If you looked at this film poster for Wall-E for the first time, you never would’ve guessed that the movie delves into the darker possibilities and repercussions of AI, and its eventual irreversible impact on planet earth. I watched WALL-E as a wee elementary schooler all the way back in 2008, and at the time, I was enamored by the personable and cute little characters that gave these robots humanlike characteristics.
I tend to write off Disney and Pixar movies as mostly cookie cutter stories without much substance, but I was pleasantly surprised by the themes explored in the movie, now being experienced from a different perspective in my early 20’s.
WALL-E highlights the effect of technology, corporate greed, and automation on our world as a whole, and is an example of how technology can potentially lead to our demise. In the film, earth’s ecosystem has already been ravaged due to environmental neglect and human negligence. The megacorporation Buy n Large evacuated all of the humans left on earth to live on a giant spaceship, where all of their daily lives are automated. Basic human tasks such as eating and cleaning are all done by AI drones, while the humans doze off and relax in their floating techno chairs, causing rampant obesity.
Before leaving the planet, the Buy n Large corporation left thousands of trash cleaning robots on earth, but only WALL-E remained standing. From the start of the film, WALL-E is shown to have a distinct personality, with humanlike characteristics while also enjoying it’s time on the barren planet earth all by itself. The characterization of WALL-E is the film’s way of depicting AI as potentially having fleshed out intelligence and a mind of it’s own in the future even without human influence around it, opening up the possibility to the audience that AI can potentially be developed to be more than just tools.
This injection of personality into a robot theme continues when WALL-E meets its love interest of the film, EVE. Yes, you heard me right, robot romance!
EVE is an AI programmed to assist in potentially making earth habitable once more. When EVE visits earth, it meets WALL-E, who then gives EVE the sole plant remaining on earth. EVE takes a probe ship back to the spaceship along with the plant and her newfound friend WALL-E. When they return, the captain of the ship finds that EVE has lost the plant on their journey back, and blames WALL-E for the mishap. This is the point in the story where the rest of the sci-fi plot commences, and I probably can’t detail all of it here. In the end, the humans and the robots all return to planet earth, in hopes that they can change their habits of living for the better and slowly reclaim earth once more.
I’d like to highlight that the robot romance and making these seemingly sentient AI’s so personable created a lot of buzz during the late 2000’s, where topics of AI weren’t explored heavily in popular culture and media. The film successfully highlighted both the dark dystopian nature of AI and the negative effects it can have on the productivity of the human race, while also animating cute happy robots with big eyes that spotlights the potential of AI and human harmony with a hopeful outlook on the future.
On a side note, I decided to not used designated pronouns for WALL-E and EVE since they’re robots, but the Wikipedia page for this movie refers to them as he and she. Maybe it’s implied that these robots have assigned genders and should be referred to as such?
It was quite nice to revisit one of my childhood favorites on a snowy day in with some hot chocolate. I’ve been inspired to circle back to more of my favorite movies and shows in the near future. In particular, I want to revisit one of my favorite anime shows called Steins;Gate that delves into the world of advanced technology and time travel, but focuses in on AI themes in its sequel, Steins;Gate 0. Hopefully I can talk about this show in more detail for a future AI106 project.
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