Part of Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair
In the distant future, Earth is overrun with garbage and devoid of plant and animal life. The surviving humans live on the spaceship Axiom after vacating the planet hundreds of years earlier. The original plan was for humans to live in outer space for five years while waste-cleaning robots (“WALL-Es”) prepared Earth for re-colonization. However, centuries later, just one WALL-E (voiced by Ben Burtt) remains. Lonely, with only a pet cockroach to keep him company, WALL-E discovers a new purpose in life when he meets a sleek search probe named EVE (Elissa Knight). EVE comes to realize that WALL-E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet’s future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans. Meanwhile, WALL-E chases EVE across the galaxy on a journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.
“The paradox at the heart of WALL-E is that the drive to invent new things and improve the old ones — to buy and sell and make and collect — creates the potential for disaster and also the possible path away from it. Or, put another way, some of the same impulses that fill the world of WALL-E — our world — with junk can also fill it with art.” —A.O. Scott, NYT Critic’s Pick, New York Times (Jun 27, 2008) “The plot of WALL-E may be about a steaming heap of garbage, but the film is a garden of unearthly delights…. The idea that a company in the business of mainstream entertainment would make something as creative, substantial and cautionary as this has to raise your hopes for humanity.” —John Anderson, Washington Post (Jun 27, 2008)
