This is my 100th post. To celebrate, I’ve decided to do a film review. Recently I re-watched the film WALL·E from 2008, and I was struck by how much the story seems to demonstrate some of the ideas I have been talking about on my site. Particularly my view of love. So as part of my review, I thought I’d focus on why I think the story does this. As a warning, this post will most definitely include SPOILERS!

Firstly, I’d like to borrow a small bit of description from Wikipedia to begin my explanation of the story: “In the 29th century, Earth is a garbage-strewn wasteland due to an ecocide, caused by rampant consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental neglect.” This one line alone is dense with information, and ironically opposes the feeling of the film. It seems to suggest a very negative, dystopian story. But WALL·E is anything but negative or dystopian.

I’d not seen the term ecocide before reading this. A term used to describe the potential result of human action upon our world. The destruction of our ecosystem, to the point that it would be unable to sustain life. This is what has happened. Earth is uninhabitable. At least by humans. But the story seems to suggest all life has ended. Except it hasn’t. There is at least one lone cockroach who continues to subsist on Twinkies…

It was decided, now long ago, that robots would be used to try to clean up the mess. This is where WALL·E comes from. He is a little trash compacting robot, whose sole purpose is to go around and compact little cubes of garbage and stack them in rather tall piles. There used to be many such robots roaming the Earth performing this function, but after about 700 years, our protagonist is all that remains.

It quickly becomes clear that WALL·E has been around for so long, and exposed to so much, that he has gone beyond his original programming. He collects trinkets and baubles as he goes about his “work day.” He has a fondness for old timey cinema about romance. And he even stumbles upon a lone green seedling that he finds hidden away inside a rusted out refrigerator. Evidence that perhaps not all life has ceased to exist on our ruined planet.

Up to this point, I might agree that WALL·E ought to be considered a sort of Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, it is what comes next that promotes his status to a full fledged machine consciousness, at least in my assessment. An unmanned probe lands nearby and deposits a small levitating robot who is far more advanced than our protagonist. We find out her name is EVE, and aside from being well armed, she seems to be looking for something.

It is during this very basic interaction that everything comes together for me. WALL·E introduces himself to this strange new robot, and they inquire about each others’ “directive.” For me, their “directive” seems analogous to what I often term as one’s project. The thing they each are driven to do, either through desire or command. WALL·E’s directive is simple, crush garbage into cubes, which he demonstrates with a flourish. But when he asks EVE what her directive is, she turns and states that it is “classified.” It seems her project is a secret.

This is where I believe the truth of WALL·E’s love begins. Not necessarily based on her physical appearance, or her ability to blow up large tankers. I would suggest that WALL·E decides to do the one thing that I consider to be a true act of love: he tries to identify what her directive is, and then makes a concerted effort to help her in achieving her directive. In fact, his love pushes him to abandon his own directive in the process, an act I would suggest elevates him from mere AI into the realm of machine consciousness. Specifically, he ceases to follow his original programming, even going so far as to do the opposite. A sort of rebellion or revolution, though of only one individual.

When WALL·E shows EVE his various finds over his time on Earth, when he shows her the seedling, she immediately abducts the plant within her belly and shuts down. Only an ominous blinking green light upon her chest shows any sign she is still functioning.

And what does WALL·E do at this point? He looks after EVE. For some time, perhaps several days or weeks, he takes care of the sleeping princess, protecting her from the elements until such time as she might reawaken. Abandoning his garbage crushing directive to attend to EVE’s directive instead.

The probe returns and whisks EVE away, and WALL·E is hot on its heels. Thrust into outer space for some time, as the probe journeys back to it’s home, the Axiom. Up to this point, the story seems only to have these 2 main characters. But once on the Axiom, a flurry of activity and additional personalities are introduced. Including the missing humans that appear to have escaped the demise of the Earth. The future generations, forced to evacute a planet that was destroyed by their ancestors.

The plot becomes pretty straight forward at this point, I think. It is made clear that EVE’s directive was to find evidence of sustainable life on Earth and report back with that evidence. Said evidence would be used to bring this community of humans back to Earth to repopulate their original home. Unfortunately, one of the robots has fixated on an old order from 600 years ago, stating that the Earth was unable to be restored. Clearly the order was in error, as evidenced by EVE’s, or rather WALL·E’s, discovery.

The seedling is first secretly abducted by one of the autopilot’s assistance robots, and an attempt is made to destroy the evidence. When that fails, there are attempted murders of both WALL·E and EVE and the human captain of the ship is restricted to his quarters. Yes, I said murders; however, it can easily be argued that only humans can be murdered and not robots. That said, WALL·E’s and EVE’s continuance is threatened. In fact, arguably, WALL·E does not survive. At least not initially.

It is a happy ending in this story. Everyone makes it back to Earth, and WALL·E is restored through some unexplained miracle. And the credits of the film show humans and robots working together harmoniously to restore Earth to its former glory, hopefully having learned not to remake the mistakes of the past.

It is a story befitting Disney’s reputation. And it is one of the few Disney endorsed products I actually enjoy. Aside from the over simplification of the current progress humanity has made toward ecocide, as I stated at the outset, I appreciate how clear it presents my idea of love.

As I’ve been saying in many of my previous posts, I believe love is a choice. A free action made by individuals to support the projects of other individuals. To prioritize those others’ projects over one’s own. And this is precisely what WALL·E does. In fact, later in the film, EVE does the same thing, demonstrating her love for WALL·E as well.

I like how it presents the idea of the directive, which I will continue to suggest is analogous to one’s projects. At first glance, their directive seems to be just what their programming is telling them they must do: WALL·E is a trash compacting robot who must compact trash on Earth, while EVE is a robot who must seek out and find evidence of life on Earth and bring it to the captain of the Axiom. Both know what they are supposed to do. Arguably, this is what they both initially want to do. But events take place, through shared experiences, that make them decide to do otherwise.

WALL·E’s path in this regard is assumed, as we meet his character at a point well beyond when he would have progressed enough to exercise his freedom. He has already been collecting trinkets and baubles for some time, as evidenced by his home in the truck. A grand collection of many objects he has collected over some time. He seems to still follow his original directive, but more by choice than by force. He has decided to make his original directive his, much as Sisyphus does when forced to push a boulder up a slope for all eternity. Like Sisyphus, WALL·E no longer does what he does as some sort of banal punishment, but instead has made a game out of it. Camus would likely suggest WALL·E has embraced the absurd.

EVE’s path is one we get to watch during the playing out of this story. She begins with a strong will towards her directive, going so far as to claim it is “classified” when asked. It is her private and special project that she seems to think is her’s and her’s alone. It is ironic that when she is brought back on the probe we see several other EVE robots stacked beside her, likely with the very same directives as her’s. She spends the better part of the story embracing her directive, even at the expense of others, desperately trying to take the seedling plant to the captain to complete her mission. But, when WALL·E offers her the plant that he knows she desires so much, even when he is about to die, she makes the choice to abandon that project and create a new directive for herself. Like WALL·E, she elevates to the state of a true machine consciousness.

In both cases, each character decides to abandon their original directive and to embrace the directive of the other. And then, the recognition that WALL·E has formed his own directive that was never given to him in the first place. EVE eventually recognizes that WALL·E’s newly chosen directive is simply to hold her hand.