Wall e is the modern day Soylent Green which tackles the long term effects of mass consumerism. In the movie, it takes a group of dysfunctional robots, led by Eve and Wall-E, to save the Earth from the trash man has piled up.
It starts with Wall-e being the only survivor of his kind, who was invented to clean up the world so the humans can resume their living after 5 years in space. Little did the administration know that this task would take 700 years to complete. So when Eve’s kind, the probe which was created with the directive to search for existence of life as a sign of a once again habitable planet, accepts Wall-e’s plant as a gift, she shuts down and is taken back to the spaceship. Walle then tries to rescue her. He is greeted by the mass who now doesn’t know how to walk due to lethargy and dependence on technology. The captain of the ship then addresses his growing curiosity of what earth is and what people would normally do only to find out that the human race is now being controlled by Axiom’s computers. Just like any other fairy tale, Wall-E ends with a happily ever after.
Two scenes struck me the most. First would be the discovery of a plant by wall-e. It shows that amidst the mess we made is a growing life and that if we don’t act sooner, our planet will end up being inhabitable. In my opinion, we should save and enhance what is left of the real earth for our next generations to cherish just as we do right now. Another would be the part when WallE bumped into Mary, a human being. Prior the encounter, Mary was busy chatting on her video call about the superficiality of her companions while she looked at a billboard stating that red was the new blue. And in an instant, everyone including Mary, purchased the new look. It deals with two other points which are consumerism and technology.
Not only has the consumerism issue manifested on the planet but also with the people who once lived in it. Everyone was obese with processed food that was being advertised over their little hubs. Because they weren’t aware of the existence of natural commodities, they have been sucked up with the world that was as easy as making a milkshake (have to watch the movie in order to understand). And because of their sloth, they have been totally reliant on the most vanguard equipment for the simplest tasks like walking and talking.
All in all, the movie was created to hand a sense of warning in an entertaining way of how our land would soon turn out if we do not make changes. It shows the irony of how a robot can appreciate the quest for life while men would rather sit around. In the end, emphasis on the point that even if WallE initiated the world’s makeover, it takes a whole race to implement that change.
