Everyone fell in love with Wall E at first sight in 2008. Who wouldn’t? A compact square shaped robot with a curious personality. Big googly eyes, his mechanical way of speaking and his quirks left an indelible impression on us. But another lesson to take home from the movie was on environmentalism.
Even though no political statements were made in the film it was still hailed as a parable for environmentalists everywhere. Without the use of any familiar slogans, Wall E shows us that the vision of the future is a cautionary dystopia wrapped up in a children’s tale.
The movie starts with an Earth, with silhouttes of garbage piles in the appearance of well known skyscrapers.
Wall E being the only one responsible to clean the mess up. The humans are on board a space ship named Axiom, waiting the environmental catastrophe out.
This space age version of Noah’s Ark is what we have in store for us. With power giants like America pulling out of the Paris agreement, a future similar to this is very likely. In the film, a glimpse of rising sea levels indicate that the humans were unsuccessful in adopting corrective measures when the time came, because the time for preventive measures is long gone.
The plot develops and Eva, a pristine white robot enters the scene, with the directive of searching for signs of life in the dumpyard. Wall E falls in love with the she-robot and they embark on an adventure to Axiom, the spaceship.
It is at this moment that the movie highlights another major contributor to the annihilation of our planet: unchecked consumerism. We find obese humans floating on hover boards, with their eyes glued to tiny screens, slurping their lunch from cups, who are unable to get back up without assistance if they fall. The stark disinterest of the humans in anything save themselves is shocking to perceive. Further, every single consumable item on the ship is manufactured by a company, ironically named Buy N Large.
Cutting some slack to the movie for missing out basic details is necessary because of its child friendly content. We only get to know about humans after the apocalypse. No animals are shown. In addition to this, did the entire human population shirk down to a size which could board the Axiom due to ecological disasters? Or were some people allowed on board, and the others left to die?
The film does end on an optimistic note, wherein they find evidence of biological survival and are successful in defeating the evil robot, Axiom. The end soundtrack of the film morphs from mechanical and electronic beats to more of orchestral music, signifying that the humans were eventually able to de-attach themselves from technology long enough to get back to the roots of nature.
Subtle referencens like these make this film a masterpiece in the environmental genre. With scanty dialogues, Wall E was able to leave an impression on the audience.
Mankind got a second chance in the movie. But will we? We need to understand that planets are not consumable products. There is only one planet. We cannot go through them the same way we do with a pen. The humans on board Axiom do come back to their home planet in the end.
” I don’t want to survive, I want to live.”