Wall-E is an absolutely brilliant movie. I rank it as one of my favorites. It explores concepts of artificial intelligence, love, creativity, free will and humanity. And its a cartoon. Aimed at children. With no dialog in the first 40 minutes or so.
Earth is a trash heap, rendered uninhabitable by pollution. The skies and seas are brown, the atmosphere is literally littered with satellites.
Humanity has abandon the planet and survives in cruise ship like space vessels where every need is taken care of by robots. While gone, an army of robot trash compactors are supposed to clean the planet but the President secretly decided that Earth was not salvageable. He ordered the robots to keep people in outer space. Humans have devolved into couch potatoes with no ambition, curiosity, or love. They are almost as machine like as the robots who care for them. Wall-E is the last of the cute trash compacts. He becomes enamored with a environmental space probe named EVA who scans to see if Earth is habitable yet. In his pursuit of EVA he finds his way to the Space Ship Axiom, awakens humans to the world around them, leads humanity home to earth where they decide to clean up the planet hand in hand with their robot friends.
What makes Wall-E so great is that it can be interpreted so many ways. A liberal might watch it and point out the devastation visited upon Earth and humanity by out of control consumerism. The company that eventually ruins the world is a thinly veiled Wall Mart called “Buy-N-Large”. Their out of control commercialism depleted all resources and forced us to abandon the planet. A conservative might view the coach potato humans (literally shaped like potatoes) as the result of a welfare state. The government or the Axiom’s AI, Auto, takes care of everything. People stop working, and trying and loose their humanity. Its the ultimate nanny state which takes care of everything from cradle to grave. Neither liberal nor conservative view would be wrong. This movie is a commentary on our current society, just as all good speculative fiction should be. Whats even better is it isn’t gratuitous at all. It warns of the dangers of loosing our humanity, in ways that are very possible. How often are we willing to agree to give away our individuality as long as get what we want. Countless studies are done which show how people are influenced by media like advertisements and commercials. Why do we buy what we buy? Answer: because the talking picture box tells us to. With the governments role expanding into private businesses, commerce, and health care will people care, as long as they are kept fed and happy? Wall-E depicts the evils of mindless capitalism and mindless socialism. Both lead, not to the extinction of humanity, but much worse, to death humanity’s spirit. We become lemmings led around with no will or independence.
Fortunately there is a plucky rolling garbage disposal with binocular eyes who in his quest for simple love shows us the light.