The hero's journey in Wall-e

Wall-e is a 2008 Pixar animated movie following the adventure of a sentient trash-clearing robot left alone for centuries on earth, thrust into the stars to find humanity living light-years away on a giant space-ship. With the help of EVE, a probe sent to earth to detect the presence of life, the two robots must fight against the established hierarchy of rebellious crew robots in order to use a plant sample from earth to activate the ships return protocol and return humanity to earth.

Wall-e certainly feels like a hero’s journey film, hence I picked it to analyse, however some of the more specific points did not have a clear example in the film. This was made more difficult due to robots making up the main cast, for many of whom the gender was ambiguous (if not all, however that’s a debate for a different time). So points that refer to a specific gender were difficult to place.

The simplified version of the hero’s journey was a somewhat easier comparison, and my analysis goes as follows;

Ordinary World: Earth, the trash-filled toxic wasteland on which Wall-e is stranded. He goes about a predictable and boring routine from day to day clearing up trash, and doesn’t interact with any other sentient beings.

Call to Adventure; Finding the plant. Wall-e discovers a lone plant, which he does not understand the significance of, yet it is the first domino in a series of events that start his journey.

Refusal of the call; There is no particular moment in which Wall-e refuses something that will further the adventure, however his general scepticism and nervousness throughout the first act of the film could be interpreted as a resistance to his curiosity and desire to explore.

Meeting with the Mentor: Again, Eve as a mentor archetype is debatable, however in a sense, Eve is likely the first sentient life-form that Wall-e has ever encountered, and introduces him to new ideas/feelings, and represents a realisation in wall-e that there is more to life than rooting through trash. In that sense, she informs him and prepares him for the journey.

Crossing the first Threshold: When Eve is abducted by a space-ship, Wall-e clings to the side in a desperate attempt not to be separated from his only friend. This is a clear point of no return, and the flight from earth to the Axiom(the mother-ship) marks the passage from the ordinary world to the ‘other’ world.

Tests, Allies, Enemies: When Wall-e and Eve first reach the Captain of the Axiom to present the plant, they find it has been removed from Eve's storage bay. The Captain assumes them both to be defective and sends them away to be repaired. Wall-e attempts to break out of the repair bay to be with Eve, and this activates the Axiom security robots. They ally with the other defective robots in the repair bay and escape from the security bots.

Approach: After finding the plant, and managing to actually present it to the Captain, the robots encounter a major setback, realising that the ships Auto-pilot (the main antagonist) is acting on secret orders to foil any attempts to return the Axiom to earth. Both Wall-e and Eve are captured and sent to the ships garbage dump along with the plant.

Ordeal: After surviving and returning from the ships depths, Wall-e and Eve face off in a final showdown with the Autopilot to deliver the plant to a receptacle which will automatically return the ship to earth.

Reward: With help from the ships captain, who rebels against the autopilot, they succeed, deactivating the autopilot and sending the Axiom to earth.

The Road Back: The hyperspace jump and landing of the Axiom.

Resurrection Hero: A close to literal resurrection as Eve must fight for Wall-e’s survival, as he was damaged during the fight on the Axiom, and desperately needs spare parts before his memory dies. Eve succeeds and resurrects Wall-e.

Return with Elixir: Wall-e and Eve bring humanity back to earth, and over presumably many centuries they work together to clean up earth and re-kindle life on earth.

There are a few other points from the extended version that do fit:

Supernatural Aid: It could be said that in this instance, the super-natural aid is life/the plant. Although life is ordinary to us, in the dystopian earth of Wall-e it has been extinct for centuries. In this respect, life as a ‘force’ is comparable to a super-natural power, and the ‘plant’ is the magic item wall-e receives from it which will be key to fighting off the films antagonists and bringing utopia back to earth.

Belly of the Whale: After wandering through the ship aimlessly near the beginning of the second act, Wall-e finds himself in the human part of the ship, and through a montage we get a picture of how human beings have come to live aboard the Axiom. This establishes the fundamental reality of the ‘other world’ and its inhabitants which Wall-e will have to navigate to achieve his goal.

Magic Flight: Flying through space in spaceships, and particularly in the scene where Wall-e and Eve perform a dance-like flight around the outside of the ship.

Master of two worlds: Uniquely, the two worlds of the film come together and merge at the end of Wall-e, as the Axiom lands back at the space-port, and it’s inhabitants; both robots and humans, leave the ship in order to live on earth.

Freedom to live: As the ships captain notes aboard the Axiom, the humans will survive aboard the axiom, but they can’t ‘live’. The humans believe they are in a utopia, where-as actually they are trapped in a never ending cycle of repeating days of leisure with no real direction or meaning to their lives. Landing on earth with the challenge of re-building civilization gives their life meaning, and far more prospects in life to explore. In this sense, they have true freedom to ‘live’.