WALL-E isn't a movie just about robots or love or the environment. It isn't even about Disney or that little sweet butterfly that gets in you every time you watch a Pixar classic. It's about sacrificing our humanity.
Buy N Large (BnL) became a popular company at the expense of business competition. This allowed them to commercialize every facet of organisation. Media, transport, government, health, education, science, sport, technology: everything except environmental responsibility. We sacrificed economic and cultural freedom for the sake of convenience. We got rid of political and business borders and made a new frontier, but put up borders against nature and a wall of silence.against the depletion of resources, physical space and waste management.
The second sacrifice was nature. Pollution and lack of recycling or renewable energy usage ruined the climate. For the sake of excessive and immediate consumption: a mindset of only thinking what you need now, and not ever considering the future.
Then we sacrificed the Earth. Humanity literally packed up its bags and ran away from its home. We gave up the entire planet - its history, culture, races, resources, and nature itself - because it was easier to leave than to fix the problem.
Then, we sacrificed our intelligence: humanity ceased growing, inventing, or creating. It just existed.
Then we sacrificed our bodies, because of laziness, given floating chairs. We stopped working, given robots. We stopped exploring our surroundings and questioning anything of our existence because of the digital world on a screen in front of us. We even stopped meeting in person.
This resulted in the ultimate sacrifice: our humanity. This is why WALL-E is so powerful as a character, because, even though he's a robot who has developed artificial intelligence, sentience, and a conscience, he's the only character left who is still human. Not just in his personality but in all the things he does and collects too. He is the only character who really understands how important humanity is and why it's worth saving, via the plant and his love for EVE, before any other characters cared or bothered to fight for it.
WALL-E isn't just a family friendly digital romance action adventure science fiction space opera trying to warn us of environmental responsibility, it's a definition of humanity and its relationship with the whole universe. It's about using technology not for convenience, but to enrich us. It's about making our place on this little planet worthwhile and enjoyable to the maximum we can afford. Technology should be used to connect us as an entire species and give us the platform to pursue our humanity in ways never before possible. It's not meant to be used so that we can just live in a chair for our entire lives - there is a good Oatmeal (or similar) comic that depicts this.
Only by using technology sustainably, to manifest our dreams, can we retain our humanity, rather than sacrifice it.
