The idea in one minute
This page compares the film WALL-E, about a little robot tidying an Earth everyone has left, with Shelley's poem Ozymandias, about a broken statue of a proud king. Both ask what really lasts. You will learn how they connect with the Names of Allah for the Owner of all kingship and the Everlasting.
The question: If kings and whole civilisations pass away, who does the Earth really belong to, and what of ours will last?
Seven hundred years from now, in Pixar's film, the Earth is buried under rubbish. The humans have gone to live on a cruise ship in space. One small robot is still at work, crushing trash into cubes and stacking them into towers taller than the old skyscrapers. In his spare time he collects treasures: a lighter, a spork, a Rubik's cube, a video of an old musical.
Two hundred years ago, in a poem of fourteen lines, Percy Shelley imagined a traveller in a desert who finds two huge legs of stone and a broken face half buried in sand. On the pedestal are the words 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings'. Then comes the line everybody remembers: 'Nothing beside remains.' One is a children's film and one is a school poem. Both are about who really owns the world.
In the makers' own words
“So, I came up with a theme: irrational love defeats life's programming.”
Andrew Stanton, director of WALL·E, 12 February 2009 · AwardsDaily, 'Robot Love, Andrew Stanton on Defeating Life's Programming' (Sasha Stone)
“everyone had to leave the planet”
Andrew Stanton, on the film's starting idea, 12 February 2009 · AwardsDaily
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings”
The inscription in Shelley's poem, 1818 · Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Ozymandias' (Project Gutenberg #4800)
“Nothing beside remains.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818 · 'Ozymandias', line 12
The king who carved his own name
Ozymandias is the Greek name for Ramesses II, one of the most powerful rulers of ancient Egypt, who reigned for more than sixty years in the thirteenth century BCE. He built on a vast scale and put his name on everything. In 1817 news was spreading in Britain that a huge stone head and torso of Ramesses, taken from his temple at Thebes, was on its way to London. Shelley and his friend Horace Smith each wrote a sonnet on the subject as a friendly contest. Shelley's was printed in The Examiner on 11 January 1818.
The statue itself, known as the Younger Memnon, reached London in 1821 and is in the British Museum today, where anyone can visit it for free. It is beautiful and enormous. It is also broken, and the king it shows has been dead for more than three thousand years. Shelley's poem catches that in one turn: the boast on the pedestal, and the 'lone and level sands' all around it.
The robot who kept a plant
Andrew Stanton first had the idea for WALL·E in 1994, at a lunch with other Pixar writers. He told AwardsDaily that the story began with a simple situation, that 'everyone had to leave the planet', and a lonely robot left behind. As he worked on it, he found the thread that tied it together: 'irrational love defeats life's programming'. WALL·E is programmed to stack rubbish. What makes him more than a machine is that he notices things, keeps things, and falls in love.
The turning point of the film is a tiny green seedling growing in an old boot. It shows that life can return to Earth. The humans, who have spent seven centuries floating in comfort, are called home to look after the planet they left. The captain, who has never touched soil, says the most moving line in the film: he does not want to survive, he wants to live. The Earth was never theirs to throw away.
What really lasts
Shelley was writing about a ruined statue. Today scientists can measure how much we build. In 2020 a team at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, led by Emily Elhacham and Ron Milo, estimated that the total mass of things made by humans, such as concrete, bricks, metal and plastic, had grown to about 1.1 trillion tonnes, roughly equal to the mass of all living things on Earth. It has been doubling about every twenty years.
Much of what we make does not last in a good way. The OECD reported in 2022 that plastic waste had more than doubled in two decades and that only about 9% of it is successfully recycled. WALL·E's towers of cubes are a cartoon, but the problem is real.
And even the greatest monuments are temporary on a bigger clock. Our Sun is about halfway through its life of roughly ten billion years. Mountains wear down, coastlines move, and stone weathers. Science gives a clear picture of a universe in which everything made changes and passes. That is exactly where the faiths begin to speak.
Owner, heir and the One who remains
The Qur'an has a prayer that could be read beside the broken statue: 'Say: O Allah! Owner of Sovereignty! Thou givest sovereignty unto whom Thou wilt, and Thou withdrawest sovereignty from whom Thou wilt. Thou exaltest whom Thou wilt, and Thou abasest whom Thou wilt. In Thy hand is the good. Lo! Thou art Able to do all things.' (3:26, Pickthall). The Name in that verse, Mālik al-Mulk, means the Owner of kingship itself. Kings hold power on loan. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) described the Day of Judgement, when God will roll up the heavens and say: 'I am the King; where are the kings of the earth?' (Bukhari 4812).
Two other Names complete the picture. Al-Bāqī is the One who remains: 'Everyone that is thereon will pass away; There remaineth but the Countenance of thy Lord of Might and Glory.' (55:26–27, Pickthall). Al-Wārith is the Inheritor: 'Lo! We, only We, inherit the earth and all who are thereon, and unto Us they are returned.' (19:40, Pickthall). In the meantime the Qur'an calls human beings khalīfa, stewards placed on the earth (2:30), and warns against spoiling it: 'Work not confusion in the earth after the fair ordering (thereof). and call on Him in fear and hope. Lo! the mercy of Allah is nigh unto the good.' (7:56, Pickthall). WALL·E's humans forgot they were stewards. Ozymandias forgot he was a tenant.
