What are your thoughts about AUTO?
0 voters
I don’t know why. I personally love him to the death. In fact, I love him so much I’m surprised at myself for feeling emotion towards an inorganic deity.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Private message me or post about your thoughts on AUTO.
This wheel rocks.[/spoiler]
Well, I thought he was okay. Not an antagonist that really stuck me. And welcome to Pixar Planet AUTOA113.
I moved this thread from the Fan Commentaries Thread to the WALL-E section of the forums.
He makes me mad, but that’s typical of any character that does bad things to the ones I connect with.
He makes me mad too, but I just find him interesting. I really got into robots with this movie. Obvious resemblance to HAL 9000, of course that’s what Stanton wanted.
It’s like this, he’s stubborn, but chilling. More so than most Disney villains. I mean it’s like, those guys are pansies. At least Auto got around to nearly completing his directive. I get where he comes from is all I’m saying.
I love HAL, therefore I love AUTO! 
Awesome! we Auto/Hal lovers gotta stick together!
I recently wrote a fan fiction on the origin of Auto. Please be sure to check it out. I will add another chapter soon.
I don’t love him or hate him. I think he’s a good villain, but not the best.
AUTOA113: Like you said, there’s something about AUTO that’s both intriguing and chilling, and that’s what makes him so interesting. I’m sure you can relate when I say that there just seems to be something so much deeper to AUTO, even though he is an emotionless robot who would much rather follow his directive than express emotion. But for some reason, it seems to me that there could be a part of him that does want to be able to display pure emotion as WALL•E and EVE do.
'Course I could be looking too far into this; seeing as how one of my fanfictions deals with this behavior showing through AUTO. 
I have to say, he is probably the darkest and definitely the coldest (no pun intended… he’s made of metal! 
) Pixar villain I can think of… besides Hopper, who I think is one of the most ruthless. Thing is, he really isn’t a villain at the same time! He’s a robot just like any of the others, but he is so adamant about following his directive that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make sure it stays fulfilled - even if it means gaining complete control and overthrowing his captain; even threatening humanity.
Geez, my WALL•E fangirling is really showing here… 
Heh… hey, when I say I love this movie and its characters to death, I seriously mean it!!!
This is a great topic of discussion. I’d like to see you guys getting more involved with it. 
little chef
Well, good point, little chef, I never thought of expanding this thought, but I do have a lot to say about him…more on Auto in my fan fic!
He’s not a dictator like most ppl think. He’s a slave. A powerful slave, but forced to see to his directive in its entirety. I’m sure you’re right about the desire to emote like WALL·E and EVE, he probably feels the need to despise them for their love. I always thought he did feel at least a little, since I detected some moments of his as emotional. He got angry a few times, and I always saw him as calm and complacent in demeanor. He also seemed scared in “Directive A113.”
Also, I’d like to point out that music plays during the same scene (awesome music! I love Thomas Newman and his strings!), and music ties to emotional feelings and memories, so it’s obvious he must have felt a little uncertain there. I listened to the music by itself, the buzzing and the strings gave an impression of a lingering pain. Perhaps he felt the fear of failing was eminent if he allowed the captain to go through with going against his directive. Also, the directive is 700 years old. Although time was rapidly going by without notice to him (he has, after all, been doing the same thing century in and century out. Time is of no essence to robots.) he remained strong and persistent. He never backed down.
I also firmly believe that Auto was only threatening the Captain and shocking WALL·E for self-preservation. The greatest fear of any computer is shutting down. Didn’t we learn this from HAL? So he felt that if he did not preform par to expectations and continue to follow his directive, he would “die”.
In my fan fiction, he feels emotions only until his creator inserts the motherboard that allows him to do EVERYTHING on the Axiom. He was proud to be the last robot BnL created. I once wrote a report on Quantum computers, which will be able to multitask insanely fast. I thought later on, jeez, that sounds like Auto’s behavior. So I assumed that BnL finally reached that dificult goal, and realized that was their limit. So Auto is the very end of Artificial intelligence. As I progress through the rest of the fiction, Auto will feel threatened by Wall·E’s appearance on the Axiom, and it will progress through the movie revealing his perspective on the matters at hand.
I think I have the same issue as EVE probably would; any time I try to like him as more than just a well written character I remember the wincing I had when I first saw WALL-E get crushed. xD
I love the opportunity for fanfic and RP to mess with him/turn him good/whatever though.
