Film: WALL-E

Year: 2008

Director: Andrew Stanton 

Starring the voices of: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight 

Language: English 

This 2008 animated film directed by Andrew Stanton is set in a dystopian future, where the Earth is barren and void of life - a literal wasteland. Humans have emigrated to space, where robots serve their every need, and navigate day-to-day life in hover chairs, never needing to move. WALL-E, the last robot on Earth, has been assigned the task of cleaning up the waste humans left behind. Everything changes for him when he finds the miracle of a plant growing within the wasteland, and meets EVE, his robot love-interest. Showing more ‘human characteristics’ than many of the people in the film, the viewer is captivated by this little robot, and invested in his story. 

At first glance, this is just a kids’ movie (and a great one at that - when I was 10, I loved it), but it doesn’t take much to see the deeper message. It presents us with three issues.  

The first is an environmental message of what may happen if we continue to plunder the Earth’s resources; skyscrapers of rubbish paint the horizon and the sky is the picture of pollution. 

The second issue presented is technology. The humans in this film are overweight, lazy, and entirely dependent on technology to live. What made them human was apparently left behind on Earth. In short, humanity’s prospects are dire.   

Finally, it’s a comment on corporate greed gone mad. Buy-n-Large’s logo is writ large on the trash WALL-E clears, and the company also profits from the resulting evacuation of humanity from Earth.   

With WALL-E as the unlikely protagonist, the film spreads a message of hope that we might redeem ourselves and salvage life from the problems we created. 

However, the reality of our consumerist culture is more than just  trash. Carbon emissions from our current lifestyles mean that we can’t turn back once we reach the critical 2 degrees above industrial levels: there will be an irreversible chain of events making life on Earth as we know it impossible. Yet in this film we are told not to worry, because we get a second chance. It also has a very anthropocentric gaze – animals don’t feature. This is a common issue in human endeavour, and our inability to look beyond our own species is arguably what got us in this mess in the first place.   

This space-age parable is an entertaining social commentary on our destructive consumerist culture. It’s also an example of how we can use mediums beyond just statistics and facts to convey important messages about the environment to different audiences, including children.  

With its fairy-tale ending, WALL-E is charming, but it’s a little outdated now. Today’s children are, I hope, more informed and able to look at the whole system: plants, animals, humans,  and  the inequalities within our society. If WALL-E was made today, would humanity be let off the hook, and should it be?