Wall-E SPEAKS! Or at least WE do.

April 18th, 2009

Andrew Stanton wrote and directed the film WALL-E for Pixar and is a professing Christian. I found his quotes regarding the film and its symbolism intriguing and they featured largely in a recent Film and Theology event discussion with our friends at Mars Hill, now available for a listen.

Some thought this movie had an overbearing environmentalist agenda, when this is far from the core of the storyteller’s impulse. From the lonely Adamic state of WALL-E and the arrival of EVE to the “Dove and Ark” metaphor of EVE and the AXIOM, there are parallels that make themselves all too obvious… 

“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…” - Andrew Stanton

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