****SPOILER ALERT*****

Personal Review of Pixar's Wall-E

 “Everything you need and many temptations”

Pixar’s animated film, Wall-e, develops a story of an uninhabitable Earth and a journey to “recolonize” the planet. Three key themes relevant today drive the plot: capitalism, technology, and curiosity. In the movie, capitalism, as a system, exploits consumers’ fears and laziness at the expense of a habitable planet. Technology and AI developed as a response to repair the damage. Ultimately, characters evolve passed basic survival instincts to curiosity, enlightenment, and hope.

Capitalism sets the dystopian premise of the movie. Buy N Large acts as an overly chipper overlord, both the Amazon and the government. The duality of Buy N Large mirrors the reality of the current global political climate. In the United States, super packs allow private organizations like oil, pharmacy, and mass agriculture to donate to political campaigns and essentially buy their way into legislative agenda. The Axiom is like a floating cruise ship or casino that keeps all of its inhabitants in a distracted stupor with promotional promises and advertisements for the latest trends. People engage primarily through screens, even when sitting next to each other. How many times have you been sitting in a room when someone sitting close by sends you a meme? Buy N Large creates an artificial experience for artificial living.

*Poster Idea *

Brainwash, rinse & repeat with “Ignorance is Bliss,” the newest conditioner de Capitalismo!

Wall-e, the movie’s protagonist, is an autonomous garbage compactor tasked to clean up the mountains of trash littered across the planet. Wall-e developed a higher form of sentience during their time on planet Earth. They spend time sifting through trash, and selecting novel or useful items. They have learned to replace their broken parts, and care for their pet cockroach. Wall-e enjoys music and learned about dancing, and companionship through an old movie. Wall-e reintroduces the concepts of caring for one another to EVA, another AI bot. Wall-E, through independent behavior, disrupts operations on the Axiom and is the catalyst for the people aboard the ship to disconnect from the matrix. Wall-e symbolizes critical thinking, creativity, and resilience.

In contradiction, artificial intelligence bots enabled humans to survive aboard the Axiom, but in multiple cases, the bots exhibited rogue behavior against programming. Mo, the little vacuum robot, shows the first glimpses of free will when they decide to jump off the line in order to clean Wall-e’s dirt trail. The bot does a little happy dance when it realizes it can move freely against programming without immediate negative consequence. When EVA gets sent down to be recalibrated and Wall-e to be cleaned, the bot service and reprogramming bay gives evidence of other unpredictable AI outcomes. Many of the bots exhibit extreme and aggressive behavior, possibly as a response to their role on the ship as a subservient class?  In the most extreme case, the automated pilot system and his small gopher bot henchmen hijack the ship to maintain power structures and lock the real captain in his quarters.

In reality, futurists will sell AI as tomorrow’s rotten eggs. Google admits they are far from achieving net zero because of AI. AI is currently responsible for a large, growing percentage of carbon emissions. The carbon footprint of training a single big language model is equal to around 300,000 kg of carbon dioxide emissions. This is of the order of 125 round-trip flights between New York and Beijing, a quantification that laypersons can visualize. (Dhar, 2020.) Even so, prominent futurist Ray Kurzweil, acclaimed author of The Singularity is Near, claims AI will solve climate change by 2030. Meanwhile, global supply chains and local livelihoods are disrupted by extreme weather events on a more frequent basis.

Tierra, la superficie del mundo en oposición al cielo o al mar.

The planet is littered by mankind’s insatiable quest to engineer a “better” life. The need to survive is closely followed by the desire for an easier life. Capitalistic markets serve the promise of a guaranteed, easy, mess free solution for every need and the stressed and fearful consumer gobbles it up like a starving, stray animal. The human capacity to move beyond mind numbing consumption – passed instant gratification – is where curiosity, compassion and creativity take root. After seeing the plant and learning about 700 years old Earth, the captain became curious and compassionate about saving the planet. The captain came to realize that humans are an extension of nature not separate from it, that humanity ceases to exist when the reciprocity between human and land is broken.  

As global citizens, we face unprecedented heat, flooding, drought, wildfires, emergence of novel zoonotic disease, mass migration and extinctions. We are tasked as the generation that could make a difference, are we?