TheMonkeyBusiness: Wall-e The Movie

WALL-E, promoted with an interpunct as WALL·E, is a 2008 computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation StudiosAndrew Stanton. The story follows a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future. He eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE, and follows her into outer space on an adventure that changes the destiny of both his kind and humanity. and directed by 

After directing Finding Nemo,  Stanton felt Pixar had created believable simulations of underwater  physics and was willing to direct a film largely set in space. Most of  the characters do not have actual human voices, but instead communicate  with body language and robotic sounds, designed by Ben Burtt, that resemble voices. In addition, it is the first animated feature by Pixar to have segments featuring live-action characters.

Walt Disney Pictures released it in the United States and Canada on June 27, 2008. The film grossed US$23.1  million on its opening day, and $63 million during its opening weekend  in 3,992 theaters, ranking #1 at the box office. This ranks as the  fourth highest-grossing opening weekend for a Pixar film as of May 31,  2009. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film, Presto, for its theatrical release.

WALL-E has been met with overwhelmingly positive reviews among critics, scoring an approval rating of 96% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed $534 million worldwide, won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form,[3] the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature as well as being nominated for five other Academy Awards at the 81st Academy Awards. WALL-ETIME's "Best Movies of the Decade." ranks first in 

Plot

Throughout the 21st century, Earth was governed by the Buy n Large (BnL) megacorporation, causing mass consumerism  and covering the planet in trash by 2105. In an attempt to resolve the  situation, BnL evacuated Earth's population on fully automated luxury starliners  for five years while an army of trash compactor robots called "WALL-E"  were left behind to clean up the planet. However, the plan failed, the  WALL-E units were shut off, and humanity has remained in space for 700  years. However, somehow one WALL-E remained active, and survived the  harsh environment and the passage of time by salvaging spare parts from  the others of his type. By doing this, the unit developed sentience,  as shown by his quirky habits of collecting knickknacks from the  mountains of trash, domesticating a lone cockroach, and singing to the show tunes of Hello Dolly!.

One day, WALL-E discovers a seedling plant growing in the soil among  the trash and returns it to his home. Later, a spaceship lands and  deploys EVE, an advanced probe robot sent to Earth with the directive  of searching for signs of plant life. WALL-E immediately falls in love  with the initially aloof and hostile EVE, who gradually softens and  takes a liking to WALL-E. During a dust storm,  WALL-E takes EVE to his home and shows her the plant in the boot, which  causes her automated systems to store the plant inside her body,  activate a homing beacon for her ship, and shut her down. After WALL-E  goes to great lengths to take care of her, even going on a date with the  inactive robot in the hopes that she will reactivate, EVE's ship  returns to collect her, prompting WALL-E to desperately cling to the  hull of the ship as it returns to the Axiom, the flagship of the BnL starliner fleet.

Upon docking, WALL-E follows EVE as she is taken to the bridge of the ship. As he progresses through the Axiom, it becomes apparent that after centuries of living in microgravity and relying on the ship's automated systems, the human passengers have suffered severe bone loss and become morbidly obese. The captain himself does little, leaving control of the ship to its robotic autopilot,  Auto. When EVE is brought to the bridge, the captain learns that by  placing her plant sample inside the ship's holo-detector as a sign of  Earth being habitable again, the Axiom will enter hyperspace  and return to Earth to allow its passengers to repopulate the planet.  However, when EVE is opened, the plant is missing. She is considered defective and is taken to the robot repair ward, along with WALL-E, to be inspected and to have her memory wiped.

At the repair ward, WALL-E interprets EVE's inspection as torture and  breaks free attempting to save her, but his clumsiness only causes  chaos and he accidentally releases a horde of malfunctioning robots to  roam the ship, resulting in the ship's security designating him and EVE  as "rogue robots." Angry with WALL-E's disruptive influence, EVE takes  him to the escape pod  bay to send him back to Earth. There they witness Auto's robot  assistant deposit the missing plant into an escape pod, which is set to  self-destruct and launched with WALL-E inside. WALL-E escapes with the  plant unharmed, and EVE gratefully gives him a "kiss" in the form of an electric spark. The two robots celebrate on a spacewalk around the Axiom before returning the plant to the captain.

The captain reviews EVE's visual records of the devastated Earth.  Some of the footage contains her time spent with WALL-E, as well as the  "Hello Dolly!" video. From it, EVE begins to understand what love is.  Further footage of WALL-E's attempts to protect her when she was  inactive shows his feelings for her, enough to realise she loves him  back. When the captain vows to return to Earth to restore the planet,  Auto reveals that he was given a final directive to keep humanity in  space when life on Earth was deemed unsustainable. When the captain  resists, Auto stages a mutiny by electrocuting WALL-E with his taser,  sending him down a garbage chute with EVE and the plant, and locking  the captain in his quarters. Realizing that the only parts available to  repair WALL-E are on Earth, EVE takes him and the plant, with the help  of several robots on board ship to the holo-detector to activate the  ship's hyperjump back to Earth. The captain breaks free from his  quarters and opens the holo-detector while trying to wrestle control of  the Axiom from Auto, who closes it on WALL-E and crushes him as  he tries to hold it open. The captain deactivates Auto and EVE places  the plant in the holo-detector, releasing WALL-E and sending the ship  back to Earth.

