“Assessing the significance of the film’s adult themes is trickier. In a way Stanton’s insistence that his film is not political makes it more worrying. If he had made a heavy-handed film with a crude propaganda message it could be easily dismissed. But Stanton seems to have simply picked up on the prevailing spirit of the times and put it into an animated cinematic form. It seems normal today to portray human beings as grossly wasteful consumers with no initiative of their own. It is unexceptional to show that people are destroying the planet with their greed. And even a Disney film can now represent humanity as easy prey for a giant domineering corporation.

“In that sense, Wall-E is a deeply sad movie. Hopefully when its young fans grow older they will be able to see the limitations of its deeply gloomy outlook.”

He’s right, and the “limitations” of the movie are based on profound lies about humanity, about freedom, about self-interest, about consumerism. How can so many people have gotten it all so backwards?