YMMV / WALL•E

• Accidental Aesop: Director Andrew Stanton claims that this movie was not intended to have an anti-consumerism message, and that the purpose of the over-consumerism theme was to justify WALL•E's existence. The same is true of the film's obvious Green Aesop: WALL•E needed to live on a planet full of garbage, and the story was derived from that.
• Adorkable: WALL•E loves musicals (well, one musical). He collects spoons and forks... and has just started a new collection of sporks.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The CEO of BnL. He's clearly not happy to report that the process of cleaning up Earth has failed, nor does he seem too happy to order the autopilots to keep Humanity in space. But, at the same time, he doesn't seem too bothered about not informing the passengers about the status of Operation Clean-Up or taking away their right to choose how to proceed with their own future.
  • The BnL corporation as a whole, are they just your typical totalitarian megacorporation, or do they genuinely have humanity's best interests at heart? As stated in Accidental Aesop above, the anti-consumerism message was by accident.
  • AUTO. The film suggests that his stubborn insistence on keeping the Axiom away from Earth is because he's blindly following his programming while being unable or unwilling to accept any change in the situation... but is that all there is to it? After all, if the Axiom's mission ended, there would presumably be no further need for an autopilot; maybe part of the reason AUTO is so vehement on staying the course is because he knows that returning to Earth would mean his own deactivation.
  • Was WALL•E falling into the Holo-Detector accidental on his part, or did he realize he was losing the battle to keep it open under his own power and deliberately slip in there to get it stuck at least partway open? His insistence, down in the garbage area, that EVE take the plant instead of trying to fix him (before she rejects it and he has to convince her that getting back to Earth is the best way to fix him in order to get her to take it) establishes that he prioritizes her goal over his survival, so this isn't too much of a reach.
• Anvilicious:
  • We don't know if you noticed, but our increasingly decadent lifestyles and disregard for the environment don't turn out well.
  • If there was something intentionally anvilicious, it's more along the lines of "our decadent lifestyles makes us disconnected from humanity and relationships to the point where we cannot look at or touch each other."
• Award Snub:
  • Despite being a serious contender for Best Film in 2008, animated or otherwise, Disney only pushed for the Best Animated Film Oscar nomination which the film won.
  • Didn't win a single award for which it was nominated for the 2008 Annie Awards. In fact, the Annies were swept almost completely by Kung Fu Panda.
  • While it was nominated for the Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing categories it was beaten by The Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionaire, respectively, despite the first half being nothing but sound from the guy who "voiced" R2D2 too.
• Broken Base: Viewers seem split over:
  • Whether or not the increased amount of dialogue and social commentary once WALL•E and EVE reach the Axiom ruins the movie.
  • Whether having EVE fail to restore WALL•E's memories would have made the ending feel more poignant and less contrived, or if the ending already feels powerful enough with WALL•E and EVE living happily ever after.
• Crosses the Line Twice: At the near end, the way GO-4 was thrown out of the window during McCrea's fight with AUTO.
  • The mentally unstable massage robot, HAN-S, violently obliterating the security drones.
• Cry for the Devil: Big Bad AUTO is an emotionless, entirely logical Well-Intentioned Extremist who intends to stop WALL•E and the Captain from returning to home even if that involves our heroes getting brutally hurt. However, he is only someone following his directive and following what was programmed into him, he ultimately had no choice. This makes him being deactivated pretty sad for some fans.
• Draco in Leather Pants: AUTO. Considering the things he does and his overall demeanor, he's the only viable target for Self-Inserts to try to romance.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • M•O, the little Neat Freak who is occasionally shown to be just as important as WALL•E and EVE, despite only having less than five minutes of screentime.
  • Captain McCrea, the most badass overweight man ever.
  • The two enormous WALL•A trash-compacting units on the Axiom only appear in one scene (plus a background appearance at the end), but their Gentle Giant nature is quite moving and their competence is refreshing.
