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WALL-E



 
 
WALL-E (promoted with an interpunct
Interpunct

An interpunct is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin alphabet, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language....
 as WALL•E) is a 2008
2008 in film

The year '2008 in film' saw many new films released worldwide, including several major mainstream sequels such as Rambo , The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Dark Knight , The X-Files: I...
 computer-animated
Computer animation

Computer animation is the art of creating moving images with the use of computers. It is a subfield of computer graphics and animation....
 science fiction film
Science fiction film

Science fiction film is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, science-based depictions of phenomena that aren't necessarily accepted by mainstream science....
 produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton
Andrew Stanton

Andrew Christopher Stanton Jr. is an American film director, screenwriter, Film Producer, and occasional voice actor based at Pixar. His most notable film work includes writing and directing Finding Nemo and WALL-E, both of which earned him Academy Awards....
. It follows the story of a robot named WALL-E who is designed to clean up a waste
WASTE

WASTE is a peer-to-peer and friend-to-friend protocol and software application developed by Justin Frankel at Nullsoft in 2003 that features instant messaging, chat rooms and file browsing/sharing capabilities....
 covered Earth far in the future. He eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE, and follows her into outer space
Outer space

Outer space comprises the relatively empty regions of the universe outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies. Outer space is used to distinguish it from airspace and terrestrial locations....
 on an adventure that changes the destiny of both his kind and humanity.

After directing Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo is a 2002 in film CGI animation film. It was written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures....
, 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
Interpunct

An interpunct is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin alphabet, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language....
 as WALL•E) is a 2008
2008 in film

The year '2008 in film' saw many new films released worldwide, including several major mainstream sequels such as Rambo , The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Dark Knight , The X-Files: I...
 computer-animated
Computer animation

Computer animation is the art of creating moving images with the use of computers. It is a subfield of computer graphics and animation....
 science fiction film
Science fiction film

Science fiction film is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, science-based depictions of phenomena that aren't necessarily accepted by mainstream science....
 produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton
Andrew Stanton

Andrew Christopher Stanton Jr. is an American film director, screenwriter, Film Producer, and occasional voice actor based at Pixar. His most notable film work includes writing and directing Finding Nemo and WALL-E, both of which earned him Academy Awards....
. It follows the story of a robot named WALL-E who is designed to clean up a waste
WASTE

WASTE is a peer-to-peer and friend-to-friend protocol and software application developed by Justin Frankel at Nullsoft in 2003 that features instant messaging, chat rooms and file browsing/sharing capabilities....
 covered Earth far in the future. He eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE, and follows her into outer space
Outer space

Outer space comprises the relatively empty regions of the universe outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies. Outer space is used to distinguish it from airspace and terrestrial locations....
 on an adventure that changes the destiny of both his kind and humanity.

After directing Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo is a 2002 in film CGI animation film. It was written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures....
, 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
Body language

Body language is a term for communication using body movements or gestures instead of, or in addition to, sounds, verbal language or other communication....
 and robotic sounds, designed by Ben Burtt
Ben Burtt

Benjamin Burtt, Jr. is a four-time Academy Awards-winning United States sound designer for many famous and noteworthy films, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones franchise, and WALL-E, as well as a film director, screenwriter, and film editor....
, that resemble voices. In addition, it is the first animated feature by Pixar to have segments featuring live-action
Live action

In film, theatre and video, live-action refers to works that are acted out by human actors, as opposed to by animation. As it is the norm, the term is usually superfluous, but it makes an important distinction in situations in which one might normally expect animation, as in a Pixar film, a video game or when the work is adapted from an anim...
 characters.

Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures

Walt Disney Pictures refers to several different entities associated with The Walt Disney Company:Walt Disney Pictures, the film banner, was found as a designation in 1983, prior to which Disney films since the death of Walt Disney were released under the name of the parent company, then named Walt Disney Productions....
 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
Presto (film)

Presto is a 2008 Pixar Computer animation Short subject shown in theaters before?and included on the DVD and Blu-ray release of?their feature length film WALL-E....
, for its theatrical release. WALL-E has achieved highly positive reviews with an approval rating of 96% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films. The name derives from the historical clich? of throwing tomatoes and other produce at stage performers if a performance was particularly bad....
. It grossed $534 million worldwide, won the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film
Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film

The Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film was awarded for the first time in 2007 at the 64th Golden Globe Awards to the Pixar film Cars ....
, and the 2009 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is one of the annual awards given by the Los Angeles-based professional organization, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences....
, and was nominated for five other Academy Awards
Academy Awards

The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers....
.

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 star
Space station

A space station is an artificial structure designed for humans to live in outer space. So far only low earth orbit stations are implemented, also known as orbital stations....
liners
Ocean liner

An ocean liner is a passenger ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule....
 for five years while garbage- compacting
Compactor

A compactor is a machine or mechanism used to reduce the size of waste material or soil through Soil compaction. A trash compactor is often used by homes and businesses to reduce the volume of trash....
 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
Sentience

Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive subjectivity. It is an important concept in philosophy, particularly in the philosophy of animal rights and in eastern philosophy, as well as in science fiction and the study of artificial intelligence, although in each of these fields the term is used slightly differently....
 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
Space probe

A robotic spacecraft is a spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe....
 robot named EVE, with whom WALL-E falls in love at first sight. During a dust storm
Dust storm

A dust storm or sandstorm is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions and arises when a gust front passes or when the wind force exceeds the threshold value where loose sand and dust are removed from the dry surface....
 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
Dating (activity)

Dating is any socializing undertaken by, typically, two people with the aim of each assessing the other's suitability as their partner in an intimate relationship or as a spouse....
, 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
Weightlessness

Weightlessness is a phenomenon experienced by people during free-fall. Although the term #Zero gravity is often used as a synonym, weightlessness in orbit is not the result of the force of gravity being eliminated or even significantly reduced ....
, and consuming liquid food, humanity has suffered severe bone loss
Spaceflight osteopenia

Spaceflight osteopenia refers to the characteristic bone loss that occurs during spaceflight. Astronauts lose an average of more than 1% bone mass per month spent in outer space....
, becoming extremely obese
Obesity

Obesity is a condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to an extent that health may be negatively affected. It is commonly defined as a body mass index of 30 kg/m2 or higher....
 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
Hyperspace (science fiction)

Hyperspace is a fictional plot device sometimes used in science fiction. It is typically described as an alternate region of subspace co-existing with our own universe which may be entered using an energy field or other device....
 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
Escape pod

An escape pod is a capsule or craft used to escape a vessel in an emergency, usually only big enough for one person. An escape ship is a larger, more complete craft also used for the same purpose....
. 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
A113

File:CALARTS ROOMA113.jpgA113 is an in-joke present as an Easter egg in animation films created by alumni of CalArts, referring to the classroom number used by character animation students at the school....
, 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
    Ben Burtt

    Benjamin Burtt, Jr. is a four-time Academy Awards-winning United States sound designer for many famous and noteworthy films, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones franchise, and WALL-E, as well as a film director, screenwriter, and film editor....
     produced the voice of WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), the titular character and protagonist
    Protagonist

    A protagonist is the main Character of a drama or Narrative. The word "protagonist" derives from the Greek language p??ta????st?? , "one who plays the first part, chief actor." In the theatre of Ancient Greece, three actors played all of the main dramatic roles in a tragedy; the leading role was played by the protagonist, while the othe...
     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
    Elissa Knight

    Elissa Knight is an employee at Pixar Animation Studios. As a voice actress, her most recent, and first major, role was in the 2008 in film WALL-E as a robot named EVE....
     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
    Jeff Garlin

    Jeff Garlin is an United States of America comic actor best known for his role as Jeff Greene, Larry David manager on the Home Box Office show Curb Your Enthusiasm....
     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
    Fred Willard

    Fred Willard is an American comedian and actor known for his improvisational comedy skills. He is best known for his roles in the Christopher Guest mockumentary films This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show , and A Mighty Wind....
     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
    PlainTalk

