Wall-E

I saw the new Disney Pixar movie, Wall-E, last night and it was definitely more than I had expected. I had pictured it to be the standard animated comedy in the realms of "Finding Nemo," "Cars," and "Toy Story." It was, in fact similar in the type of humor and taste, but this also had several societal and environmental messages as well.

Warning...a few semi-spoilers lay ahead (but nothing too harmful):

The movie starts out with Wall-E, a robot who is designed to collect and condense trash, living all by himself on Earth. All the humans have gone away because of the massive amounts of garbage they created but could not clear up on their own had become overwhelming, so they left it to robots, which failed. The entire planet is a desolate wasteland where the only living creature left is a cockroach, which happens to be Wall-E's pet.

Later on, in outer space, it becomes embarrasingly sad to see what has become of the human race. They all live on a space station in another galaxy. It's not that they live in another galaxy that's the problem, but they they have become so incredibly lazy and dependent on technology for everything that they are so fat they they live in hovercraft-like chairs. A hologram television is placed a foot from their face, which acts as their eyes to the rest of the world (or, to be more exact, the space station).

The movie wasn't at all necessarily sad in itself, but rather hilarious. However, as I watched it, in these themes I've pointed out I couldn't help but notice the truth to what they say about society today, especially in America. We are seen as a lazy country that makes messes but doesn't clean them up and view the entire would through what television tells us rather than experiences it for ourselves.

The other day I was at the Royals came and as we left the stadium, all over the place was garbage. Beer cans and beer cases and food wrappers. How hard would it be for people to place them in their cars and to bring home to recycle? To me, it's just sad seeing what our generation has become. Now, I'm only generalizing and I know there are plenty of Earth-loving people alive, but why can't we all be like that?

I loved the movie for it's humor (I just love most disney movies alltogether) and it was a joy to watch. It's a great movie. I'd definitely recommend you see it. These themes really aren't a big part of it at all, it's just stuff I happened to notice.It made me happy to see a fun movie that also had messages to tell it's audience as well. Towards the end, the captain of the ship says to a little plant, which is the only plant that survived on earth over the 700 years they abandoned it: "You just needed someone to look after you, that's all." It's our planet, so let's look after it.