EVE brings WALL-E's body back to his home and successfully repairs  and reactivates him. Unfortunately, WALL-E's memory and personality  appear to have been erased as he reverts to his original  trash-compacting duties. Heartbroken, EVE gives him a farewell electric  spark "kiss" that reboots his memory and restores him to his usual self,  happily reuniting the two robots. WALL-E and EVE rejoin the humans and  robots, taking care to plant the seedling that brought them back home.  The camera zooms out to show more seedlings sprouting from the ground,  and the epilogue shows the humans and robots working together to rebuild  civilization and restore the Earth's environment.

[edit] Cast and characters

Ben Burtt produced the voice of WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class), the titular character of the film. WALL-E is a sentient, 700-year-old solar-powered mobile trash compactor robot, and is presumably the only functional robot on Earth. He is designed as a small compactor box with all-terrain treads, three-fingered shovel hands, and binocular eyes. He is equipped with a cutting laser between his eyes and a recording device which he uses to record and play his Hello Dolly music. He is very curious, lonely, kindhearted and endearing, and always puts others, namely EVE, before himself on his journey to earn her love. He also collects objects that have been left on Earth (like a cage full of rubber duckies, a plastic spork, the Rubik's cube and a golden trophy, for example), has a pet cockroach named Hal (whom he feeds Kremies, a Twinkie-like confection, due to the popular misconception that they never expire), and is very interested in music. The truck is his only home.
- Burtt is also credited for the voice of M-O (Microbe Obliterator), as well as most other robots in the film. M-O is a tiny, obsessive compulsive maintenance robot who cleans the ship and inspects incoming shipments for foreign contaminants. Meeting WALL-E turns his life upside-down, however, when he sees not only how much filth is on his body, but how much he leaves behind. M-O spends a portion of the film following and cleaning WALL-E's tracks throughout the Axiom, leading him to the garbage depot where he unintentionally saves WALL-E and EVE from being jettisoned into the vacuum of space through the airlock and befriends them.
Elissa Knight as EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a sleek, state-of-the-art robotic probe whose main function is to locate vegetation on Earth to verify its habitability. She is designed with a white, egg-shaped body with levitating pivot points (fingers, arms, and head) and blue LED eyes. EVE moves around by a form of antigravity technology, and is equipped with scanners, a specimen storage compartment with a tractor beam, and a plasma cannon in her right arm (which she is quick to use, and harshly, at even the slightest provocation). She is initially a cold and hostile robot who is only concerned with her mission but does display basic emotions. However, when she opens up to WALL-E she learns to convey her emotions and eventually to understand his deep feelings for her, becoming more humane and considerate until she finally reciprocates WALL-E's love.
Jeff Garlin as Captain B. McCrea, the sole commander of the Axiom. Throughout his duties as captain, he is bogged down by daily routines and boredom. Meeting WALL-E, however, has sparked his interest in Earth, and he becomes enthusiastically engrossed in researching the home he never knew before, ultimately paving the way for a more dynamic leadership role. His name is never mentioned in dialogue, but is shown on a holographic commemoration in his cabin along with his predecessors.
Fred Willard as Shelby Forthright, historical CEO of the Buy n Large Corporation. Known for his seemingly unending optimism, Forthright proposed the plans to evacuate, clean up and recolonize the planet. However, he gave up hope after realizing he underestimated just how toxic the planet had become. Fred Willard is the only cast member in this film who plays a live-action character with a speaking role, and the first to do so in any Pixar film.
MacInTalk, the text-to-speech program for the Apple Macintosh, was used for the voice of Auto, the Axiom's artificially intelligent autopilot built into the ship's robotic helm. He is considerably the most "robotic" robot that appears in the film, having no distinct personality whatsoever. Unlike most of the other robots in the film, Auto does not have his programming influenced by WALL-E, remaining a cold and soulless character throughout. The characteristic qualities of his voice are retained even in other languages. The robot's design is a homage to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, featuring a HAL-style red "eye" in the center of his body.
John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy as John and Mary, respectively. John and Mary are both humans who live on the Axiom and have been largely unaware of their surroundings for most of their lives, most noticeably not realizing their ship housed a giant pool despite living there their entire lives, constantly talking to their friends on computer screens in front of them. However, they are brought out of their trances after chance encounters with WALL-E, eventually meeting face-to-face for the first time and falling in love. John is a man with blond hair and Mary is a woman with red hair tied in a ponytail with pink fingernails.
Sigourney Weaver as the Axiom's computer.

Writing

BACK ON M-O AND WALLY [sic]

M-O just finishes cleaning the floor.

Wally is fascinated.

Impishly makes another mark.

M-O compulsively cleans it. Can’t resist.

M-O (bleeps): [Look, it stays clean. You got that?]

Wally wipes the bottom of his tread on M-O’s face.

M-O loses it.

Scrubs his own face.       
Stanton wrote the screenplay to focus on the visuals

and as a guide to what the sound effects needed to convey[5]

Andrew StantonWALL-E during a lunch with fellow writers John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Joe RanftToy Story was nearing completion and the writers brainstormed ideas for their next projects – A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo – at this lunch. Stanton asked, "What if mankind had to leave Earth and somebody forgot to turn off the last robot?"[6] Having struggled for many years with making the characters in Toy Story appealing, Stanton found his simple Robinson Crusoe-esque idea of a lonely robot on a deserted planet very strong.[7][8] Stanton made WALL-E a waste collector as the idea was instantly understandable, and because it was a low-status menial job that made him sympathetic.[9] Stanton also liked the imagery of stacked cubes of garbage.[10] He did not find the idea dark because having a planet covered in garbage was for him a childish imagining of disaster.[11] conceived  in 1994. 

