Most know Pixar’s Wall-E to be a cute animated film filled with ideas of love and friendship with hints at environmentalism sprinkled about. While this is certainly true, and writes a good message for kids and future generations, it uses more serious themes and paints a grim picture that younger viewers may miss.
The movie takes place on a future Earth that has been completely overrun with garbage resulting from the same big corporation that has given the human race evacuation from the planet and relief from said situation. Though cyberpunk and the science fiction genre are speculative fiction and look into futuristic concepts, Wall-E combines those fictitious themes with pictures that are more realistic and closer in the near future without some sort of intervention.
Landscape and color play an important role in the environment of the movie. The entire opening scene is painted in browns and oranges and depicts the abandoned landscapes left behind. This color scheme stays consistent for the entirety of the landscape. The city is inspired by real life locations, but it is meant to represent any city and give an idea that these scenes would be familiar around the globe.
One particular shot is a pan across the cityscape depicting the scale of the architecture to the mounds of trash. It is a physical representation of the juxtaposition between life before and after these technological advancements, before and after this era of cyberpunk. While the world seems full and voluminous with the heaps of trash stacked and overflowing into the street, the reality is that everything is completely empty and abandoned. The buildings, once occupied, are now no better than the trash heaps standing tall next to them.
What caused this? Humans become the robots, and the robots become human. Mindless consumers who do what they are told the minute they are told to do it, humans essentially become the one thing they are afraid of. They create their own destruction and then exacerbate the problems without knowing because they are just doing what they are told, acting as zombies of consumerism.
This could end up being the reality in the future. With little checks on mass production and large monopolous companies, Earth could easily end up looking like the one in the film with piles of garbage stretching higher than even the tallest of skyscrapers, space debris creating a shell just outside the atmosphere, and barren wastelands without the slightest hints of life. This may be a cute science fiction movie for kids, but its warnings and messages are closer to reality than most want to believe. Without intervention, this movie is a glance into Earth’s and humanity’s future. We are the robots and the slaves working towards our own destruction.
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