  • The Rogue Robot squad; a group of malfunctioning robots that instantly befriend WALL•E after the latter unintentionally breaks them out of the Axiom's repair ward. It's very common to see them portrayed in artwork as the La Résistance that fights back against AUTO.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The elaborate end-title sequence, showing the humans and the robots successfully rebuilding Earth over many generations, was added with the intent of averting this trope, after the initial test audiences thought that all the humans would die in a hopeless attempt to do so.
• Fanon: In humanization art, WALL•E is commonly portrayed as wearing either glasses or steampunk goggles.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • At the end, Captain McCrea enthuses over the idea of growing pizza plants. In 2011, Congress called pizza a vegetable. Well, okay, not really, but it sounds funnier that way. Pizza Farms exist as well, albeit in a more roundabout way than directly growing the pizzas; rather, they grow the ingredients for the pizzas.
  • WALL•E using all the garbage he collects to construct full-sized buildings one block at a time seems like it would be tedious and annoying — but now that we have Minecraft, a lot more people can probably see the appeal.
  • This movie had footage from 20th Century Studios' film version of Hello, Dolly! years before the company acquired the studio.
  • People paying money to go into space with something called an Axiom? It may cost a few million, but you can buy a ticket to the International Space Station or a future corporate space station from a company named... Axiom Space.
  • AUTO is an AI that oversees humanity after their world went to ruin by keeping them in a state of ignorance about the true nature of their world, and does while commanding a giant vessel containing humans onboard it. These are traits it would later share with Z of the Moebius from Xenoblade Chronicles 3, who similarly keeps mankind locked in a state of conflict that prevents them from questioning the true nature of their world, with all their data being contained in Origin.
• Love to Hate: AUTO. He may be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but he's just so damn entertaining to watch.
• Memetic Mutation: "GIVE ME THE PLANT." "Bro, quit sending me that. Just tell me how much weed you want."^explanationSomebody texting a screenshot of AUTO saying "give me the plant" to their weed dealer.
• Misaimed Fandom: AUTO. Amusing how a character Andrew Stanton intended to have no character has fan clubs as well as tons of fanfiction and fanart.
• One-Scene Wonder: Many of the assorted back-up robots on the ship, but the best is probably HAN-S, the violently unstable massage robot thanks to the scene of him violently massacring AUTO's security drones.
• Robo Ship: WALL•E is head over treads for EVE at first sight, while she warms to him eventually.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Lindsay Ellis (back when she was The Nostalgia Chick) not only cites this as one of her favorite movies ever, but also called it a far more faithful adaptation of The Lorax than the 2012 movie wound up being.
  • A story about a two robots — one based with dark hues, the other one feminine and pure white — who are mostly known for Holding Hands while initially stuck in a barren wasteland for miles on end and having a language barrier separate them? It's basically Pixar's robot version of ICO. Bonus points come from the ending since it mirrors Yorda trying to get Ico to safety like how EVE wants to save WALL•E from shutting down for good.
• Squick: The very thick water that WALL•E punts across. Given the length of time it's probably inorganic sediment or chemical, but still... yuck.
• Ugly Cute:
  • WALL•E is a trash compactor robot, looking like a mix between Johnny 5, a tank, and a garbage truck, and still one of the most adorable movie stars ever made.
  • WALL•E's pet cockroach, dubbed by the producers as Hal.
• Viewer Name Confusion: Many people mistakenly refer to EVE as EVA due to the way WALL•E pronounces it ("Eee-Vuh").
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: According to Word of God, no, it's not. The massive amounts of pollution were simply an excuse to get all the humans off the Earth and nothing else. After all, even if given thousands of years, in reality humans would not be able to produce the sheer amount of garbage shown on Earth as in the movie (and that's without considering how as societies get more advanced, they actually produce less waste per person).
• The Woobie: The title character definitely qualifies as an Iron Woobie. His programming demands that he goes out and cleans the world of all the trash. He is the last WALL•E that is operating. He has to clean up all the trash in the world, on a planet that is essentially MADE OF TRASH, alone, brick by brick, and he has been doing it for hundreds of years. And you thought your life sucked. Though for for what it's worth, he seems to like it okay.

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