Imagine that humankind had to leave Earth and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off. Andrew Stanton, a inventive writer-director of Finding Nemo and technical geniuses at Pixar Animation Studios, had written a movie tells a love story between two robots (who speak three words between them) against the backdrop of an Earth that has been destroyed by waste and consumerist overkill.

WALL-E (voiced by Ben Burtt) is a story about loneliness and love, triumph and perseverance, the possibility and pitfalls of human existence. As the movie tells it, human abandoned earth sometime around 2010 when the planet became uninhabitable due to mounds and mounds of waste from consumer goods, which are purchased from super mega-store BnL (Buy ‘n Large). The firm left behind an army of WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class) robots to pick up all the wastes, compress it into cubes and clean things up enough so that the human population, currently living on a distant spaceship, can return.

The first 30 minutes, WALL-E is almost completely without dialogue. Instead, the story is told visually. As we see WALL-E, the hero goes around doing his job, as he has for the past 700 years, compacting wastes into cubes and stacking them into immense towers. The hero also collects remnants of humanity to keep for his own amusement. Rubik’s Cubes, Zippo lighters, Christmas lights, these are what WALL-E surrounds himself with. He is living alone; dirty and abandoned stuffs are his companions, his contact with humanity.

After 700 years, the hero is the only WALL-E left, with only a cockroach and an old videotape of “Hello, Dolly!” for firm. Later on, a spaceship lands and leave behind another robot, EVE (voiced by Elissa Knight), who is as sleek and digital as WALL-E is clunky and analog.

When WALL-E presents EVE with a tiny plant, he found growing inside a trashed refrigerator. However, EVE keeps the plant inside herself and goes into shutdown mode; WALL-E is perplexed. However, WALL-E takes care of EVE until the ship returns. EVE is one of many probes that have been sent to earth by the BnL spaceship to seek evidence of sustainable life. Then, WALL-E, smitten by EVE, latches onto the spaceship and rides it across the galaxy, following her to the massive BnL ark.

Later on, the story goes to sweet and poignant and funny and special to just above-average kids’ movie. Humanity has grown complacent and corpulent on the ship, with robots taking care of their every need. However, the arrival of the pant makes the ship’s captain (voiced by Jeff Garlin) realize that there is a secret conspiracy to keep people from ever returning to earth. There is no doubt that young kids will absolutely love this movie. The action is perfectly paced, and the characters are expressive and fun. Undoubtedly, WALL-E is the greatest of all movies by Pixar Animation, the little Disney studio with the Midas touch.

In a movie season that has overpopulated with tired superhero movies, sequels and remakes, it is incredibly refreshing to watch a movie that stands on its own as a unique and new creation. WALL-E’s intelligence may be artificial, but his heroism is anything but superficial.

Read also: Wall-E: A Pixar Animated Film

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