A Commentary on WALL-E

Note: This is an article I wrote for the school newspaper, which I thought I'd share here.

WALL-E is one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s so much more than a delightful animated fable about a robot in love; it’s a beautiful meditation on the meaning of humanity.
WALL-E is a satire which contrasts the world of mass-consumerism, cell-phones, and hygienic-obsession with the world of nick-knack collections, dancing, musicals, and romance. It comes off almost as an origin film of sorts for humanity, where a comatose human-spirit reawakens through its interactions with a romantic little robot who is perhaps the most human character ever portrayed on screen.
We first meet WALL-E on a devastated Earth, where he cleans up the mountains of trash. He collects the interesting bits of trash and keeps them in the abandoned truck that is his home; a Rubik’s-Cube, a ring-box (he throws the ring away), a fine collection of plastic silver-ware, and a partial copy of ‘Hello Dolly,’ which he watches obsessively and hums the songs as he works. He is curious and playful; he admires beauty, as seen when he stares transfixed at the stars which peek through the cloud-covered sky, but he does not let any of these distractions take over his life; a movie, games, and toys are part of his life, not his whole life. What his life is is something more than the sum of its parts; it is uniquely him.
Despite having a pet cockroach for a companion, however, he is lonely; as a person, he feels the need to be with another person. The chance for this occurs when a spaceship drops off the sleek probe-droid, EVE, with whom WALL-E falls in love with at first sight. What follows is a beautiful sequence where he tries to work up the nerve to approach her, then to get her to notice him, and finally to guard and revive her after something causes her to shut down).
WALL-E‘s love for EVE soon takes him far from home, to where the remnants of humanity…well, live isn’t the right word; exist is more appropriate. There they have become a society of grotesque couch potatoes, where two men can be right next to each other but talk via cell-phone. From here, WALL-E’s presence begins slowly, almost imperceptibly, to revive the comatose human spirit. A hygienically-obsessed robot jumps off its sterile track, another robot discovers how to wave, the captain feels dirt for the first time and begins obsessively researching the Earth (which he acknowledges as his home, although he has never seen it), and in a heart-breakingly beautiful sequence, WALL-E and EVE dance (and kiss) among the stars, causing two humans to touch for the first time…
Curiosity, playfulness, love; toys, movies, pets, kissing, dancing, holding hands…these are the things humans do. Humans laugh, they admire beauty, they crave companionship, they take the time to enjoy life. But this is not all; WALL-E demonstrates that, along with all this, humans make sacrifices, they act selflessly and bravely, and when they have to, they fight. As the film progresses it becomes more and more necessary for WALL-E and EVE to show courage and make difficult decisions. This is painfully shown when WALL-E defies the malevolent autopilot, a far more powerful and advanced machine, and even though he pays the inevitable consequences, he succeeds in his task. Not long afterwards, EVE has to decide whether to save WALL-E or a mass of humans, and although it breaks her heart, she makes the right decision. Meanwhile, the captain wrestles with the autopilot for humanity’s future. While all this is going on, a damaged WALL-E struggles to literally bear the fate of the world upon his shoulders, even though the effort breaks him.
In the end, WALL-E’s thesis is that humans belong on Earth, their home. They dance, they play, they care for living things, they kiss, they splash in pools, sing, admire sunsets, work, farm, recognize beauty, care for each other, make sacrifices, fight, stand on their own feet, watch movies and above all, they love.