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WALL-E
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WALL-E (promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E) is a 2008 computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton. It follows the story of 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.
After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt Pixar had created believable simulations of underwater physics and was willing to direct a film set in space.
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Encyclopedia
WALL-E (promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E) is a 2008 computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton. It follows the story of 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.
After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt Pixar had created believable simulations of underwater physics and was willing to direct a film 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 $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 the third highest-grossing opening weekend for a Pixar film as of July 2008. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film, Presto, for its theatrical release. WALL-E has achieved highly positive reviews with an approval rating of 96% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed $534 million worldwide, won the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and the 2009 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and was nominated for five other Academy Awards.
Plot
In the early 29th century, the Earth is deserted and covered in trash. Seven hundred years earlier, the world was governed by the Buy n Large Corporation (BnL), who relocated the Earth's population to fully automated luxury starliners for five years while garbage- compacting WALL-E robots cleaned up the planet. Rising toxicity levels caused the evacuation to be extended indefinitely, and all of the WALL-E units broke down except for one, who survived by salvaging parts off other defunct units. He eventually developed sentience and became curious about love after watching a video of the film Hello, Dolly!. One day, a spaceship lands and deploys an advanced, feminine probe robot named EVE, with whom WALL-E falls in love at first sight. During a dust storm he brings her to his truck, showing her his collection of abandoned items. When WALL-E shows her a seedling plant he found earlier, EVE stores the plant inside herself and goes into standby. WALL-E protects her motionless body, even taking her out on dates, hoping that she will reboot, but to no avail.
EVE's ship returns to collect her, and WALL-E desperately clings on as it returns to the Axiom, the flagship of the BnL starliners. While they are taken to the bridge, it becomes apparent that after centuries of being reliant on the machinery around them, microgravity, and consuming liquid food, humanity has suffered severe bone loss, becoming extremely obese and unable to walk, reclining on moving chairs and communicating only through video messaging; even piloting the ship is handled by its computerized autopilot, Auto, rather than the human Captain. WALL-E perplexes several humans and robots with his peculiar behavior, particularly a cleaning robot named M-O, who obsessively follows and cleans WALL-E's filthy tracks, and two humans, John and Mary, who talk to each other face to face for the first time when WALL-E distracts them. On the bridge, EVE is reactivated and shown to the Captain, who learns from a video recording by BnL CEO Shelby Forthright that by having the ship's holo-detector scan the plant, the ship will make an automatic hyperjump back to Earth so humanity can recolonize the planet. When EVE is opened, however, the plant is missing: she is deemed defective and sent to a repair ward with WALL-E, whom the Captain orders to be cleaned.
In the repair ward, WALL-E mistakes EVE's repairs for torture and tries to free her, but accidentally releases a host of malfunctioning robots, causing him and EVE to be designated "rogue robots" by security. Annoyed with WALL-E, EVE tries to send him back to Earth on an escape pod. Traveling to the pod launch room, they see GO-4, Auto's security assistant, deposit the missing plant in a pod that he sets to self-destruct. WALL-E sneaks into the pod to retrieve the plant as the pod is ejected, and narrowly escapes with the plant. Overjoyed that WALL-E is alive and has recovered the plant, EVE "kisses" him and dances with him around in space before returning to give the plant to the Captain. In his excitement, the Captain has EVE replay a visual recording of her mission on Earth, and discovers the planet is still devastated. During the replay, EVE realizes WALL-E protected her while she was inactive, and finally understands his feelings for her. The Captain realizes humanity must restore Earth and orders Auto to assist. Auto refuses and shows the Captain a secret recording from Shelby Forthright, codenamed A113, that was made when the cleanup operation failed. Forthright had ordered the autopilots to keep humanity in space, and when the Captain resists, Auto imprisons him in his quarters, electrocutes WALL-E, and sends him and EVE down a garbage chute.