    PlainTalk is the collective name for several speech synthesis and speech recognition technologies developed by Apple, Inc.In 1990, Apple invested a lot of work and money in speech recognition technology, hiring many respected researchers in the field....
    , the text-to-speech program for the Apple Macintosh
    Macintosh

    File:Imac alu.pngMacintosh, commonly shortened to Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc....
    , was used as the voice of Auto, the Axioms autopilot. Auto serves as the antagonist
    Antagonist

    An antagonist is a character or group of characters, or, always an institution of a happening who represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend....
     of the film. The characteristic qualities of this voice are retained even in other languages.
  • John Ratzenberger
    John Ratzenberger

    John Deszo Ratzenberger is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Cliff Clavin in the sitcom Cheers....
     and Kathy Najimy
    Kathy Najimy

    Kathy Ann Najimy is a Lebanese-American actress, known as Olive Massery on the television series Veronica's Closet, Sister Mary Patrick in Sister Act and the voice of Peggy Hill on the animated television series King of the Hill....
     as John and Mary, respectively. John and Mary are both humans who live on the Axiom.
  • Sigourney Weaver
    Sigourney Weaver

    Sigourney Weaver is an Academy Award-nominated American actor, best known for her roles as Lt. Ellen Ripley in the Alien film series and as Dana Barrett in the Ghostbusters movies....
     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
Rod Dreher

Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He is a conservative editorial writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News and a contributor to American Conservative and National Review....
 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
Luddite

The Luddites were a social movement of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work....
 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
Eve

Eve is the first woman created by God in the Book of Genesis.Eve may also refer to:...
 because WALL-E's loneliness reminded him of Adam
Adam

Adam was, according to the Book of Genesis, the First man or woman created by God and noted in subsequent Jewish, Christian and Islamic commentary....
, 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
McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving nearly 58 million customers daily. McDonald's primarily sells hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken products, French fries, breakfast items, soft drinks, milkshakes, and desserts....
 creating brand loyalty
Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty, in marketing, consists of a consumer's commitment to repurchase the brand and can be demonstrated by repeated buying of a product or service or other positive behaviors such as word of mouth advocacy....
 in children. Megan Basham of
World
World (magazine)

WORLD Magazine is a biweekly Christian Newsmagazine, published in the United States, and based in Asheville, North Carolina, North Carolina....
magazine felt the film criticizes the pursuit of leisure, whereas WALL-E in his stewardship
Stewardship

Stewardship is personal responsibility for taking care of another person's property or financial affairs or in religious orders taking care of finances....
 learns to truly appreciate God's creation.

Dreher also compared EVE to the dove
Dove

Pigeons and doves constitute the family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes, which include some 300 species of near passerine Aves....
 with the olive branch
Olive branch

The olive branch is a branch of an olive tree. In Western culture, derived from the customs of Ancient Greece, it symbolizes peace or goodwill....
 from the story of Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark is a large vessel featured in the mythology of Abrahamic religions. Narratives that include the Ark are found in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an ....
, because she finds a plant that is a sign the world is returning to normal. WALL-E himself has been compared to Prometheus
Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to human beings for their use....
, Sisyphus
Sisyphus

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus , was a king punished in Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again, and to repeat this throughout eternity....
, and Butades
Butades

Butades of Sicyon, sometimes mistakenly called Dibutades, was the first ancient Greek sculpture in clay. The period at which he flourished is unknown, but has been put at about 600 BC....
: in an essay discussing WALL-E as representative of the artistic strive of Pixar itself, Hrag Vartanian
Hrag Vartanian

Hrag Vartanian was born in Aleppo, Syria, raised in Toronto, Canada, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is a writer, critic and designer who regularly contributes to AGBU News Magazine, Ararat Quarterly, Boldtype, The Brooklyn Rail and other publications....
 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
Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films. The name derives from the historical clich? of throwing tomatoes and other produce at stage performers if a performance was particularly bad....
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
Metacritic

