the audience to that. His attitude in the face of this world he lived on is why audiences all over the world loved him. 

However, it is not only his attitude that is why the world loved him, his looks are also a huge reason. Wall-e is designed to be as cute as possible just to make the audience fall in love with him. Wall-e has a cute little body that most people would just want to hug. He has big wide eyes that are constantly looking around in wonder and full of love when he sees Eve and the audience loves it. He acts like a child in some circumstances and a hero in others but all while looking like the cute little robot that Pixar has made millions selling plush toys of. 

The opening scene to Wall-e is all about contrast. Whether it’s from the up-beat music playing throughout it, or how Wall-e acts to a roach while he is supposed to be cleaning trash, there is contrast everywhere. The song that plays is only in the movie to give a little part of the main character’s personality, and to create contrast in this first scene. The upbeat song talking about going on a drive through the city is not what you would expect to be playing when the Camera is on an empty, rusty, trash filled ugly city. At the same time, you would not expect the only thing left on this particular ugly version of Earth to be a happy robot though either. Wall-e is one of the loveable characters ever put on a movie screen, and yet his home is a inhospitable wasteland. That is contrast and that is what the scene was trying to show the audience from the start. 