I’m not sure if I feel one way or the other about him. He did some bad things, but only because he was programmed to carry out orders. Of course, near the end, I think maybe he might have done some ‘thinking’ for himself.
Every time someone calls AUTO a ‘villain’, I have to headdesk slightly.
I neither love nor hate him, but I find it very intriguing that his lack of a conscience is considered evil or villainous. There are many times in life when following orders is really the best thing to do, and the character of AUTO shows that there are times when the orders don’t make sense and it’s better to do your own thing. Obviously, AUTO is incapable of doing this, but this doesn’t make him bad or evil. What AUTO does is highlight the contrast between himself and the other characters, in particular WALL-E and EVE.
I do agree with other points made on this thread that he did seem to show emotions at some point, especially as his voice was not always flat. It’s almost as though he’s on the verge of being a feeling robot but for whatever reason can’t quite make it.
But yes, I do like him. He’s a cool character. 
Auto is NOT a villain. Many say he is merely following his directive, and they are obviously correct. However, you don’t have to be a villain to be threatening. Auto shows this clearly, and the only reason, is to remain in control and set everything “right”, in his ideal of the word.
I am certain there is a part of Auto that feels. From the first time watching this film, I not only noticed the scene when he showcases inflection in the voice instead of monotone, but the first time he says " Not possible." This is the scene when WALL·E and Eve are fighting the Steward bots, and winning. He pauses in between the words like he is malfunctioning, or perhaps he can’t believe what is happening. I prefer the first, since I also assumed upon first watching the movie, when he jams his taser into the button to close the holo-detector, the shocks made me think he was pushing down so hard, he started shorting out. I know better now, but it explains why he would harm the Captain. In their fight, you notice he was just trying to force the Captain off. Later, though, when the Captain stands up, he is about to tase him. This conflicts with the laws of robotics, so it is possible to assume that Auto was not thinking clearly in his final hour.
During the Captain verses Auto scene, Auto furiously spins the ship at an angle. Andrew Stanton had stated that the ship was supposed to tilt much more, but it looked like people were dying from falling. To apply this to a story sense, Auto was still responsible for the passengers, so he had to tone it down a little, despite his anger. In many scenes, he almost quakes with fury and intensity, and I can almost hear him thinking :“This is not right. I have to fix this, or else.” It is much like HAL 9000, wanting to be of service, if only to make sure that he wouldn’t be shut down. That is the greatest fear of Hal, and presumably, Auto, or any sentient machine.
Auto really wanted order. That is most likely his deepest desire. When he crushed WALL·E, some think it was intentional, but Auto didn’t know until afterward. Then he shouted “No!” and tried to close the holo-detector again, to try and set things right.
Auto was resistant to change. It is not because he himself, is against it, it is his directive. As the Captains became more useless and obese, Auto became more dominant, progressing through the pictures, you can visibly see him moving forward, becoming more dominant, and visually bigger, like the Captains almost. Laughs. That scene still scares me when I think about it, because I always imagine the next picture the Axiom takes of a Captain, it will be Auto, alone. If Captain B. McCrea had not resisted and did not want to go back to Earth, Auto may have developed a personality like that of Hal, and maybe then he would be a villain. He might have opposed anyone in his way, and that may explain the blood and Captain’s hat in the background in the picture I have in my mind’s eye. Yes, I have kind of a morbid mind.*Laughs.*Although, sometimes I picture Auto wearing that. Maybe it’s his dream to be a captain.
I wonder what the photographers thought while taking those pictures: “What the heck is that wheel doing???” Laughs.
Needless to say, Auto is my favorite Pixar character, not just my favorite antagonist or WALL·E character. He is complex in his behavior. We can’t even be sure that he’s a he. We all just kind of imposed the gender on him. Granted, he does have a bit of a masculine slant in his design, so maybe Stanton knows the real story.
Check my posts on “AUTOA113’s Astounding Antagonists” and “Auto’s Story” for more.
A couple of things I’ve noticed people assume about Auto…
Gender (although he does look rather masculine, and even Stanton referred to him as “he”)
Others assumptions are that Auto is a slave-driver or in control. A dictator. This is untrue. He is a slave himself.
AUTO-Biography chapter 10 up!
