Released in the middle of 2008, Wall-E was set in a futuristic dystopia with an Earth that’s left uninhabitable, with humans having been evacuated by Blue Origin Buy-N-Large, a megacorp, to a space station in the 22nd century. Left behind, a single sentient waster compressor, Wall-E, spends its days moving through the earth in a futile attempt to clean up the planet.
The movie is centred around the relationship between Wall-E and EVE, another robot designed to find traces of life on earth. Much of the movie is focused on the touching relationship between the characters, with Wall-E following EVE onto the space station upon its discovery of life.
While the movie certainly touches on issues of consumerism and corporate greed; the Disney-Pixar movie, which spawned merchandise sales that likely amounted to tens of millions of dollars, found its strength in cinematic features of the film. Throughout the movie, the animators and sound engineers did an excellent job at conveying the emotionality of the film, often without being aided by dialogue.
In total, Wall-E is likely to be remembered as one of the better Pixar movies of the decade for both the quality of the film itself, as well as the messages it conveyed, albeit with a bizarre lack of self-awareness.