What struck me most
was the appearance and life style of the human beings in the Axiom
(the spaceship). Everyone was obese and moving around in their
hovering chairs which entertained them and fed them. This may be
revealing what is to come to our world someday or atleast in the
wealthy countries, especially the US where obesity is a rapidly
increasing issue. While Wall-E follows Eve as it is being escorted to
the captain's chamber, we see a fat guy, John, falling off his
hovering chair and unable to come back on it. It was a humorous
moment but this inability to physically move becomes a huge problem
later on in the movie. Auto, the evil robot, must be prevented and
Captin McCrea dramatically shuts it off barely standing up. I felt
that this movie had a message or in an extreme sense, a warning,
towards what might happen if we do not control ourselves from over
consuming.
The origin of evil
in this movie is the trashing of the earth. Since the earth was
filled with trash and no longer able to produce and sustain life,
human beings were forced to leave. Forced to consume unhealthy foods
which require no vegetation and to live on chairs inorder to minimize
the ocupation of space, people become obese. This seems to be where
our world is heading towards. Life
in the empire is full of pollution and destruction of the environment
for selfish desires, as we saw in the short 10 minute video on the
corporations and their evil acts of damaging not only terrirory in
the US but all around the world. Another issue of the film are the
evil robots. As the advancement of techonology has been expolsive,
people of the empire have idolatized and have placed their reliance
on machines. But this film reveals that this lifestyle of the empire
is dangerous.
The
saviour figure of the movie is Wall-E. Without its work and findings,
humans would have not been able to return to earth. But it is ironic
that the plain, old and rusty robot is the heroe figure. This is goes
along with the up-side-down Kingdom of God where the weak, small and
the unattractive are used.
- What message is Wall-E trying to communicate to us and what lessons should we learn from it?
- What can we do about the rising issues related to pollution, consumerism and obesity?
Wall-E has a lot of issues and topics packed into an hour and half movie; kudos to you for bringing up so many of them in one short review/analysis! I agree the film did exaggerate the consequences of passive consuming, but they did so to make a point. Both in Wall-E and reality I think the first step toward solving any of the issues that they bring up is awareness. People have to be aware that all of their actions have consequences, even though the person themselves cannot directly see the consequences. After that, we are called to take action! Simple steps like recycling, planting a garden, eating less, eating better, not throwing out 99% of what we buy are beginnings to helping thwart pollution, consumerism, obesity, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe irony of a lonely trash robot being the savior in humanity is certainly interesting, isn't it? Excellent observations all around, Abe! You definitely explore the major themes of the film and the (dare I say) apocalyptic nature of its story in fairly short order.
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