WALL-E



WALL-E (styled as WALL•E) is a 2008 prophetic post-apocalyptic animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Featuring a tiny free-willed Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class tasked with cleaning an Earth ravaged by pollution, he falls in love with another robot and travels into space to ensure her survival. The movie was near-universally acclaimed, with the anthropomorphic romance compared to the silent films of yesteryear, and won everything including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

There were a handful of critics, however.

The wingnut reaction
Never ones to miss an opportunity to look like laughingstocks, American conservatives immediately went on a witchhunt over WALL-E's "political" message.

Angered by the portrayal of a consumer society gone wrong, sites from the National Review to RedState, to such luminaries as Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg, decried the film as having a "Marxist, Eco-Theological world view," "fascistic elements," "Bush Derangement Syndrome," "Malthusian fear-mongering," "leftist propaganda" and that "Goebbels [has] reached all the way to California." Boycotts were called.

Noticing the potential Streisand effect developing, other right-leaning commentators declared their support for WALL-E and its commitment to family values. Prepare your irony meters: one look at the Wikipedia pages of the production staff imply devout Christianity (at least one actor was a Republican supporter), and traces of Biblical influence are rampant. There was a reason his love interest was named EVE, for God's sake. It is also worth noting that the conspiracy crowd went full-metal apeshit on theories over "the technocracy", humans are being dumbed down by machines, and similar fear mongering stories conspiracies. [What's the Difference?]

Scientific reaction
Scientific criticism was particularly focused on physics issues (sci-fi movie, duh), but identified examples where WALL-E's dystopia is already more reality than the fringe want it to be.