Wall-E Moments That Go Right Over Kids' Heads

The opening of the film reveals a completely decimated planet, a place of death and ruin. Wall-E is the only bit of movement in all that rusty stillness, the lone survivor at the end of days. The robot scratches out an existence the only way it knows how, the same way we've seen in films such as "I am Legend" or "The Road": it combs through society's wreckage and takes what it needs. 

First, he gathers the essentials. When Wall-E's treads start showing too much wear, it ventures into the shadows of an overpass that serves as a Wall-E graveyard and strips parts from the body of another robot. Later we find out it has dozens of spare parts stashed in its' hideout. It is not clear what happened to those other robots, or how Wall-E came to be the last. Perhaps Wall-E robots are like the immortals from "Highlander": there can be only one. Self-awareness and self-preservation go hand-in-hand. Perhaps some quirk of fate bestowed consciousness onto Wall-E in order to see its robotic kin as convenient ways to extend its own life. Granted, such a pessimistic outlook doesn't really fit with the Wall-E we know from the film, but several hundred years alone might've given Wall-E a sudden appreciation for life. If you think that's dark, we're only just getting started!

The film's second sequence shows a day in the life of our plucky hero. Wall-E drags itself out of bed, slowly puts on its treads, and packs its cooler. It opens the door and stands in quiet contemplation of the work ahead before sighing heavily and trudging out the door. Wall-E's job is to collect and stack Earth's garbage, one cube at a time. The robot has been doing this for over 700 years. Some of the stacks rival skyscrapers ... and you thought your job was bad.

The work is tedious, boring, and without end. Wall-E copes with the soul-killing drudgery by looking for interesting things amid the trash. The world is a dumpster and Wall-E is the last dumpster diver. It finds plenty of distractions along the way, including a woman's bra that it tries on over its optical sensors because that is the most sensible place to wear it. In addition to being funny, this goes a long way toward humanizing Wall-E. We all waste time on silly things at work.

After Eve locates the plant specimen and is retrieved from Earth, Wall-E hitchhikes on the trip across space. Axiom, an enormous starliner built by Buy n Large, is parked in a purple cloud formation at the edge of the solar system. We know the Axiom is "the jewel of the BNL fleet" from an advertisement Wall-E accidentally triggers in the intro. Where then is the rest of the fleet? There have to be other ships ... right?

We never see the rest of the fleet and there is no reference to other ships. Captain McCrea (Jeff Garlin) makes no attempt to contact any other captains after he learns that life has returned to Earth. The Axiom and its complement of passengers may be the only humans left alive. Those other ships were either lost, destroyed, or never left Earth at all. There is at least one tiny clue to support the theory that Axiom is the only ship that made it into space: Early in the film, Wall-E rolls past a bank where money litters the ground, thousands and thousands of dollars now worthless. It conjures images of a crowd rioting because they are unable to escape the doomed planet. This is all conjecture, but Wall-E is a dark film when you stop to think about it.

As part of its efforts to follow directive A113 (i.e. keep the humans away from Earth), Auto has a security robot put the plant in an escape pod and jettison it into space. Wall-E ends up in the escape pod too. Hijinks ensue, resulting in the escape pod detonating. Wall-E survives, somehow, then uses a fire extinguisher as a propellent to fly through space.

Wall-E reunites with Eve in the depths of space. Distraught Eve can't follow its directive without the plant, but Wall-E managed to stash it in its compression compartment. Wall-E opens the compartment and brandishes the plant, voila. Again, in the black depths of space, where all life dies. That should've been the end of the adventure right there, but (impossibly) the plant doesn't wilt. There are a lot of questionable things, science-wise, but this is without a doubt the most egregious.

Since we're on the subject, let's talk about those shakes. After Captain McCrea takes his position on the Axiom's bridge, the computer runs through status updates on all of the ship's major systems. Amid the sorts of stuff you'd expect — mechanical systems, reactor core, life support — there is one update that stands out because it is so wildly different: Regenerative food buffet. What?!

This sneeze-and-miss-it reference is the only time we hear those three words. Food is plentiful on the ship. Nearly every time we see a human, they're slurping down a Big Gulp, but we never get any other references to what exactly these people are eating. "Regenerative" suggests a sort of cloning since, in all likelihood, animal life on Earth went extinct or was left behind to die out. We never see any evidence to the contrary. So they probably aren't drinking ground beef. Perhaps there is a lab on the ship where steaks are brewed in Petri dishes and blended into smoothies. It's feasible, but there is one other possibility.

The great Albert Einstein once said: "People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." In other words: Time itself is an illusion. Though it's clear where Einstein came down on the issue, the debate still rages today among scientists. You wouldn't expect a movie meant for kids to weigh in on the subject, but while "Wall-E" stays above the fray, it includes a winking reference.

After Captain McCrea gets his morning status updates from the ship's computer, he is alarmed to discover it's already 12:30. He missed giving the morning announcements, which is the highlight of his otherwise boring day. It's a problem McCrea solves for himself as he turns a time dial back three hours, to 9:30. This causes the artificial sun to change position in the sky and the lunch slurries to swap out for breakfast slushies. Those are the only material changes. Otherwise, life continues on as it was, as though time itself doesn't actually matter.

The story doesn't directly answer the obvious question of "How did the world go so bad?" It's something we want to know, mostly due to our idle but ever-present self-preservation instincts. Yet the question isn't relevant to the story, in much the same way that "Mad Max: Fury Road" never clarifies who killed the world. It doesn't need to, since the answer is obvious: we did.

Humanity's consumption ruined the Earth, literally burying it in the trash. It's a clear metaphor for climate change and our role in the ongoing destruction of our homes, but it's a problem that will only be solved when humanity rolls up its sleeves and does the hard work. After viewing Eve's recordings from Earth, Captain McCrea is initially disappointed. There's no blue sky or green grass. It's all just brown and dead. McCrea waters the plant, remarking that it "just needed someone to look after you." At that moment, he comes to a striking realization. Humanity needs to look after the Earth. It's not something we can delegate to Buy n Large's robots. The Earth is our home, and we are responsible for taking care of it.