Stanton and Pete Docter developed the film under the title of Trash Planet for two months in 1995, but they did not know how to develop the story and Docter chose to direct Monsters, Inc.[12][13]  Stanton came up with the idea of WALL-E finding a plant, because his  life as the sole inhabitant on a deserted world reminded Stanton of a  plant growing among pavements.[14]  Before they turned their attention to other projects, Stanton and  Lasseter thought about having WALL-E fall in love, as it was the  necessary progression away from loneliness.[11] Stanton started writing WALL-E again in 2002 while completing Finding Nemo.[15]Dan O'Bannon's Alien. O'Bannon wrote his script in a manner Stanton found reminded him of haiku,  where visual descriptions were done in continuous lines of a few words.  Stanton wrote his robot dialogue conventionally, but placed them in  brackets.[8] In late 2003, Stanton and a few others created a story reel of the first twenty minutes of the film. Lasseter and Steve Jobs were impressed and officially began development,[16] though Jobs stated he did not like the title, originally spelled "W.A.L.-E."[17] instead. Stanton formatted his script in a manner reminiscent of 

While the first act of WALL-E "fell out of the sky" for Stanton,[11]  he had originally wanted aliens to plant EVE to explore Earth and the  rest of the film was very different. When WALL-E comes to the Axiom, he incites a Spartacus-style  rebellion by the robots against the remnants of the human race, which  were cruel alien Gels (completely devolved, gelantinous, boneless,  legless, see-through, green creatures that resemble Jell-O). James Hicks, a physiologist, mentioned to Stanton the concept of atrophyweightlessness would have on humans living in space for an inordinately extended time period.[6][18][19][20] and their ancestry would have been revealed in a Planet of the Apes-style ending.[21]  The Gels also spoke a made-up gibberish language, but Stanton scrapped  this idea because he thought it would be too complicated for the  audience to understand and they could easily be driven off from the  storyline.[22] The Gels had a royal family, who host a dance in a castle on a lake in the back of the ship, and the Axiom curled up into a ball when returning to Earth in this incarnation of the story.[22] Stanton decided this was too bizarre and unengaging, and conceived humanity as "big babies" (an idea Peter Gabrielneoteny).[21] Stanton developed the metaphorical theme of the humans learning to stand again and "grow[ing] up",[21][23]utopian societies come to exist.[24]  The process of depicting the descendants of humanity as the way they  appear in the movie was very slow. Stanton first decided to put a nose  and ears on the Gels so the audience could recognize them. Eventually,  fingers, legs, clothes, and other characteristics were added until they  arrived at the concept of being fetus-like to allow the audience to see  themselves in the characters.[22] and the effects prolonged  compared to  wanting WALL-E and EVE's relationship to inspire humanity because he felt very few films explore how  Therefore, this was the inspiration of the humans degenerating into the alien Gels,

In a later version of the film, Auto comes to the docking bay to  retrieve EVE's plant. The film would have its first cutaway to the  captain, but Stanton moved that as he found it too early to begin moving  away from WALL-E's point-of-view. As a homage to Get Smart,[25]  Auto takes the plant and goes into the bowels of the ship into a room  resembling a brain where he watches videos of Buy n Large's scheme to  clean-up the Earth falling apart through the years. Stanton removed this  to keep some mystery as to why the plant is taken from EVE. The captain  appears to be unintelligent, but Stanton wanted him to just be  unchallenged; otherwise he would have been unempathetic.[20]  One example of how unintelligent the captain was depicted initially is  that he was seen to wear his hat upside-down, only to fix it before he  challenges Auto. In the finished film, he merely wears it casually atop  his head, tightening it when he assumes real command of the Axiom.[22]

Originally, EVE would have been electrocuted by Auto, and then be  quickly saved from ejection at the hands of the WALL-A robots by WALL-E.  He would have then revived her by replacing her power unit with a  cigarette lighter he brought from Earth. Stanton reversed this following  a 2007 test screening, as he wanted to show EVE replacing her directive  of bringing the plant to the captain with repairing WALL-E, and it made  WALL-E even more heroic if he held the holo-detector open despite being  badly hurt. Stanton also moved the moment where WALL-E reveals his  plant (which he had snatched from the self-destructing escape pod) from  producing it from a closet to immediately after his escape, as it made  EVE happier and gave them stronger motivation to dance around the ship.[20]  Stanton felt half the audience at the screening believed the humans  would be unable to cope with living on Earth and died out after the  film's end. Jim Capobianco, director of the short film Your Friend the Rat,  created an end credits animation that continued the story – and  stylized in different artistic movements throughout history – to clarify  an optimistic tone.[26]

[edit] Design

WALL-E was the most complex Pixar production since Monsters, Inc.[7]storyboards, WALL-E[27] Production designer Ralph Eggleston wanted the lighting of the first act on Earth to be romantic, while the second act on the Axiom to be cold and sterile. During the third act, the romantic lighting is slowly introduced into the Axiom[6] Pixar studied Chernobyl and the city of Sofia to create the ruined world; art director Anthony Christov was from Bulgaria and recalled Sofia used to have problems storing its garbage.[28][29]  Eggleston bleached out the whites on Earth to make WALL-E feel  vulnerable, as if he requires sunglasses to survive the harsh sunlight.  The overexposed light makes the location look more vast. Because of the  haziness, the cubes making up the towers of garbage had to be very  large, otherwise they would have lost shape (in turn, this helped save  rendering time). The dull tans of Earth subtly become soft pinks and  blues when EVE arrives. When WALL-E shows EVE all his collected items  inside the truck he lives in, all the lights he has collected light up  to give an inviting atmosphere, like a Christmas tree.  Eggleston tried to avoid the colors yellow and green so WALL-E – who  was made yellow to emulate a tractor – would not blend into the deserted  Earth, and to make the plant more prominent.[30] because of the world and the history that had to be conveyed. Whereas most Pixar films have up to 75,000  required 125,000. environment.

