Released in 2008, Andrew Stanton’s film is a Pixar gem from which we can draw great conclusions
That humanity is heading at full speed towards the destruction of the Earth is something we have known for a long time. We are increasingly aware of global warming and it was not something new when WALL·E came to theaters. Andrew Stanton’s film followed in the footsteps of An uncomfortable truthby Davis Guggenheim, about Al Gore’s campaign to raise awareness about this problem.
The valuable of WALL·ETherefore, it is not that he tells us that we have to change our habits, which we already know very well, but that almost 15 years after its release, its criticism makes even more sense: We have the technology to change things but we don’t feel like doing it.
They changed their power sources when it was too late
This already appears in the opening sequence of the film, when we see the planet completely desolate. In the first images you can see how humans installed wind turbines and nuclear power plants -cleaner energies compatible with the future- on top of a huge mountain of waste and garbage. That is, men did not decide to change their energy sources until it was too late, even though they could have done so much earlier.
It’s a very subtle detail and you may not realize it until a second or third viewing. This image complements the message that is present throughout the entire film. When we encounter today’s civilization, we realize that many generations under the BNL regime had the ability to clean up the planet and didn’t care enough to make the effort.
For some viewers could be a script hole the fact that they left Earth. Rather than entering space, they could have built a bunker or lived in hermetically sealed buildings – which is what the ship they travel in is – but the scriptwriters’ message was that humans They have left the planet behind as if it were a piece of garbage. They have used it for what they wanted and, when it has been spent, they have thrown it away and continued consuming and spending resources elsewhere, without having learned anything.
WALL·E It tops the top of the best Pixar films for many. Its score on review aggregators is almost perfect, with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 94/100 on Metacritic. In fact, after Beauty and the beastwas the most nominated animated film in cinema history. Andrew Stanton’s team managed to make an instant classic with “narrative subtlety” and “emotional depth”, as the film’s review states in SensaCine.
That something they wrote for the year 2008 makes even more sense in 2024 is just what sets great stories apart.
