Wall-E is an excellent and interesting movie. I enjoyed it a great deal. What's more, it includes a rather controversial theme which I feel merits further discussion. Both the movie and this discussion about it will be more pleasant for you if you experience them in the proper sequence.
If you haven't watched Wall-E yet, pretend every post in this thread is composed only of that text. Do yourself a favor and don't read this until you've seen the movie. The only reason I made this a separate thread rather than a wall of [spoiler]spoiler text[/spoiler] is because my girlfriend's mac doesn't highlight spoiler boxes right, and I have to hit the Quote button to read their contents.
So. Wall-E.
The movie was excellent, but one of its themes has really been bothering me. This idea that "the Earth is irreparably toxified, but we can save it if we just BUILD MORE FARMS" is just incredibly naive and counterproductive.
The first issue is one of plausibility. How much time was supposed to have passed between the Axiom's launch and its subsequent return? 705
years? That isn't enough time for really gross anatomical changes, but I have a hard time believing that this entire population could spend that much time isolated in a near-sterile space environment where machines take care of their every need without being physically and culturally incapable of adapting to the rigors of agriculture without a truly massive die-off. Even with the machines helping them, even with the presumably-functioning support systems on the Axiom: their mortality rate is going to
skyrocket. But I guess that's what choosing life over survival means.
Retreating from industrialization to survive on the fruits of your own two hands is a romantic image which almost never actually happens. But that's the little issue.
The big issue is that
farms are a
huge part of what's destroying the world.
[pretend this is an image of a farmer standing in his field photoshopped to look like one of those old war posters with the caption "THIS MAN IS A FARMER. // HE IS A FRIEND TO THE PLANET."]
Maybe I'm getting caught up in little details. The big thing Wall-E has to say is that things like complacency, duty, routine, and stability aren't as important as figuring out what's important and doing everything you can for the
sake of what's important, which is pretty moving on the big screen but problematic in the real world. I DUNNO I GUESS IT WORKED WELL FOR HITLER LOL and now that I've self-Godwinned we can move on to you telling me how wrong I am for raising niggling little objections to the most moving movie to move me in the modern millennium, etc.
DISCUSS