Metacritic is a website that collates reviews of music albums, console game, film, television program, DVDs, and books. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged....
, which assigns a normalized
Normalization

Broadly, normalization is any process that makes something more normal, which typically means conforming to some regularity or rule, or returning from some state of abnormality....
 rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average
Weighted mean

The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others....
 score of 93, based on 39 reviews. indieWire
IndieWire

indieWIRE is a daily news site for the international independent film community. It covers indie, documentary and foreign language films, as well industry news, film festival reports, filmmaker interviews, and movie reviews....
 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
Richard Corliss

Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment....
 of
Time
Time (magazine)

Time is a weekly United States newsmagazine, similar to Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. A European edition is published from London....
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
Spencer Tracy

Spencer Tracy was a two-time Academy Award winning actor of theatre and film, who appeared in 74 films from 1930 in film to 1967 in film. He is generally regarded as one of the finest actors in motion picture history....
 and Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an United States actress of film, television and stage.Acclaimed throughout her 73-year career, Hepburn holds the record for the most Academy Award for Best Actress Academy Awards wins with four, from 12 nominations....
. Other critics who named
WALL-E as their favorite film of 2008 included Tom Charity of CNN
CNN

Cable News Network, almost always referred to by its initialism CNN, is a major US Cable News Network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first station to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States....
; Lisa Schwarzbaum of
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is a magazine published by Time Inc. in the United States which covers movies, television, music, Broadway stage productions, books, and popular culture....
; A. O. Scott
A. O. Scott

Anthony O. "Tony" Scott is an United States journalist and critic. He is best known as a film critic for The New York Times....
 of
The New York Times
The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....
; Christopher Orr
Christopher Orr

Christopher Orr may refer to:* Chris Orr , English artist* Christopher Orr , Scottish painter* Christopher Orr , American actor...
 of
The New Republic
The New Republic

The New Republic is an United States magazine of politics and the arts. It is published semimonthly and has a circulation of approximately 60,000....
; Ty Burr
Ty Burr

Ty Burr has been a film critic for the Boston Globe since 2002. At the Boston Globe he reviews films alongside Wesley Morris.Born in 1957, Burr studied film at Dartmouth College and New York University....
 and Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris

Wesley Morris is a film critic at Boston Globe. Before that he wrote for the San Francisco Examiner, and later at the San Francisco Chronicle....
 of
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe is the most widely circulated daily newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts and in New England, United States. Owned by The New York Times Company, the broadsheet Globes local print rival is the Boston Herald....
; Joe Morgenstern
Joe Morgenstern

Joe Morgenstern is a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for The Wall Street Journal.His movie reviews appear each Friday in the "Weekend & Leisure" section of the newspaper, and he writes a column about the movie industry which appears in the paper every other Saturday....
 of
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an English language international daily newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company in New York, New York with Asian and European editions....
; and Anthony Lane
Anthony Lane

Anthony Lane has been a film criticism for The New Yorker since 1993....
 of
The New Yorker
The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an United States magazine that publishes reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Starting as a weekly in the mid-1920s, the magazine is now published 47 times per year, with five of these issues covering two-week spans....
.

Todd McCarthy of
Variety
Variety (magazine)

Variety is a weekly entertainment trade newspaper founded in New York in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Hollywood, was founded by Silverman in 1933....
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
Apocalypse

Apocalypse is a term applied to the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind. Today the term is often used to refer to the Doomsday event, which may be a shortening of the phrase apokalupsis eschaton which literally means "revelation at the end of the ?on, or age"....
 was its optimism. Kirk Honeycutt of
The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter is a major trade publication of the entertainment industry in the United States. During the last century it was one of the two major publications ? the other being Variety ....
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 film
Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made possible in the late 1920s with the introduction of the Vitaphone system....
s. 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
Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert born June 18, 1942) is an United States film criticism and screenwriter.He is known for his film review column and for two television programs Sneak Previews and At the Movies , which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel....
 writing in the
Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is an United States daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois....
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
Ecology

