It’s summertime and time once again for the creative people of Pixar to present us with yet another great animated film. Opening in theaters today is WALL•E, the story of the last robot on an abandoned Earth. WORLD’s Megan Basham interviewed the film’s screenwriter and director, Andrew Stanton, asking him how WALL•E represents his singular vision as director, something Pixar has tried to accomplish in each of its films:

“Well, what really interested me was the idea of the most human thing in the universe being a machine because it has more interest in finding out what the point of living is than actual people. The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love, but that’s not always our priority. So I came up with this premise that could demonstrate what I was trying to say—that irrational love defeats the world’s programming. You’ve got these two robots that are trying to go above their basest directives, literally their programming, to experience love.

“With the human characters I wanted to show that our programming is the routines and habits that distract us to the point that we’re not really making connections to the people next to us. We’re not engaging in relationships, which are the point of living—relationship with God and relationship with other people.”

It’s interesting to note that many reviewers think WALL•E is a movie about environmental issues. “People made this connection that I never saw coming with the environmental movement, and that’s not what I was trying to do,” Stanton told WORLD. “I was just using the circumstances of people abandoning the Earth because it’s filled with garbage as a way to tell my story.”

Read the entire interview and Megan’s review here.