In the Axioms garbage hold, WALL-E and EVE are almost jettisoned into space with the trash until M-O – having chased after WALL-E all this time in the hopes of cleaning him – arrives to rescue them. EVE, M-O and WALL-E fly to the holo-detector and rally the malfunctioning robots to their aid. EVE and the damaged WALL-E struggle to keep the holo-detector open for the plant to be scanned, and WALL-E is jammed inside and crushed. The Captain tricks Auto so he can escape captivity and deactivates him, so EVE can place the plant in the holo-detector, releasing WALL-E. The Axiom makes a hyperjump to Earth and lands; EVE repairs and revives WALL-E with the spare parts he kept in his truck. Unfortunately, his memory and personality are corrupted, reverting him to his original programming as an unfeeling waste compactor. Heartbroken, EVE takes his hand and gives him a farewell "kiss", causing an electric spark that restores his memory. WALL-E and EVE happily reunite as the humans and robots place the plant in the ground, and begin working together to rebuild their home.
Cast
- Ben Burtt produced the voice of WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), the titular character and protagonist of the film. WALL-E is a mobile trash compactor, the last operational unit on Earth.
- Burtt also created the voice of M-O (Microbe Obliterator), as well as most other robots in the film. M-O is a tiny, obsessive maintenance robot who cleans the ship and inspects incoming shipments for foreign contaminants.
- Elissa Knight as EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a sleek, ergonomically advanced robotic probe whose main function is to locate vegetation on Earth to verify its habitability.
- Jeff Garlin as Captain B. McCrea, the sole commander of the Axiom. 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. 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 as the voice of Auto, the Axioms autopilot. Auto serves as the antagonist of the film. The characteristic qualities of this voice are retained even in other languages.
- John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy as John and Mary, respectively. John and Mary are both humans who live on the Axiom.
- Sigourney Weaver as the Axioms computer.
Production
Themes
Stanton, who is Christian, felt the moral of the film was "Irrational love defeats life's programming." He continued "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." 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 of the planet".
Stanton said that by taking away effort to work, the robots also take away humanity's need to put effort into relationships. 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 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."
and the dove in that story.]]
Stanton named EVE after the Biblical character because WALL-E's loneliness reminded him of Adam, before God created his wife. Dreher noted EVE's biblical namesake and saw her directive as an inversion of that story; EVE uses the plant to tempt humanity to return to Earth and 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. 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.
Dreher also compared EVE to the dove with the olive branch from the story of Noah's Ark, because she finds a plant that is a sign the world is returning to normal. WALL-E himself has been compared to Prometheus, Sisyphus, 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."
Reception
Reviews
WALL-E received universal acclaim from film critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 200 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 93, based on 39 reviews. indieWire named WALL-E the 3rd best film of the year, based on their annual survey of 100 film critics, while Movie City News shows that 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.
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 Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Other critics who named WALL-E as their favorite film of 2008 included Tom Charity of CNN; 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.
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. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter declared that WALL-E 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 silent 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."
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 thought"s for the younger viewers. He named it as one of his twenty favorite films of 2008 and argued it was "the best science-fiction movie in years".
The film was interpreted as tackling a topical, ecologically-minded agenda, though McCarthy said it did so with a lightness of touch that granted the viewer the ability to accept or ignore the message. 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." 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". The interpretation led to criticism of the film by conservative commentators such as CNN's 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).
Patrick J. Ford of The American Conservative said WALL-Es 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."
Awards
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. Walt Disney Pictures also pushed for an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination, but it was not nominated, provoking controversy as to whether the Academy deliberately restricted WALL-E to the Best Animated Feature category, 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." Only one animated film, 1991's Beauty and the Beast, has ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, after which the category of Best Animated Feature was created. 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."
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), the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Central Ohio Film Critics awards, the Online Film Critics Society, and most notably the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, where it became the first animated feature to win the prestigious award. 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.
It won Best Animated Feature Film at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, 81st Academy Awards and the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008. 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); but it won none. It won Best Animated Feature at the 62nd British Academy Film Awards, and was also nominated there for Best Music and Sound. Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel won two Grammy Awards for "Down to Earth" and "Define Dancing". 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. It became the first animated film to win Best Editing for a Comedy or Musical from the American Cinema Editors.
At the British National Movie Awards, which is voted for by the public, it won Best Family Film. It was also voted Best Feature Film at the British Academy Children's Awards. WALL-E was listed at #63 on Empires online poll of the 100 greatest movie characters, conducted in 2008.
In 2009, writers Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, and Pete Docter were nominated for a Nebula Award, along side The Dark Knight and Stargate Atlantis episode The Shrine.
See also
External links
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