see- i told you it wall-e was a good movie... and i didn’t even think of this reason.
here is an interview with the director and WORLD magazine... click to read the whole article
WORLD: How does WALL•E represent your singular vision?
STANTON: Well, what really interested me was the idea of the most human thing in the universe being a machine because it has more interest in finding out what the point of living is than actual people. The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love, but that's not always our priority. So I came up with this premise that could demonstrate what I was trying to say—that irrational love defeats the world's programming. You've got these two robots that are trying to go above their basest directives, literally their programming, to experience love.
With the human characters I wanted to show that our programming is the routines and habits that distract us to the point that we're not really making connections to the people next to us. We're not engaging in relationships, which are the point of living—relationship with God and relationship with other people.
WORLD: The depiction of humanity is pretty stark in this movie.
STANTON: Well, when I started outlining humanity in the story, I asked myself: What if everything you needed to survive—health care, food—was taken care of and you had nothing but a perpetual vacation to fill your time? What if the result of all that convenience was that all your relationships became indirect—nobody's reaching out to each other? A lot of people have suggested that I was making a comment on obesity. But that wasn't it, I was trying to make humanity big babies because there was no reason for them to grow up anymore.
WORLD: Now that you mention people misconstruing your intentions, how do you feel about reports that WALL•E is an environmental movie?
STANTON: People made this connection that I never saw coming with the environmental movement, and that's not what I was trying to do. I was just using the circumstances of people abandoning the Earth because it's filled with garbage as a way to tell my story.
I always knew that I wanted WALL•E to be digging through trash for two reasons: One, I wanted him to be the lowest on the totem pole. It's a janitorial job; it's the saddest, lowest status amongst his kind; and it just makes him that much more of a lonely guy. Two, trash is really visual. Even the littlest kid understands when there's stuff in the way and it needs to be picked up, so I didn't need to spend time explaining his job. And then I just reverse-engineered from there, "OK, if there's trash everywhere, how did it get there?"
WORLD: As someone who is completely freaked out by rats, I was amazed that in Ratatouille you managed to make rats lovable. Now, in WALL•E, you've done something even more amazing—you've made cockroaches loveable!
STANTON: [Laughing] Yeah, we [the animators] took that as a personal challenge. We said, let's not even design it cute—we'll make it look like a real cockroach and we'll still make it cute! I'm glad you think we succeeded.
(more from WORLD magazine, from the LIVING TO SERVE, LEARNING TO LOVE section)
True, the foundation for the story is that humanity has left the planet heaped in garbage. But far weightier themes—like how technology distances us from the wonder of creation and how that distance cripples us spiritually—play a bigger role. In fact, if Stanton criticizes people for anything, it's for worship of leisure. Because they live to be cared for rather than to care, the few human beings WALL•E meets have become, to use Stanton's words, giant babies—literally feeding on milk rather than solid food. In contrast, WALL•E, the meek little trash collector, accepts stewardship in a way that people have rejected. And because love springs from service, he comes to love the creatures that inhabit Earth. That's not an environmental message, it's a biblical one.
“irrational love defeats the world’s programming” as demonstrated by wall-e. or irrational love goes and rebuys shirts for teenage daughters. my two blog entries were actually linked in some way. isn’t that so God?
btw... if you wonder about my blog reader who goes by the initials DB... that stands for DELECTABLE BROWNIES. yes, debbie- MY blog readers make me brownies and bring them to my house. you may have more comments, but i have totally HOMEMADE brownies with a chocolatey icing that is out of this world....