 WALL-E finds a bra. Roger Deakins and Dennis Muren were consulted on realistic lighting including backgrounds that are less focused than foregrounds.

Stanton also wanted the lighting to look realistic and evoke the  science fiction films of his youth. He felt Pixar had captured the  physics of being underwater with Finding Nemo, so for WALL-E  he wanted to push that for air. It was while rewatching some of his  favorite science fiction films he realized Pixar's films lacked the look  of 70 mm film and its barrel distortion, lens flare and racking focus.[7] Producer Jim Morris invited Roger Deakins and Dennis Muren  to advise on lighting and atmosphere. Muren spent several months with  Pixar, while Deakins hosted one talk and was requested to stay on for  another two weeks. Stanton said Muren's experience came from integrating  computer animation into live-action settings, while Deakins helped them  understand not to overly complicate their camerawork and lighting.[24] 1970s Panavision cameras  were used to help the animators understand and replicate handheld  imperfections like unfocused backgrounds in digital environments.[6]  The first lighting test consisted of building a three-dimensional  replica of WALL-E, filming it with a 70 mm camera, and then trying to  replicate that in the computer.[31] Stanton cited the shallow lens work of Gus Van Sant's  films as an influence, as it created intimacy in each close-up. Stanton  chose angles for the virtual cameras that a live-action filmmaker would  choose if filming on a set.[11]

Stanton wanted the Axiom's interior to resemble Shanghai and Dubai.[7] Eggleston studied 1950s and '60s NASA paintings and the original concept art for Tomorrowland for the Axiom, to reflect that era's sense of optimism.[6]  Stanton remarked "We are all probably very similar in our backgrounds  here [at Pixar] in that we all miss the Tomorrowland that was promised  us from the heyday of Disneyland," and wanted a "jet pack" feel.[7] Pixar also studied the Disney Cruise Line and visited Las Vegas, which was helpful in understanding artificial lighting.[6] Eggleston also based his Axiom designs on the futuristic yet comforting architecture of Santiago Calatrava.  Eggleston divided the inside of the ship into three sections; the  rear's economy class has a basic gray concrete texture with graphics  keeping to the red, blue and white of the BnL logo. The coach class with  living/shopping spaces has 'S' shapes as people are always looking for  "what's around the corner". Stanton intended to have many colorful  signs, but he realized this would overwhelm the audience and went with  Eggleston's original idea of a small number of larger signs. The front,  premier class is a large Zen-like  spa with colors limited to turquoise, cream and tan, and leads on to  the captain's warm carpeted and wooded quarters and the sleek dark  bridge.[30] In keeping with the artificial Axiom, camera movements were modeled after those of the steadicam.[32]

Having chosen to show live-action footage from Hello, Dolly!,  Stanton continued the precedent of showing historical, normal humans in  live action footage, while creating their bloated descendants in the  rest of the film with animation.[21] The use of live action was a stepping stone for Pixar, as Stanton was planning to make John Carter of Mars his next project.[7][33]  Eggleston added that if the historical humans had been animated and  slightly caricaturized, then the audience would not have recognized how  serious their devolution was.[30] Stanton cast Fred Willard as the historical Buy n Large CEO because "He's the most friendly and insincere car salesman I could think of."[21] The CEO says "stay the course," which Stanton used because he thought it was funny.[34] Industrial Light & Magic did the visual effects for these shots.[6] Storyboarder Derek Thompson noted introducing live action meant they had to make the rest of the film look even more realistic.

[edit] Animation

WALL-E went undeveloped during the 1990s partly because  Stanton and Pixar were not confident enough yet to have a feature length  film with a main character that behaved like Luxo Jr. or R2-D2.[8]Tin Man,  or "machine[s] with function" like Luxo and R2. He found the latter  idea "powerful" because it allowed the audience to project personalities  onto the characters, as they do with babies and pets: "You're compelled  ... you almost can't stop yourself from finishing the sentence 'Oh, I  think it likes me! I think it's hungry! I think it wants to go for a  walk!'"[35] He added, "We wanted the audience to believe they were witnessing a machine that has come to life."[6] The animators visited recycling stations to study machinery, and also met robot designers, visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to study robots, watched a recording of a Mars rover,[15] and borrowed a bomb detecting robot from the San Francisco Police Department. Simplicity was preferred in their performances as giving them too many movements would make them feel human.[6] Stanton explained there are two types of robots in cinema: "human[s] with metal skin", like the 

Stanton wanted WALL-E to be a box and EVE to be like an egg.[36]binoculars Stanton was given when watching the Oakland Athletics play against the Boston Red Sox. He "missed the entire inning" because he was distracted by them.[37] The director was reminded of Buster Keaton and decided the robot would not need a nose or mouth.[38] Stanton added a zoom lens to make WALL-E more sympathetic.[38] Ralph Eggleston noted this feature gave the animators more to work with and gave the robot a child-like quality.[30] Pixar's studies of trash compactors during their visits to recycling stations inspired his body.[6] His tank treads were inspired by a wheelchair someone had developed that used treads instead of wheels.[36] The animators wanted him to have elbows, but realized this was unrealistic because he is only designed to pull garbage into his body.[6] His arms also looked very flimsy when they did a test of him waving.[36]  Animation director Angus MacLane suggested they attach his arms to a  track on the sides of his body to move them around, based on the inkjet printers  his father designed. This arm design contributed to creating the  character's posture, so if they wanted him to be nervous, they would  lower them.[39]Short Circuit until others pointed it out to him.[8] WALL-E's eyes were inspired by a pair of  Stanton was unaware of the similarities between WALL-E and Johnny 5 from 

