Hello, this is my review of the movie WALL-E. The movie starts off with an outer space view of earth, except earth is a complete wasteland full of nothing but trash. Earth is completely abandoned and there are no plants, just trash and pollution. While we’re being shown this abandoned planet, in the background the happiest song is playing. This is a very interesting contradiction because I would not expect to hear a happy song as I’m being shown my abandoned, dystopian, polluted home. Next, we see the happiest little robot named WALL-E, who seems to be the last functioning thing on earth. WALL-E is cleaning the trashed and non-livable planet by compressing trash together into cubes and stacking them on top of each other. While this is happening, we see tons and tons of advertisements and stores strangely all under the same name brand called “Buy n’ Large” (BnL). Right off the bat we are given a lot to interpret and I really like that. Buy n’ Large seems to be the downfall of the human race. It was too ambitious and gave humans too many technological conveniences. Too much ambition can be a bad thing and as we see in this movie it starts the downfall of the human race, but let’s keep going. So, WALL-E walks past a holographic commercial that says, “Too much garbage in your face? There’s plenty of space in space. BnL spaceships leaving everyday… we’ll clean up the mess while you’re away.” This throws another curve-ball at us if you thought all the humans died… you were wrong. They were too lazy to clean their mess so BnL took advantage of another chance to get money from the society they’ve taken over by sending the humans to space. This leads us to another holographic BnL commercial that says “The jewel of the BnL fleet, the Axium. Spend your 5-year cruise in style, waited on 24 hours a day by our fully automated crew while your captain and auto pilot try to course for nonstop entertainment, fine dining, and with our hover chairs there’s no need to walk!” Now this is very strange. It seems like humans listen to every word BnL says. It’s like they cannot think on their own. The technological conveniences are so convenient humans don’t seem to have to do anything, not even walk. Now the movie is equating laziness and obesity to the downfall of the human race. We then go to a scene in WALL-E’s home (an abandoned BnL bunker). In his home we see tons of tiny trinkets that WALL_E has collected, and we meet WALL_E’s pet roach. He also shows human emotion during this scene which is crazy. This means that technology was so advanced that BnL could program these robots to basically be humans, which also means the humans didn’t have anything to do because the robots did it all for them. This is the movie equating laziness with the downfall yet again. Then we see WALL_E go to work (cleaning up trash). While he’s cleaning he finds the last living plant. This is the first sign of hope in the whole movie. Suddenly a spaceship lands on earth near WALL-E. A single robot gets off of the ship and starts frantically searching earth. WALL-E is amazed by this and begins to follow the robot around. WALL_E finally introduces himself to “E.V.E”, the robot, and he takes her back to his home. He shows her all of his little trinkets and she’s amazed. This is another example of robots showing human emotion. WALL_E ends up showing EVE his plant and she snatches it from him and shuts down. So, now we know why she was sent to earth. It was to search for a plant. WALL-E shows compassion towards EVE. He tries to reboot her but can’t. He falls in love with Eve as well. The space ship came back to get Eve and WALL-E secretly enters. So, now we know these robots can show human emotion AND think for themselves. When they get back to the Axium we quickly realize what happened to the humans while they were in space. They can’t walk anymore due to laziness. They can’t communicate unless it’s through a screen. It is total dystopia. Robots do everything for them. It’s terrible what has happened. It really makes you think if the world you’re living in is slowly becoming this one. So, humans are too lazy to chew food, so everything comes in a cup and you just drink your meals, children are taught to worship BnL. Humans cannot function anymore; their whole life is dependent of service robots to provide for them 24/7. Meanwhile WALL-E is searching for EVE. I love the parallel story-lines in this movie, we have WALL-E and EVE’s romance forming, and we’re also watching the human race waste away into extinction due to laziness, being easily manipulated, obesity, and reliance of machines, etc. This movie is so compelling we may have a Tide on our hands. So now we see EVE give the plant to the captain. Only to find that the plant is not there anymore. It’s lost. The captain has to call off the return to earth trip (the return to earth trip- where one of the E.V.E robots finds a plant on earth and confirms that it’s now safe to return to earth.) The captain thinks EVE is defective, so he sends her to be reprogrammed but, WALL-E rescues her… but he also sets all of the robots free. EVE is fed up with WALL-E so she tries to send him home, but she falls off the ship with WALL-E and we see one of the most romantic scenes in the movie. It’s a very sweet scene. We see WALL-E and EVE dancing but, again the parallel story-line also shows us the captain realizing how bad things are becoming. WALL-E had stolen the plant from EVE earlier but he gives it back at the end of their dance. EVE gives the plant to the captain. Then there’s a bunch of meaningless action scenes but, we get this quote from the captain while he’s rebelling against his robot “I don’t wanna survive. I wanna live.” Then the captain walks! and deactivates his evil BnL robot! WALL-E gets crushed by the plant container and is killed and EVE grabs him and holds him the whole ride home. When the humans get back they begin cleaning the earth without robots. While this is happening, Eve tries desperately to revive WALL-E but she just can’t, so she gives him a final goodbye kiss. When her head touched WALL-E’s it magically revived him but WALL-E has forgotten about EVE. This scene is in the top ten saddest Pixar scenes according to most top ten lists.We then see EVE start crying and she grabs WALL-E’s hand and somehow through that touch it brings back WALL-E’s memories. So, my overall review of this movie is that it’s a brilliant and captivating story, with parallel story-lines and it displays a scarily realistic dystopian society. It also shows a beautiful love story between two robots. I don’t have much bad to say about this movie at all other than it’s not necessarily a kids movie, there are a few plot holes like how the plant grew and how the captain learned to walk but all in all it’s a great movie. It shows how too much ambition for success can corrupt you and it shows how reliance on technology is a giant problem. I give it a tide!!!!
Citations (I didn’t really use any of these citations at all but they are a requirement)
Rahmadya Putra Nugraha. (2017). Keterasingan Dalam Film Wall-E. Jurnal Visi Komunikasi, Vol 16, Iss 1, Pp 26-37 (2017), (1), 26. https://doi.org/10.22441/jvk.v16i1.1642
Mattie, S. (2014). WALL·E on the Problem of Technology. Perspectives on Political Science, 43(1), 12–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2013.784576
HERHUTH, E. (2014). Life, Love, and Programming: The Culture and Politics of WALL-E and Pixar Computer Animation. Cinema Journal, 53(4), 53–75. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2014.0042
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