WALL-E

I recently saw the movie WALL-E, or "Waste Allocation Load-Lifter, Earth-class". There has been a lot said about it being an environmentalist movie, both for the green and the anti-green crowds. I have to say though, I think they are overplaying it, and missing a much more important theme.

The environmentalism thing is really just a backdrop, a literary contrivance to create a conflict for the characters to grow over. The real, REAL underlying message of the story is one of liberty, individuality, of anti-nanny-statism. WALL-E is an ugly, dirty, quirky, weird robot, and it's because he is such an outsider that he saves the day.

Through his pursuit of the unknown, and perhaps even forbidden (we aren't shown any other robots falling in love or having relationships), WALL-E enacts vast social change. He instigates a misfit robot rebellion. He gets people seeing each other for the first time. If anything, you could call WALL-E a virus of humanity. Everyone he touches comes alive for the first time, and starts seeing the world in a new light ("I didn't know we had a pool").

Some other reviews I've read have been saying the movie is anti-progress and anti-technology. I don't think that is true at all. It's very clearly pro-technology, anti-technocracy. It's a warning to not become so complacent that we allow unfeeling computers to control our lives. Even the best computer, Auto-Pilot, gets things wrong, just because of its stubborn insistence to adhere to its directive and failing to take new factors into account. Auto-Pilot did a good job of keeping humanity safe for 700 years, enough time for Earth to heal itself, so even the subjugation of the people through domestication was necessary to a certain degree. Auto-Pilot just didn't know when to quit. Computers need the human input, the manual override.

That doesn't make the movie anti-technology, though. The humans would still be under the robots' spell if it weren't for a handful of rogue robots coming to the rescue. Even after the overthrow of the technocracy, the humans are portrayed as living in harmony with the robots. People are shown doing manual labor where such a thing could ideally be deemed adventurous or edifying in some way, and where such labor is mundane or dangerous, the robots come in to play. This is the sort of "healthy" human-technology relationship for which we should strive. Certainly not letting technology take care of everything for us.

I can't say the movie is without flaws. I find it hard to believe that a corporate monopoly is going to A) develop, B) take over the world, and C) destroy the world, in any time, let alone less than 100 years from now. But without any explanation for how that happened, it can hardly be considered anything more than just a plot device. We are at least told that people had to buy their tickets on the Axiom, suggesting that some people were left behind who could not afford a ticket, left to die. A rather chilling thought, and one I suspect was not considered, if only for the fact that this is "just a kids movie". Disney films aren't allowed to have more than one death (I don't know if that's true, but it sounds good). An entire civilization is a little too much of a divergence from that.

It's a wonderful movie, about as good as a movie can get. Pixar really needs to start being honest that these movies are for adults.