…Um, from your tone towards the film, I’m assuming the sarcasm mark is on the “that’s ok” and not from the moral you think it had. I have two mental illnesses that I’ve had to deal with disability stigma over for 15 years, and… how on Earth did you get that message from the film, exactly?
[spoil]The first new character we meet in Radiator Springs is Odis, who is not only a good guy lemon that Mater treats very kindly, but is freaking adorable and panders to the audience to like him right away. Later, when confronted with the bad guy lemons, Mater immediately makes an appeal to them, showing empathy for their plights. They didn’t not listen to him because they were lemons; they didn’t not listen to him because they were greedy people. Should we let somebody get away with doing something wrong because they have a disability? Or is it just not politically correct now to show disabled characters as anything but the good guys?
And Mater, being totally different from every other character, was the main character. The movie goes as far as to flat out say that if other people can’t accept that he’s different, they need to change. It was, while a bit preachy, one of the most inspiring things I’ve heard related to mental illness or just not fitting the status quo in a film in years.[/spoil]
I say you’re reading way too much into it. If you dislike the movie, fine. Cool. Can we not have another “WALL-E supports communism” bit, please?
Innocent? Yes. He didn’t come on screen laughing evilly and kill somebody. Friendly? No. For me, Auto immediately comes off as intimidating. I mean, we enter an empty, darkened room with only Auto in the center. He activates his glowing red eye and preforms quick, calculative completely ignoring anybody’s presence unless he needs to command them. WALL-E even boxed up a little and backed away.
If anything, Auto came across as neutral and just trying to do his job. And he never really got revealed as the villain as much as escalated into the events by his need to obey orders, which was apparent from the start. Heck, you could claim that Auto isn’t the antagonist at all and just a tool of the antagonist, Mr. Forthright. Auto is technically an inanimate object, after all.
And that brings up whether Forthright is a revealed villain? Well, he’s kind of a jerk, but he didn’t mean to hurt our heroes. He was just being lazy/cheap and A113 resulted from it.
Stanton seems to have a thing for circumstances being the antagonist more than any specific character.