 Auto, the captain and EVE

Stanton wanted EVE to be at the higher end of technology, and asked iPod designer Jonathan Ive to inspect her design. He was very impressed.[7] Her eyes are modelled on Lite-Brite toys,[38][36] Her limited design meant the animators had to treat her like a drawing, relying on posing her body to express emotion.[6] They also found her similar to a manatee or a narwhal[36]HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the usage of Also sprach Zarathustra for the showdown between the captain and Auto furthers that.[8][not in citation given][40]  Originally, Auto was designed entirely differently, resembling EVE, but  masculine and authoritative; the Steward robots were also more  aggressive Patrol-bots.[20]  The majority of the robot cast were formed with the Build-a-bot  program, where different heads, arms and treads were combined together  in over a hundred variations.[6] The humans were modelled on sea lions due to their blubbery bodies,[30]  as well as babies. The filmmakers noticed baby fat is a lot tighter  than adult fat and copied that texture for the film's humans.[41] because her floating body resembled an underwater creature. Auto was a conscious homage to  The manner in which he hangs from a wall gives him a threatening feel, like a spider.  but Pixar chose to not make them overly expressive as it would be too  easy to have her eyes turn into hearts to express love or something  similar.

To animate their robots, Pixar watched a Keaton and a Chaplin film every day for almost a year, and occasionally a Harold Lloyd[8]  Afterwards, the filmmakers knew all emotions could be conveyed  silently. Stanton cited Keaton's "great stone face" as giving them  perseverance in animating a character with an unchanging expression.[38]  As he rewatched these, Stanton felt that filmmakers – since the advent  of sound – relied on dialogue too much to convey exposition.[8] The filmmakers dubbed the cockroach WALL-E keeps as a pet "Hal", in reference to silent film producer Hal Roach (as well as being an additional reference to HAL 9000).[6] They also watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf, films that had sound but were not reliant on dialogue.[33] Stanton acknowledged Silent Running as an influence because its silent robots were a forerunner to the likes of R2-D2,[24] and that the "hopeless romantic" Woody Allen also inspired WALL-E.[12] picture.

[edit] Sound

Producer Jim Morris recommended Ben Burtt as sound designer for WALL-E because Stanton kept using R2-D2 as the benchmark for the robots.[25] Burtt had completed Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and told his wife he would no longer work on films with robots, but found WALL-E and its substitution of voices with sound "fresh and exciting".[6] He recorded 2500 sounds for the film, which was twice the average amount for a Star Wars film,[15] and a record in his career.[6] Burtt began work in 2005,[42] and experimented with filtering his voice for two years.[43] Burtt described the robot voices as "like a toddler [...] universal language of intonation. 'Oh', 'Hm?', 'Huh!', you know?"[44]

During production Burtt had the opportunity to look at the items used by Jimmy MacDonald, Disney's in-house sound designer for many of their classic films. Burtt used many of MacDonald's items on WALL-E.  Because Burtt was not simply adding sound effects in post-production,  the animators were always evaluating his new creations and ideas, which  Burtt found an unusual experience.[45][6]  Burtt would choose scientifically-accurate sounds for each character,  but if he could not find one that worked, he would choose a dramatic if  unrealistic noise.[45]  Burtt would find hundreds of sounds by looking at concept art of  characters, before he and Stanton pared it down to a distinct few for  each robot.[7] He worked in sync with the animators, returning their animation after adding the sounds to give them more ideas.

Burtt saw a hand-cranked electrical generator while watching Island in the Sky, and bought an identical, unpacked device from 1950 on eBay to use for WALL-E moving around.[46] Burtt also used an automobile self starter for when WALL-E goes fast,[45] and the sound of cars being wrecked at a demolition derby provided for WALL-E's compressing trash in his body.[47] The Macintosh computer chime was used to signify when WALL-E has fully recharged his battery. For EVE, Burtt wanted her humming to have a musical quality.[45] Burtt was only able to provide neutral or masculine voices, so Pixar employee Elissa Knight  was asked to provide her voice for Burtt to electronically modify.  Stanton deemed the sound effect good enough to properly cast her in the  role.[34] Burtt recorded a flying 10-foot-long (3.0 m) radio-controlled jet plane for EVE's flying,[6] and for her plasma cannon, Burtt hit a slinkytimpani stick. He described it as a "cousin" to the blaster noise from Star Wars.[48] hung from a ladder with a 

MacInTalk was used because Stanton "wanted Auto to be the epitome of a robot, cold, zeros & ones, calculating, and soulless [and] Stephen Hawking's kind of voice I thought was perfect."[24][45]Sigourney Weaver  was cast as the voice of the ship's computer. Stanton joked about the  role with Weaver, saying, "You realize you get to be "Mother" now?"[6][49] "Mother" is the ship's computer in the film Alien (1979).[49] Additional sounds for the character were meant to give him a clockwork feel, to show he is always thinking and calculating. 

