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So partially to make progress on goal 4, and partially because I absolutely love Pixar I saw WALL•E¹ tonight. What can I say, it was fantastic. While watching the movie a thought came to mind, why we² make movies. Without giving too much away, WALL•E isn’t just a movie about a super incredibly cute robot. The film starts out in the barren landscape of a post-apocalyptic Earth. We find WALL•E working away at his primary mission, clean things up. Now WALL•E’s idea of cleaning things up is pretty similar to a child, or the typical college student, take your crap and make it into piles. Things really are really only a little better then when he started. Instead of junk scattered everywhere, there is junk everywhere in really really neat piles. It’s cute, but quite frankly for a movie partially targeted at children it is really dark.

WALL•E however is science fiction at it’s finest and by the end of the movie thing’s aren’t all better with everything fixed, but they’re better. However this had me thinking about why I love science fiction, something I’ve always known. Science fiction is frequently about hope. This hasn’t always been the case however but thanks to the brilliant mind of Isaac Asimov and his rejection of the Frankenstein complex this is what science fiction has become.³ Star Trek is a perfect example of modern science fiction that takes this and runs with it. Above all other thins Star Trek was a rejection of the typical dystopian science fiction and an example of what can be.

Star Trek was made in the 60’s a time of social and political upheaval. Amongst many other things the airing of the original Star Trek coincided with the height of American involvement in Vietnam, the African-American Civil Rights Movement, some of the most heated moments of the Cold War, and the assassination of American leaders, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. For many Star Trek gave people hope that everything would turn out all right. This was no coincidence as Asimov was a friend and adviser to Gene Roddenberry the creator and produce of Star Trek.

But back to WALL•E. WALL•E represents the same things that Star Trek did, in a time not so dissimilar. People are searching for hope as much now as ever. If you were asked to define Barack Obama’s campaign for president in one word hope would be high on the list of responses.⁴ WALL•E doesn’t go as far as Star Trek and suggest that everything is going to work out perfectly but it does suggest that we can overcome. Hope has been in short supply lately and WALL•E does it’s very best to add some to the mix. Fortunately WALL•E’s very best the work of Pixar and their very worst is better then what some can ever hope for. Amongst other things, hope is why we make movies.