Why he's so miserable: The only thinking creature left on planet Earth, Wall-E spends his days on the Sisyphean task of cleaning up the mountains of rubbish left by a vanished human race. All the rest of his kind have succumbed to decay, malfunction and machine death over the 700 years that he's been labouring, so that - aside from a cockroach pet - he is entirely alone in the world, just trundling through the dust of a vanished civilisation.

Why he's inspiring: It's Wall-E's endless sense of wonder and delight in the world and its peculiar rubbish that has the ability to remind us how much we have to be thankful for. Seeing him try to decide whether to place a newly-discovered spork with his fork collection or his spoon collection would charm a dead man. And if we want to make Wall-E's future-potential life better, we're going to have to clean up our act now.