Burtt had visited Niagara Falls in 1987 and used his recordings from his trip for the sounds of wind.[47] He ran around a hall with a canvas bag up to record the sandstorm though.[6]  For the scene where WALL-E runs from falling shopping carts, Burtt and  his daughter went to a supermarket and placed a recorder in their cart.  They crashed it around the parking lot and then let it tumble down a  hill.[50] To create Hal (WALL-E's pet cockroach)'s skittering, he recorded the clicking caused by taking apart and reassembling handcuffs.[6]

[edit] Music

See also: WALL-E (soundtrack)

Thomas Newman recollaborated with Stanton on WALL-E since the two got along well on Nemo,  which gave Newman the Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated  Feature. He began writing the score in 2005, in the hope that starting  this task early would make him more involved with the finished film.  But, Newman remarked that animation is so dependent on scheduling he  should have begun work earlier on when Stanton and Reardon were writing  the script. EVE's theme was arranged for the first time in October 2007.  Her theme when played as she first flies around Earth originally used  more orchestral elements, and Newman was encouraged to make it sound  more feminine.[51]  Newman said Stanton had thought up of many ideas for how he wanted the  music to sound, and he generally followed them as he found scoring a  partially silent film difficult. Stanton wanted the whole score to be  orchestral, but Newman felt limited by this idea especially in scenes  aboard the Axiom, and used electronics too.[52]

 A live-action clip of the song "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello, Dolly!, which inspires WALL-E to hold hands with EVE

Stanton originally wanted to juxtapose the opening shots of space with 1930s French swing music, but he saw The Triplets of Belleville  (2003) and did not want to appear as if he were copying it. Stanton  then thought about the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello, Dolly!, since he had portrayed the sidekick Barnaby Tucker in a 1980 high school production.[53]  Stanton found that the song was about two naive young men looking for  love, which was similar to WALL-E's own hope for companionship. Jim Reardon  suggested WALL-E find the film on video, and Stanton included "It Only  Takes a Moment" and the clip of the actors holding hands, because he  wanted a visual way to show how WALL-E understands love and conveys it  to EVE. Hello Dolly! composer Jerry Herman  allowed the songs to be used without knowing what for; when he saw the  film, he found its incorporation into the story "genius".[54] Coincidentally, Newman's uncle Lionel worked on Hello, Dolly![6]

Newman travelled to London to compose the end credits song "Down to Earth" with Peter Gabriel,  who was one of Stanton's favorite musicians. Afterwards, Newman  rescored some of the film to include the song's composition, so it would  not sound intrusive when played.[6] Louis Armstrong's rendition of "La Vie en rose" was used for a montage where WALL-E does not get EVE's attention on Earth. The script also specified using Bing Crosby's "Stardust" for when the two robots dance around the Axiom,[5]  but Newman asked if he could score the scene himself. A similar switch  occurred for the sequence in which WALL-E attempts to wake EVE up  through various means; originally, the montage would play with the  instrumental version of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", but Newman wanted to challenge himself and scored an original piece for the sequence.[55]

[edit] Themes

Stanton describes the theme of the film as "irrational love defeats life's programming":[21]

I realized the point I was trying to push with these two programmed robots was the desire for them to try and figure out what the point of living was...It took these really irrational acts of love to sort of discover them against how they were built...I realized that that's a perfect metaphor for real life. We all fall into our habits, our routines and our ruts, consciously or unconsciously to avoid living. To avoid having to do the messy part. To avoid having relationships with other people. of dealing with the person next to us. That's why we can all get on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another. I thought, 'That's a perfect amplification of the whole point of the movie.' I wanted to run with science in a way that would sort of logically project that.^[21]

Stanton noted many commentators placed emphasis on the environmental  aspect of humanity's complacency in the film, because "that  disconnection is going to be the cause, indirectly, of anything that  happens in life that's bad for humanity or the planet".[56] Stanton said that by taking away effort to work, the robots also take away humanity's need to put effort into relationships.[40] Christian journalist Rod Dreher saw technology as the complicated villain of the film. The humans' artificial lifestyle on the Axiom  has separated them from nature, making them "slaves of both technology  and their own base appetites, and have lost what makes them human".  Dreher contrasted the hardworking, dirt covered WALL-E with the sleek  clean robots on the ship. However, it is the humans and not the robots  who make themselves redundant, and during the end credits humans and  robots are shown working alongside each other to renew the Earth. "WALL-E is not a Luddite  film," he said. "It doesn't demonize technology. It only argues that  technology is properly used to help humans cultivate their true nature –  that it must be subordinate to human flourishing, and help move that  along."[57]

 EVE and the AxiomNoah's Ark and the dove in that story. have been compared to 

Stanton, who is Christian,[9] named EVE after the Biblical character because WALL-E's loneliness reminded him of Adam, before God created his wife.[58]  Dreher noted EVE's biblical namesake and saw her directive as an  inversion of that story; EVE uses the plant to tell humanity to return  to Earth and move away from the "false god" of BnL and the lazy  lifestyle it offers. Dreher also noted this departure from classical  Christian viewpoints, where Adam is cursed to labor, in that WALL-E  argues hard work is what makes humans human. Dreher emphasized the  false god parallels to BnL in a scene where a robot teaches infants "B  is for Buy n Large, your very best friend", which he compared to modern  corporations such as McDonald's creating brand loyalty in children.[57] Megan Basham of World magazine felt the film criticizes the pursuit of leisure, whereas WALL-E in his stewardship learns to truly appreciate God's creation.[9]

