Your top 5 sci-fi movies (and why)

[Paul Farquhar]

The point is that doing something as a job is massively different from doing something as a hobby

No, it isn't. A hobby is just a job that you do to please yourself. And you don't need to be particularly "wealthy" to choose your job, and find something that is rewarding and satisfying. I was a teacher, that's not exactly a well paid job, and often it wasn't pleasurable, but I did it for the satisfaction of making a contribution to society, not for the (negligible) money. And now I'm retired, finding ways to usefully contribute is the challenge I face. Of course, being grindingly poor restricts your choices, as does a lack of education, place of birth, and many other situations. But you don't need to be one of the super rich in order to do a job that you find satisfying, and/or enjoyable.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think this applies to an awful lot of internet theories about movies or books, they rarely survive contact with whatever they're about. I'm having a hard time imagining a person watching Wall-E, looking at the humans, and going 'yeah that looks like paradise to me'.

The humans in Wall-E have nothing to do apart from sit around and wait to die. Which we can assume won't take long since they are all massively overweight. Of course, they might be like the Eloi in the Time Machine, and they are overweight because they are going to become food. But without Morlocks, and in a closed system with out access to additional biomatter, the Wall-E humans are clearly cattle who are eating themselves.

Of course, the whole point of the Time Machine is that a divided society is bad for everyone. The healthy place to be is in the middle.