Okay. I admit it. I loved the Pixar movie WALL-E. Yes, I'm aware that it's a Disney movie---the same evil company that, along with a handful of other corporations, largely controls the media we are exposed to in this country and around the world. I usually try to eschew Disney movies like the plague, but that has become a task too difficult to achieve in the last few years because of the somewhat recent appearance of a handful of nieces.
Anyway, WALL-E is a fantastic cautionary tale of how a careless and consumer-driven society can destroy the Earth, effectively burying it under tons of garbage and e-waste. The opening scene of the movie is worth the price of admission alone. The movie opens up with a far shot of the Earth from space, and then as it zooms in closer you see what you think are skyscrapers, but in reality, they are towers of garbage created by armies of Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth Class robots, or WALL-E, for short. A Wal-Mart-esque company named BnL (for "Buy N Large") had effectively hijacked the world's consciousness, pushing its agenda of buying for the sake of buying. BnL even had worked its way into the oval office (which is not a far cry from the influence that Wal-Mart has on Washington's "finest"). With such unchecked influence, humans became mass-consumers, and consequently, mass-wasters. Eventually, Earth was evacuated by the BnL corporation because it had become a giant garbage dump. The only thing left behind were the WALL-E robots and cockroaches.
Another slam at American excess in this movie is the fact that, after 700+ years on the BnL spaceship they had originally evacuated on, humans have become morbidly obese, lazy, leisure-addicted slobs, who ride around in electronic recliners, while an army of servant robots wait on them. These humans are plugged-in and tuned out, overstimulated and overfed---alive, but not really living their lives. Sound like anyone you know?
I guess what I liked most about this movie is that it is an excellent commentary on our modern capitalistic consumer-driven society, and really makes us take a hard look at ourselves. Trust me, I did not give away too much, so go see this movie!
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