During writing, a Pixar employee noted to Jim Reardon that EVE was reminiscent of the dove with the olive branch from the story of Noah's Ark, and the story was reworked with EVE finding a plant to return humanity from its voyage.[59] WALL-E himself has been compared to Prometheus,[25] Sisyphus,[57] and Butades: in an essay discussing WALL-E as representative of the artistic strive of Pixar itself, Hrag Vartanian  compared WALL-E to Butades in a scene where the robot expresses his  love for EVE by making a sculpture of her from spare parts. "The Ancient  Greek tradition associates the birth of art with a Corinthian maiden  who longing to preserve her lover’s shadow traces it on the wall before  he departed for war. The myth reminds us that art was born out of  longing and often means more for the creator than the muse. In the same  way Stanton and his Pixar team have told us a deeply personal story  about their love of cinema and their vision for animation through the  prism of all types of relationships."[60]

[edit] Reception

[edit] Release

Continuing a Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short filmPresto. The film was dedicated to Justin Wright (1981–2008), a Pixar animator who had worked on Ratatouille and died of a heart attack before WALL-E's release.[6] for its theatrical release: the attached film was 

The film premiered at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on June 23, 2008,[61]  and opened in 3,992 theaters in the United States and Canada on June  27. It grossed $63 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at  the box office.[62] It was the third-best opening weekend for a Pixar film.[63]  The movie crossed the $200 million mark in its sixth week with a total  gross of more than $204 million on the first weekend in August 2008.[64]  In total, the film grossed $223,808,164 domestically with a worldwide  overall of $521,268,237, making it the ninth highest grossing film of  2008.[2]

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on November 18, 2008. The various editions included Presto, a new short film BURN-E, the Leslie Iwerks documentary film The Pixar Story, shorts about the history of Buy n Large, the behind-the-scenes special features and a Digital Copy of the film that can be played through iTunes or Windows Media and compatible devices.[65]

Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) built animatronic WALL-Es to promote the picture, which made appearances at Disneyland Resort;[66] the Franklin Institute; the Miami Science Museum; the Seattle Center; and the Tokyo International Film Festival.[67]  Due to safety concerns, the 700 lb robots were always strictly  controlled and WDI always needed to know exactly what they were required  to interact with. For this reason, they generally refused to have their  puppets meet and greet children at the theme parks in case a WALL-E  trod on a child's foot. Those who wanted to take a photograph with the  character had to make do with a cardboard cutout.[68]

Very small quantities of merchandise were sold for WALL-E, as CarsSpeed Racer, which was a successful line despite the film's failure at the box office. Thinkway, which created the WALL-E toys, had previously made Toy Story dolls when other toy producers showed disinterest.[67]  Among Thinkway's items were a WALL-E that danced when connected to a  music player, a toy that could be taken apart and reassembled, and a  groundbreaking remote control toy of him and EVE that had motion sensors  that allowed them to interact with players.[69] There were even soft toys.[70][67] at a retail price of almost $200, leading The Patriot-News to deem it an item for "hard-core fans and collectors only".[69] items were still popular, and many manufacturers were more interested in  The "Ultimate WALL-E" figures were not in stores until the film's home release in November 2008,

[edit] Reviews

WALL-E was met with near universal acclaim, receiving praise from critics and public alike.[71] Rotten Tomatoes  reported that 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based upon  a sample of 200 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10.[72] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 94, based on 39 reviews.[71] indieWire named WALL-E the 3rd best film of the year, based on their annual survey of 100 film critics,[73]WALL-E  appeared in 162 different top ten lists, out of 286 different critics  lists surveyed, the most mentions on a top ten list of any film released  in 2008.[74] while Movie City News shows that 

Richard Corliss of Time named WALL-E  as his favorite film of 2008, noting the film succeeded in  "connect[ing] with a huge audience" despite the main characters' lack of  speech and "emotional signifiers like a mouth, eyebrows, shoulders  [and] elbows". It "evoke[d] the splendor of the movie past" and he also  compared WALL-E and EVE's relationship to the chemistry of Spencer TracyKatharine Hepburn.[75] Other critics who named WALL-E as their favorite film of 2008 included Tom Charity of CNN,[76] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, A. O. Scott of The New York Times, Christopher Orr of The New Republic, Ty Burr and Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe, Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal, and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker.[77] and 

Todd McCarthy of Variety  called the film "Pixar's ninth consecutive wonder", saying it was  imaginative yet straightforward. He said it pushed the boundaries of  animation by balancing esoteric ideas with more immediately accessible  ones, and that the main difference between the film and other science  fiction projects rooted in an apocalypse was its optimism.[78]The Hollywood Reporter declared that WALL-Esilent films.  Honeycutt said the film's definitive stroke of brilliance was in using a  mix of archive film footage and computer graphics to trigger WALL-E's  romantic leanings. He praised Burtt's sound design, saying "If there is  such a thing as an aural sleight of hand, this is it."[79] Kirk Honeycutt of   surpassed the achievements of Pixar's previous eight features and  probably their most original film to date. He said it had the "heart,  soul, spirit and romance" of the best 

Roger Ebert writing in the Chicago Sun-Times found WALL-E  "an enthralling animated film, a visual wonderment, and a decent  science-fiction story". Ebert said the scarcity of dialogue would allow  it to "cross language barriers" in a manner appropriate to the global  theme, and noted it would appeal to adults and children. He praised the  animation, saying the color palette was "bright and cheerful [...] and a  little bit realistic", and that Pixar managed to generate a "curious"  regard for the WALL-E, comparing his "rusty and hard-working and plucky"  design favorably to more obvious attempts at creating "lovable" lead  characters. He said WALL-E was concerned with ideas rather than spectacle, saying it would trigger stimulating "little thoughts for the younger viewers."[80] He named it as one of his twenty favorite films of 2008 and argued it was "the best science-fiction movie in years".[81]

