Wall-E Response

The other day, I watched WALL-E for the first time in years. I had forgotten how incredible this movie is, or maybe now I believe it is amazing because I can understand more of what is happening in the film. Either way, the movie is magnificent. I mean, who does not love the classic robot love story? Okay, so maybe it isn't classic, but that's beside the point. This film has a relevant message blatantly portrayed throughout its entirety, and the message is that we must pay more attention to the environment before we destroy it.

This movie is not like your stereotypical Disney or Pixar movie. Although there is a personified (machinified?) villain in AUTO, he is not the main evil that the film focuses on. In the movie, WALL-E is the only robot left on an uninhabitable Earth, left picking up trash left behind from Buy N Large, the company that made Earth unfit to live on, and turning the trash into cubes. While WALL-E is cleaning, he finds a flower. When a robot named EVE is sent to see if Earth if habitable again, WALL-E develops a crush on her and gives her the flower. EVE probes, and she and WALL-E are brought on board the ship. AUTO steals the flower from EVE while she is probed so that the ship will not set course to return to Earth. WALL-E and EVE must steal it back so that they can make the ship go back to Earth.

AUTO is not the actual villain in this movie. While he is the physical entity that steals the flower and complicates the path back home, he only does this because man commanded him to never return to Earth because it would be forever inhabitable. In this movie, there are only two true villains: man and technology.

In the film, man has been overcome by greed and creates an uninhabitable environment as a result of not regulating Buy N Large and presumably other companies as well. Pollution eventually destroyed much of the planet's atmosphere. In this movie, man is the villain because man is the only reason why WALL-E and EVE must exist to do their jobs, and then WALL-E and EVE are almost unable to do their jobs due to an order given to AUTO by man.

One of the undervalued villains in this film is technology (which could also be attributed to the villainy of man, since man built the technology). Technology has been advanced so far in WALL-E that people do not have to do anything for themselves. The people in WALL-E do not have to walk, make their own food, or really accomplish anything. They have reached a new level of laziness compared to modern day people (which is saying something). As a result, everyone aboard the ship is extremely overweight and literally can't do even the simplest tasks without the help of a machine.

Ultimately, I believe that WALL-E sends two messages:
1) We need to take care of the environment and think of our actions before we are stuck with the same uninhabitable as displayed in the film.
2) There is a point when technology becomes too advanced. Humans must maintain a strong layer of independence from machinery.