Module 11
Megan Flinders
WALL-E
The
computer related movie I chose to view was the animated movie by Disney’s
Pixar, WALL-E. Although it is a
fictional movie made for children and families, there are many points in this
film that are very relatable and relevant to our society today. The film was released in 2008 and the setting
of WALL-E takes place in the future, in approximately 2805. It is interesting to see how far the use of
computer generated robots has come since 2008 and to imagine what their capabilities
will be in the year 2805. I wonder if
there will be more similarities to what the movie depicted than we suspect.
The film
begins by introducing the main character, WALL-E, which stands for Waste
Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-Class. He
is a computer generated trash compactor that was sent to earth in 2105 to help
other trash compacter robots clean the planet after it had been evacuated by
all humans due to decades of mass consumerism that had left the planet
uninhabitable thanks to the megacorporation Buy n’ Large (BnL). The humans left to live in fully automated
starliners (made by BnL of course) while the robots make the earth habitable
once more. Eventually BnL abandons its
plan and shuts down all of the WALL-E robots, except for one. He maintains his lifestyle and repairs
himself with old parts he finds and collects things he finds while compacting
trash.
One day
while going about his business, WALL-E discovers a small plant that has begun
to grow. Not long after that, a
spaceship lands and deploys an advanced robot sent from the BnL starliner to
search for vegetation on earth. This
robots name is EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), and WALL-E quickly
falls in love with her. She, after many
hostile interactions, eventually befriends him.
WALL-E brings EVE to his collection and she sees the plant which she
immediately stores inside herself and goes into stand-by mode waiting to be
retrieved by a ship. WALL-E thinks she
has malfunctioned and tries to fix her to no avail. He stows away on the spaceship that comes to
collect EVE and travels to the Axiom ship where the humans reside.
On the ship
we find that the inhabitants have become morbidly obese and incessantly lazy
due to the comfortable lifestyle on the ship that computers and robots provide
for them. They ride around in automated
chairs all day that have a big virtual screen right in front of their faces that
obeys their every command. They never
need to have face-to-face interactions with each other because they can talk
through their computers whenever they like.
They also order food on their computers which they eat in their space chairs
while on the go, never really going anywhere in particular.
The plant
that EVE has found would be proof to the humans that life on earth could exist
once more, but through a series of unfortunate events between EVE and WALL-E,
there are confusions and mishaps that almost ruin the chance for them to find
the plant that EVE stored within herself.
Once the plant is finally discovered, the captain of the spaceship
concludes that mankind must return to restore their ruined planet. However, the ship’s robotic autopilot, Auto,
has taken control of the ship and does not want the humans to return to
earth. After many attempts, the captain
overtakes and disables Auto and the Axiom begins its return home to earth.
It is a
little frightening to see the depiction of the dependency that the humans have
on their computers, and it is pretty realistic to how people are with
technology today. I can totally imagine
a world where the human race depended on technology and computers for
everything in life. While the human-like
characteristics of the robots probably seemed far-fetched in the year 2008,
today we see robotic interactions that imitate human like qualities to an
almost scary degree. Even in talking to
Siri we find that she is programmed with sarcasm that makes her
personable. I definitely think the
social and cultural issues that are raised by the film showcase our dependence on
our technology and the “I need it now and I don’t want to have to work for it”
attitude that we can see becoming increasingly more commonplace. The movie was meant to portray a time far in
the future, but I don’t think we have to look all the way into 2805 to see
similarities between our day and this film.
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