The Names this touches
The contrast
The film imagines a robot who inherits an abandoned Earth, and the poem a king whose boast outlasts his kingdom; the Names describe the One who owns the kingdom outright, remains when every statue has fallen, and inherits the Earth and everyone on it.
Mālik al-Mulk: The Owner of all sovereignty: kings hold power on loan (3:26).
Al-Bāqī: The One who remains when all else has passed (55:26–27).
Al-Wārith: The Inheritor of the earth and all who are on it (19:40).
What each faith says
Judaism
“Of old Thou didst lay the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment... But Thou art the selfsame, and Thy years shall have no end.”
Psalm 102:26–28 · JPS 1917
The Hebrew Bible says plainly who owns the world: 'The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof' (Psalm 24:1). In the Book of Daniel, the proudest king of his age, Nebuchadnezzar, is humbled 'to the intent that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men' (Daniel 4:14).
Jewish law turns this into daily practice. The rule of bal tashchit, 'do not destroy', comes from Deuteronomy 20:19, which forbids cutting down fruit trees even in war, and the rabbis extended it to forbid needless waste of anything useful. The shmita year, when the land rests every seventh year, is a reminder that the land is held in trust, not owned outright (Leviticus 25:23).
Christianity
“All flesh is like grass, and all of man's glory like the flower in the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls; but the Lord's word endures forever.”
1 Peter 1:24–25 · WEB
Christians share the Psalms and add the voice of Jesus, who warned against piling up things that will not last: 'Don't lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume' (Matthew 6:19). Mary, in her song in Luke's Gospel, praises a God who 'has put down princes from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly' (Luke 1:52).
Many churches now speak of 'creation care'. Pope Francis's 2015 letter Laudato si' calls the Earth 'our common home' and asks every person to see care for it as part of faith. For Christians the hope is not that the world is thrown away but that God is 'making all things new' (Revelation 21:5).
Islam
“Say: O Allah! Owner of Sovereignty! Thou givest sovereignty unto whom Thou wilt, and Thou withdrawest sovereignty from whom Thou wilt. Thou exaltest whom Thou wilt, and Thou abasest whom Thou wilt. In Thy hand is the good. Lo! Thou art Able to do all things.”
Qur'an 3:26 · Pickthall (1930)
The Qur'an returns again and again to ruined cities of proud peoples, such as ʿĀd and its city of Iram 'With many-columned Iram, The like of which was not created in the lands.' (89:7–8, Pickthall), as signs for those who think. It sets human power against God's: 'That which ye have wasteth away, and that which Allah hath remaineth. And verily We shall pay those who are steadfast a recompense in proportion to the best of what they used to do.' (16:96, Pickthall).
At the same time, Islam gives people a real job on Earth. Human beings are khalīfa, stewards (2:30), and the Qur'an observes that 'Corruption doth appear on land and sea because of (the evil) which men's hands have done, that He may make them taste a part of that which they have done, in order that they may return.' (30:41, Pickthall). The Prophet taught kindness to animals and plants; he said that a man who gave water to a thirsty dog was forgiven for it (Bukhari 173). Care for the Earth is worship, because the Earth is His.
Same and different
All three faiths say the Earth belongs to God, that human power is borrowed and temporary, and that we are responsible for how we treat creation. They differ in emphasis and hope. Jewish law builds care for the land into commandments such as bal tashchit and the sabbatical year; Christians look to a renewed creation in Christ; Muslims speak of stewardship (khilāfa) answerable to the One who inherits all.
Go deeper
- 'Ozymandias', full text · poem
- The Younger Memnon, British Museum collection · museum
- Elhacham et al., 'Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass', Nature (2020) · paper
- OECD, Global Plastics Outlook press release (February 2022) · report
- Qur'an 55:26–27 with translations · scripture
- Pope Francis, Laudato si' (2015) · church document
- Deuteronomy 20 (Sefaria) · scripture
Sources (8)
- Stanton quotes; idea dates from 1994; WALL·E is 700 years old: AwardsDaily, 12 February 2009
- Poem text: Shelley, 'Ozymandias', Project Gutenberg #4800
- Published in The Examiner 11 January 1818; contest with Horace Smith; Younger Memnon arrived 1821: Wikipedia, Ozymandias
- Human-made mass about 1.1 trillion tonnes, equal to living biomass around 2020; doubling about every 20 years: Elhacham et al., Nature 588 (2020)
- Only 9% of plastic waste successfully recycled; plastic waste doubled in two decades: OECD press release, February 2022
- Sun about halfway through a life of about 10 billion years: NASA Science, 'Sun: Facts'
- WALL·E certificate U: BBFC
- Hadith: 'I am the King; where are the kings of the earth?'; the thirsty dog: Sahih al-Bukhari 4812; 173
