Once upon a time on a faraway desolate planet, two mining robots meet.
While the meeting of these two souls, albeit artificially birthed ones, bodes well for companionable cooperation, things don’t quite work out as you might expect.
The smaller more Wall-E-esque of the two supplies eagerly leads the bigger and stronger robot to the bright, glowing green jewels they both seek and for a while their complimentary skills seem to work to their mutual advantage, with the spoils of their collective efforts neatly and even divided between their two storage machines.
But this marriage made in robotic heaven sadly doesn’t last forever, and the two robots experience a rather robust falling out.
It’s proof that it’s not just humanity that can’t play nice in the sandpit of life; it’s their creations too.
What makes Wire Cutters such a pleasure to watch, even if things aren’t all that narratively warm-and-fuzzy at the end, is the way the team behind the team, headed by creator Jack Anderson, have invested these two characters with so much personality and sense of life in a very short time frame and with no dialogue to flesh things out in a hurry.
There is such a rich vibrancy to the robots’ interactions which, while they don’t end all that rosily, nonetheless are always immensely engrossing and yes even endearing to watch.
Bummer about the ending but that’s life, even artificial life.
(source: io9)