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SOMEWHERE, OUT THERE: Director Andrew Stanton proved that a film created via CGI could contain key human emotions—even when ascribed to young robots in love—on the level of a live-action film. WALL-E also comments on themes as significant as consumerism and ecology. Courtesy: Pixar/Walt Disney Pictures.
CREDITS
Pixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Pictures; Andrew Stanton, dir.; Stanton, Jim Reardon, Pete Docter, scr.; Jim Morris, Lindsey Collins, John Lasseter, pro.; Thomas Newman, mus.; Stephen Schaffer, ed.; Ralph Eggleston, prod. design; Anthony Christov, art dir.; Mark Cordell Holmes, graphic art director; Bruce Zick, visual development; Ben Burtt, sound/character voice design; Neil Blevins, digital artist; Lanny Cermak/ILM, digital artist; Simon Dunsdon, CGI artist; Jeanmarie King/ILM, Richard E. Hollander, Christopher James Hall/Kerner Optical, visual effects; Alan Barillaro, supervising animator; Angus MacLane, directing animator; Bob Scott, end titles; Tom MacDougall, music supervisor; 98 min.; Color; 2.35:1.
CAST (VOICES)
Ben Burtt (WALL-E/M-O); Elissa Knight (EVE); Jeff Garlin (Captain); MacInTalk (AUTO); John Ratzenberger (John); Kathy Najimy (Mary); Sigourney Weaver (Ship’s Computer); Kim Kopf (Hoverchair Mother); Andrew Stanton, Lori Alan, Teresa Ganzel, Laraine Newman (Additional Voices), Fred Willard (Shelby Forthright).
After 700 years of doing what he was built for . . . he’ll discover what he’s meant for.
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BACKGROUND
Andrew Stanton (1965–) pitched the project to Pixar head honcho John Lasseter (1957–) in 1994: “What if mankind had to leave Earth and somebody forgot to turn off the last robot?” Intrigued, Lasseter put the project on a slate that already included A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monsters, Inc. (2001). When Stanton and Peter Docter (1968–) began work on a script, the original title was Trash Planet. During development, the determined little robot emerged as such a distinct personality that the team decided to focus on WALL-E, using the dystopian environment as backdrop. All the same, Steve Jobs (1955–2011), who had become fascinated with and directly involved in the project, had to be convinced to go with the WALL-E title (originally spelled W.A.L.-E.), which he didn’t initially like. Anthony Christov, a native of Bulgaria hired to oversee the art direction, based his concept of the city on Chernobyl. Always, though, everyone involved with the production was aware that, as a Disney family film, WALL-E must, despite its cautionary fable quality, end optimistically.
In 2105, lonely little robot WALL-E methodically continues the project he had long ago been programmed for: compacting trash on a deserted Earth. He has no companions other than a chipper cockroach, the one creature born with the natural protection necessary to survive mankind’s trashing of the environment, and, more recently, one green and growing organism, proof of nature’s ability to revitalize, at least once humans are gone. Another robot, the probe EVE, beams down and WALL-E is smitten. When EVE is summoned back on board the Axiom galacticship, WALL-E follows, putting a new spin on one of the oldest of Hollywood axioms: boy robot meets girl robot, boy robot loses girl robot, boy robot gets girl robot.
THE FILM
The rebellion WALL-E incites on Axiom was intended to recall the slave uprising against the Romans inspired by Kirk Douglas in Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960). Once again, by his very presence and determination to live in a free manner, an ordinary man (or robot) inspires others to question their lot for the first time, becoming a hero in the process.
While WALL-E and Inception (2010) may present the opposite poles of contemporary science fiction—the former delightful in its sweet simplicity, the latter archly demanding in its dark intellectual complexity—these disparate films do share one key element: Édith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose.” Key to the soundtrack of both films, the song symbolizes in each a golden age for Earth and man that has somehow slipped away.
THEME
Can robots love, hate, experience emotions? If so, does that mean such man-made creatures are evolving into something that more closely resembles humanity? And, if that is the case, is this for better or worse? These questions have been raised at least since the publication of Isaac Asimov’s novel I, Robot (1950), though Czech writer Karel Čapek hinted at such a theme earlier in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots, 1920). Whereas most cautionary fables about robots stealing control from humans portray a hostile attack, WALL-E offers an alternative: the bloodless coup occurs without humans even noticing as people grow lazier and obese after assigning physical activity to their supposed “slaves” and complicated service systems.
The film offers one more unique variation on the green theme, as that first lonely little natural growth leads to the eventual comeback of a green Earth. WALL-E is thus both romantic in appeal and optimistic in tone, very much in line with the great tradition of Disney products.
TRIVIA
Among the cast members, Fred Willard is unique in that he lends his actual physical presence as well as voice to his character, Shelby Forthright.
Though the film displays the remarkable CGI animation for which Pixar, the company itself and the gifted crew, is renowned, this is very much a Disney film in spirit. The sidekick to the title character might well have been named Jiminy, as the cockroach resembles that cricket in Pinocchio (1940).
The film that WALL-E adores, with its idealized image of life in an earlier, happier time, is Hello, Dolly! (1969).
Stanton had hoped, at the time, to move on to direct an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars pulp fiction novels, though Disney eventually decided to do that as a live-action project. By the time this project reached the screen, with Stanton at the helm, it featured live action with special effects. Whatever the initial dream for the John Carter film may have been, it turned into a nightmare during filming and abruptly ended more than one career.
The visual settings, as well as the narratives that take place within them, became so complex that artists at Pixar had to create a total of 125,000 storyboards, 50,000 more than usual.
Among awards won by WALL-E were the Golden Globe for Best Animated Film, the Nebula Award for Best Script, the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film, and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.