Ecology is the science study of the distribution and Abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their nature environment ....
-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
Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is an American critic, novelist and essayist. He is a staff film critic for the New York Post. His film reviewing style has been called "an exercise in hilarious hostility" by Entertainment Weekly....
 of the
New York Post
New York Post

The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continually as a daily, although -- like most other papers -- its publication has been interrupted by labor actions....
, 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
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is the segment of The Walt Disney Company that conceives, builds, and manages the company's theme parks and holiday resorts, as well as a variety of additional family-oriented leisure enterprises....
, 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
U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report is an influential United States newsmagazine published in Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek, it was for many years a leading news weekly, although it focused more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories....
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
Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is an United States radio personality and television host, Conservatism in the United States political commentator, author, and entrepreneur....
, and contributors to
National Review Online
National Review

National Review is a biweekly magazine and web site, founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955 and based in New York City....
including Shannen W. Coffin
Shannen W. Coffin

Shannen W. Coffin is an attorney for the Washington, D.C. law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP who until early November 2007 served as general counsel to United States Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney....
 and Jonah Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Jacob Goldberg is an United States syndicated columnist and author. Goldberg is known for his contributions on politics and culture to National Review, where he is the editor-at-large....
 (although he admitted it was a "fascinating" and occasionally "brilliant" production).

Patrick J. Ford of
The American Conservative
The American Conservative

The American Conservative is a biweekly United States opinion magazine founded in 2002 by Scott McConnell, Pat Buchanan, and Taki Theodoracopulos....
said WALL-E
s conservative critics missed lessons in the film that he felt appealed to traditional conservatism. He argued that the mass consumerism
Consumerism

Consumerism is the equation of personal happiness with Consumption and the purchase of material possessions.The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen....
 in the film was not shown to be a product of big business
Big Business

Big Business is a term used to describe large corporations, in either an individual or collective sense. The term first came into use in a symbolic sense subsequent to the American Civil War, particularly after 1880, in connection with the combination movement that began in American business at that time....
, but of too close a tie between big business and big government
Big government

Big government is a pejorative term generally used by political conservatism, laissez-faire advocates or libertarians to describe a government which is excessively large, Political corruption and inefficient, or which is inappropriately involved in certain areas of public policy....
: "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
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is one of the annual awards given by the Los Angeles-based professional organization, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences....
 and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Sound Editing
Academy Award for Sound Editing

The Academy Award of Merit for Best Sound Editing is an Academy Awards granted yearly to a film exhibiting the finest or most aesthetic sound editing or sound design....
, and Sound Mixing at the 81st Academy Awards
81st Academy Awards

The 81st Academy Awards ceremony was held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to honor its selection of the best 2008 in film on February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California....
. Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures

Walt Disney Pictures refers to several different entities associated with The Walt Disney Company:Walt Disney Pictures, the film banner, was found as a designation in 1983, prior to which Disney films since the death of Walt Disney were released under the name of the parent company, then named Walt Disney Productions....
 also pushed for an Academy Award for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture

The Academy Award for Best Motion Picture is one of the Academy Award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the film industry....
 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
Peter Travers

Peter Travers is an American film critic. He has been the regular film reviewer for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone magazines....
 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
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)

Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 Cinema of the United States animated cartoon family film. It is the thirtieth List of Disney animated features produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation....
, 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
Boston Society of Film Critics

The Boston Society of Film Critics is an organization of film reviewers from Boston, Massachusetts, United States, based publications.The BSFC was formed in 1981 to make "Boston's unique critical perspective heard on a national and international level by awarding commendations to the best of the year's films and filmmakers and local film t...
 (tied with Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is a film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the Exclusive Books Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-nominated novel Q & A by Indian English literature and diplomat Vikas Swarup....
), the Chicago Film Critics Association
Chicago Film Critics Association

The Chicago Film Critics Association is an American film criticism association....
, the Central Ohio Film Critics awards, the Online Film Critics Society
Online Film Critics Society

The Online Film Critics Society is a professional association for film critics as well as film journalists, scholars, and historians who publish their reviews, interviews and essays on the Internet....
, and most notably the Los Angeles Film Critics Association
Los Angeles Film Critics Association

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association was founded in 1975. Its main purpose is to present yearly awards to members of the film industry who have excelled in their fields....
, 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
American Film Institute

The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B....
 and the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
National Board of Review of Motion Pictures

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of film, to protest New York City Mayor George B....
.