The film was interpreted as tackling a topical, ecologically-minded agenda,[72] though McCarthy said it did so with a lightness of touch that granted the viewer the ability to accept or ignore the message.[78] Kyle Smith of the New York Post, wrote that by depicting future humans as "a flabby mass of peabrained idiots who are literally too fat to walk", WALL-E was darker and more cynical than any major Disney feature film he could recall. He compared the humans to the patrons of Disney's Parks and Resorts, adding, "I'm also not sure I've ever seen a major corporation spend so much money to issue an insult to its customers."[82] Maura Judkis of U.S. News & World Report  questioned whether this depiction of "frighteningly obese humans" would  resonate with children and make them prefer to "play outside rather  than in front of the computer, to avoid a similar fate".[83] The interpretation led to criticism of the film by conservative commentators such as Fox News' Glenn Beck, and contributors to National Review Online including Shannen W. Coffin and Jonah Goldberg (although he admitted it was a "fascinating" and occasionally "brilliant" production).[84]

A few notable critics have argued that the film is vastly overrated,[85] claiming it failed to "live up to such blinding, high-wattage enthusiasm",[86] and that there were "chasms of boredom watching it", in particular "the second and third acts spiraled into the expected".[87] Other labels include "unimaginative", "surprisingly trite",[88][unreliable source?][85] and "too long".[86] "preachy"

Child reviews sent into CBBC were mixed, some citing boredom and an inadequate storyline.[89]

Patrick J. Ford of The American Conservative said WALL-E's conservative critics missed lessons in the film that he felt appealed to traditional conservatism. He argued that the mass consumerism in the film was not shown to be a product of big business, but of too close a tie between big business and big government:  "The government unilaterally provided its citizens with everything they  needed, and this lack of variety led to Earth's downfall." Responding  to Coffin's claim that the film points out the "evils of mankind", Ford  argued the only evils depicted were those that resulted from "losing  touch with our own humanity" and that fundamental conservative  representations such as the farm, the family unit, and "wholesome"  entertainment were in the end held aloft by the human characters. He  concluded, "By steering conservative families away from WALL-E, these commentators are doing their readers a great disservice."[90]

Director Terry Gilliam  praised the film as "'A stunning bit of work. The scenes on what was  left of planet Earth are just so beautiful: one of the great silent  movies. And the most stunning artwork! It says more about ecology and  society than any live action film – all the people on their loungers  floating around, brilliant stuff. Their social comment was so smart and  right on the button." [91]

[edit] Awards

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by WALL-E

WALL-E won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing at the 81st Academy Awards.[92] Walt Disney Pictures also pushed for an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination,[93] but it was not nominated, provoking controversy as to whether the Academy deliberately restricted WALL-E to the Best Animated Feature category,[94] Peter Travers commented that "If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for best picture it's Wall-E."[95] Only two animated films, 1991's Beauty and the BeastUp,  have ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. A  reflective Stanton stated he was not disappointed the film was  restricted to the Best Animated Film nomination because he was  overwhelmed by the film's positive reception, and eventually "The line  [between live-action and animation] is just getting so blurry that I  think with each proceeding year, it's going to be tougher and tougher to  say what's an animated movie and what's not an animated movie."[14] and Pixar's next film 2009's 

WALL-E made a healthy appearance at the various 2008  end-of-the-year awards circles, particularly in the Best Picture  category, where animated films are often overlooked. It has won the  award, or the equivalent of it, from the Boston Society of Film Critics (tied with Slumdog Millionaire),[96] the Chicago Film Critics Association,[97] the Central Ohio Film Critics awards,[98]Online Film Critics Society,[99] and most notably the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, where it became the first animated feature to win the prestigious award.[100] It was named as one of 2008's ten best films by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.[101][102] the 

It won Best Animated Feature Film at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, 81st Academy Awards and the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008.[103][104] It was nominated for several awards at the 2009 Annie Awards,  including Best Feature Film, Animated Effects, Character Animation,  Direction, Production design, Storyboarding and Voice acting (for Ben  Burtt);[105] but was beaten out by Kung Fu Panda in every category.[106] It won Best Animated Feature at the 62nd British Academy Film Awards, and was also nominated there for Best Music and Sound.[107] Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel won two Grammy Awards for "Down to Earth" and "Define Dancing".[108] It won all three awards it was nominated for by the Visual Effects Society:  Best Animation, Best Character Animation (for WALL-E and EVE in the  truck) and Best Effects in the Animated Motion Picture categories.[109] It became the first animated film to win Best Editing for a Comedy or Musical from the American Cinema Editors.[110] In 2009, Stanton, Reardon and Docter won Nebula Award, beating The Dark Knight and the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Shrine".[111][112] It won Best Animated Film and was nominated for Best Director at the Saturn Awards.[113]

At the British National Movie Awards, which is voted for by the public, it won Best Family Film.[114] It was also voted Best Feature Film at the British Academy Children's Awards.[115] WALL-E was listed at #63 on Empire's online poll of the 100 greatest movie characters, conducted in 2008.[116] In early 2010, TIME ranks WALL-E #1 in "Best Movies of the Decade".