That’s a good point, AUTOA113, though in a way all of the robots’ genders are presumed as, technically, none of them actually have a gender. We just naturally make that assumption by the way they look and the gender of the voice they have, and though AUTO’s appearance is neither masculine or feminine (well, maybe a tad masculine) he does obviously have that masculine voice.
And yes, you’re right, he is a slave to his own directive. In a way the others, like EVE and WALL-E, are sort of slaves that have broken free. But it’s interesting to think about AUTO in that way, since it becomes more and more obvious that he isn’t some villain that some people like to think of him as.
Well, I have to admit I’m the second one who voted AUTO as well…person who hates AUTO. No offense here! Please. Just one of my personal rants.
No offense again, (& I hope this won’t affect great relationship to you, AUTOA113 and other Pixar fans as well) AUTO is one of my eyesore character ever seen in a movie (#1: Hans Gruber). The character is too complex and yeah, I know it’s a robot that programmed to do something. But the way it becomes evil wasn’t strong enough to be an evil or professionally say: an antagonist character in a movie.
No offense for the third time!
– worried that my personal comment will destroy relationships between Pixar fans and I’ll get banned here and perhaps if I’m crazy enough, end my life by tying balloons and jumped from 20th floor of KLCC. LOL –
No problem, wannabechef91. I understand there are people who will regard AUTO as a bad character or even despise him. I’m not so much of a fan that I delude myself into thinking that everyone likes him.
Perhaps you should read AUTO-Biography. It gives a more heartfelt perspective on AUTO, although if you say you dislike his complexity maybe that’s a bad idea.
A quote from the Art of WALL·E on the only two pages on AUTO (with a nice model packet drawing for future reference):
“In some ways, the Autopilot is HAL (the sentient computer in the film 2001: A space Odyssey) for kids. Because the bid difference between Auto and WALL·E, and ultimately EVE and a lot of other robots, is that he does not find a way to rise above his programming. He is just following orders. WALL·E affects other robots so much that they betray their programming or go beyond it, and Auto cannot. That’s his flaw.”
—Jim Reardon, head of story, writer
If the plant is Stanton’s key image for WALL·E, the picture of AUTO and Reardon and the sucessing captain’s is mine, and I use these and the qoute above to get into gear.
Readers of AUTO-Biography may recognize Reardon as the only captain Auto becomes attached to. I checked IMDB when I began writing to find the names of the captains, although I already knew MCrea’s. I could have watched the movie again but sometimes when you watch something excessively, it becomes less special. It remains special to me, and I haven’t seen it since April. It’s almost like an addict going cold turkey and going into rehab. laughs.
In a recent study of government, I stumbled across the term “Autocracy.”
It’s the oldest government ever, and consists of a dictatorship.
So Auto’s flaw is more than being unable to rise above his directive, it’s how many millenniums ago he’s stuck in.
He IS rather behind the times, despite being advanced technology, by following a 700 year old directive…any thoughts?
Cool, I never thought of the term ‘autocracy’ before, AUTOA113! Those Pixarians are mad geniuses!
I think AUTO is one of the more memorable villains of the Pixar universe (then again, most of the bad guys are pretty strong in the other films). But I think he is unique primarily because he can’t help it, it’s his directive. It’s like Jessica Rabbit said in WFRR?:
Now, some may argue that AUTO did have a choice to disobey his directive much like what Wall-E and Eve did, and that just makes him all the more complex as an antagonist, to what degree did he have control over his decisions? You can even argue that what he did was for the good of mankind, or at least what he perceived to be the best solution (Earth’s toxicity levels possibly killing any humans who land and are exposed to its environment).
There’s just so much to explore about AUTO’s characters and moralities, and deserves a much longer post than what I just wrote for the last two minutes, which is pretty much what a great film villain is all about: multi-dimensional.
I’m just waxing lyrical, am I?
Oh, and FYI, I voted the first option. You don’t mess with AUTO and hope to get away with it (Case in point: Wall-E).
You’re perfectly entitled to your own opinions, as long as you don’t purposely try to belittle those who have ones who are contrarian to yours. And by the way, wouldn’t it be cool to float away from the KL Twin Towers skybridge, hanging onto balloons? Although, I’d probably crap my pants if I ever was crazy enough to attempt that.
I absolutely love Auto. His sleek design and the amazing job Ben Burtt did giving him that memorable voice. Plus, the HAL homage just tops it all off.
I didn’t think he was good or bad, just following the orders he had been given by higher authority.