It won Best Animated Feature Film at the 66th Golden Globe Awards
66th Golden Globe Awards

The 66th Golden Globe Awards Ceremony was broadcast on January 11, 2009, from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, United States on the NBC TV network....
, 81st Academy Awards
81st Academy Awards

The 81st Academy Awards ceremony was held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to honor its selection of the best 2008 in film on February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California....
 and the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008

The 14th Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards were given to honor the finest achievements in 2008 in film....
. It was nominated for several awards at the 2009 Annie Award
Annie Award

The Annie Awards are presented by the Los Angeles, California branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood since 1972....
s, 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
62nd British Academy Film Awards

The 62nd British Academy Film Awards, hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, took place on 8 February, 2009, and honoured the best films of 2008 in film....
, and was also nominated there for Best Music and Sound. Thomas Newman
Thomas Newman

Thomas Montgomery Newman is an American 10 time Academy Award-nominated film score composer....
 and Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel

Peter Brian Gabriel is a Grammy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated England musician and songwriter. He first rose to fame as the lead vocals and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis ....
 won two Grammy Award
Grammy Award

The Grammy Awards ?or Grammys?are presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States for outstanding achievements in the music industry....
s for "Down to Earth
Down to Earth (Peter Gabriel song)

"Down to Earth" is a single and part of the soundtrack album WALL-E , sung, written and produced by Peter Gabriel featuring Soweto Gospel Choir; the music was composed by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman....
" and "Define Dancing". It won all three awards it was nominated for by the Visual Effects Society
Visual Effects Society

The Visual Effects Society is the entertainment industry's only organization representing the full breadth of visual effects practitioners including artists, technologists, model makers, educators, studio leaders, supervisors, PR/marketing specialists and producers in all areas of entertainment from film, television and commercials to music...
: 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
American Cinema Editors

Founded in 1950, American Cinema Editors is an honorary society of film editors that are voted in based on the qualities of professional achievements, their education of others, and their dedication to editing itself....
.

At the British National Movie Awards
National Movie Awards

The National Movie Awards is a United Kingdom movie awards ceremony broadcast by ITV. The awards were initiated in 2007, following the success of the National Television Awards, a similar awards ceremony for television....
, 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
British Academy of Film and Television Arts

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a British charity that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation....
. WALL-E was listed at #63 on Empire
Empire (magazine)

Empire is a United Kingdom film magazine published monthly by Bauer Verlagsgruppe. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap....
s online poll of the 100 greatest movie characters, conducted in 2008.

In 2009, writers Andrew Stanton
Andrew Stanton

Andrew Christopher Stanton Jr. is an American film director, screenwriter, Film Producer, and occasional voice actor based at Pixar. His most notable film work includes writing and directing Finding Nemo and WALL-E, both of which earned him Academy Awards....
, Jim Reardon
Jim Reardon

Jim Reardon is an animation director and storyboard consultant, best known for his work on the animated TV series The Simpsons. He has directed over 30 episodes of the series, and was credited as a supervising director for seasons 9 through 15....
, and Pete Docter were nominated for a Nebula Award
Nebula Award

The Nebula Award is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the two previous years ....
, along side The Dark Knight and Stargate Atlantis episode The Shrine
The Shrine

"The Shrine" is the sixth episode of the Stargate Atlantis of the science fiction television series, Stargate Atlantis. The episode is also the 300th produced episode in the overall Stargate....
.

See also

  • List of Pixar film references
    List of Pixar film references

    The following is a summary of all references to other Pixar films that the Pixar filmmakers incorporate into their movies:...
     lists references made in WALL-E to other Pixar films.


External links