Prescience, Futurism, Hard SF… Go See WALL-E
 WALL-E’s Curiosity Gives it Purpose Credit: Pixar Studios |
Great Science Fiction films come out so rarely that I am overjoyed when a movie like Pixar’s WALL-E hits the screens. This is one of those rare SF stories that ventures into the distant future, a place so alien most SF writers don’t want to touch it.
WALL-E leaps more that 700 years into the future to a dystopian time where the human race has evacuated the Earth after burying it in trash. Waste Allocation Load Lifters Earth-Class (WALL-E) robots are left with the task of cleaning up the planet so humans may one day return. Only one such robot remains, WALL-E, with a cockroach as a companion, where all the other bots have long-since broken down.
 WALL-E is Solar Powered Credit: Pixar Studios |
WALL-E has survived these 700 years because it has learned to recycle from the skyscraper-tall mountains of garbage it has assembled. WALL-E is inquisitive, experimenting with the world around it, playing with all the toys left behind from our shopaholic binge on Earth. Its curiosity has obviously also had a crucial role in its survival all these centuries.
WALL-E meets EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a vastly more advanced robot sent from the humans in space, in a “boy meets girl” storyline that makes WALL-E a stowaway back to the human ship, where we find a society of humans all turned into obese blobs floating on mobile beds which perpetually feed them commercialized media and “meals in cup.” Such a dystopian future is not difficult to imagine in our present society, where we are encouraged to buy things we do not need and consume nutritionless calories far in excess of what our bodies can burn.
 WALL-E and EVE Credit: Pixar Studios |
Can WALL-E and EVE save the human race? See for yourself. I left the theater to find myself confronted with a world of brandnames, and a fascinating new perspective on them and what they are doing to our human evolution. Impacting our worldview is what good science fiction is all about.
I also had lots of fun playing with Disney’s WALL-E Website
Interesting! I guess I’m going to get this now!
Comment by ClintJCL — June 30, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
…dont’ forget to buy the toys and other assorted tie-in products! ;)
Comment by Sean G — June 30, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
Hmm, I wonder if the giant trash piles in the movie contain remnants of those WallE-related toys and merchandise…
Comment by Dave — June 30, 2008 @ 10:47 pm
Dave,
The trash piles contained several Wall-Es. I couldn’t tell if they were toys or robots though.
-BMF
Comment by BMF — June 30, 2008 @ 11:19 pm
We did eventually see this, and it was very good.
Comment by ClintJCL — December 15, 2008 @ 10:45 am
Here’s Maxim’s 1-line summary of Wall-E: “Disney uses cute cartoon robots to mask Commie Propaganda.”
Wow. Usually their movie summaries are…. not so douchey.
Comment by ClintJCL — January 21, 2009 @ 11:36 am
(I guess because I want a planet to live on, I’m a communist.)
Comment by ClintJCL — January 21, 2009 @ 11:36 am
That’s a funny review, especially considering the dystopian world the human race was living in was a Corporate Welfare State. It doesn’t matter if Communism comes from the Government or Wal-Mart, it’s still Communism.
Comment by ideonexus — January 24, 2009 @ 11:55 am
Indeed it is! I think it was a quick blurb review before it actually came out…
Comment by ClintJCL — January 24, 2009 @ 1:59 pm
If anything, I would think of it as anti-commie propaganda and satirical. The people on the ship are so out if it, that they can’t even do things for themselves, and barely even think for themsleves.
Regardless, good movie.
Comment by chriggy — January 24, 2009 @ 3:08 pm
[…] 1 Comment [IMDB link] [Netflix link] I first heard about this movie when it was reviewed on Ryan’s science blog. I thought Ian posted something about it too. Besides, IMDB now lists it as the #34 movie of all […]
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