WALL-E

WALL•E
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Andrew Stanton
Screenplay by	Andrew Stanton Jim Reardon
Story by	Andrew Stanton Pete Docter
Produced by	Jim Morris
Starring	Ben Burtt Elissa Knight Jeff Garlin Fred Willard John Ratzenberger Kathy Najimy Sigourney Weaver
Cinematography	Jeremy Lasky Danielle Feinberg
Edited by	Stephen Schaffer
Music by	Thomas Newman
Production company	Pixar Animation Studios
Distributed by	Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures[a]
Release dates	June 23, 2008 (2008-06-23) (Greek Theatre) June 27, 2008 (2008-06-27) (United States)
Running time	97 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$180 million[2]
Box office	$532.5 million[3][4]

WALL-E (stylized with an interpunct as WALL·E) is a 2008 American animated romantic science fiction film^[5] produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton, produced by Jim Morris, and written by Stanton and Jim Reardon. It stars the voices of Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, with Sigourney Weaver and Fred Willard. The film follows a solitary robot named WALL-E on a future, uninhabitable, deserted Earth in 2805, left to clean up garbage. He is visited by a robot called EVE sent from the starship Axiom, with whom he falls in love and pursues across the galaxy.

After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt Pixar had created believable simulations of underwater physics and was willing to direct a film set largely in space. WALL-E has minimal dialogue in its early sequences; many of the characters in the film do not have voices, but instead communicate with body language and robotic sounds that were designed by Burtt. The film incorporates various topics including consumerism, corporatocracy, nostalgia, waste management, human environmental impact and concerns, obesity/sedentary lifestyles, and global catastrophic risk.^[6] It is also Pixar's first animated film with segments featuring live-action characters. Thomas Newman composed the film's musical score. The film cost $180 million to produce, a record-breaking sum for an animated film at the time. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film titled Presto for its theatrical release.

WALL-E was released in the United States on June 27, 2008. The film received critical acclaim for its animation, story, voice acting, characters, visuals, score, sound design, screenplay, use of minimal dialogue, and scenes of romance.^[7][8] It was also commercially successful, grossing $521.3 million worldwide and becoming the ninth-highest grossing film of 2008. It won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation,^[9] the final Nebula Award for Best Script,^[10] the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with five additional Oscar nominations. The film was widely named by critics and organizations, including the National Board of Review and American Film Institute, as one of the best films of 2008,^[11][12] and to be considered among the greatest animated films ever made.^[13][14][15]

In 2021, WALL-E became the second Pixar feature film (after Toy Story) to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[16] In September 2022, at the request of Stanton, Disney licensed WALL-E to The Criterion Collection, who re-released the film as a special edition 4K Blu-Ray-standard Blu-ray combo pack on November 22, 2022, marking the first Pixar film to ever receive such an honor.^[17][18]

Plot[edit]

In the 29th century, Earth is a garbage-strewn wasteland due to an ecocide, caused by rampant consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental neglect.^[19]

Humanity is nowhere to be seen, having been evacuated by the megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL) to space on giant starliners, leaving trash compacting robots to clean up the planet, seven hundred years prior. All the robots on earth have since stopped functioning and the last remaining active robot, a Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class (WALL·E), has developed a personality. WALL·E remains active by salvaging parts from other inactive robots and lives with his pet cockroach as his only companion in a large robot carrier truck.

One day, WALL·E's routine of compressing trash and collecting interesting objects is broken by the arrival of an unmanned rocket probe carrying an egg-shaped robot called an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE), which is sent to scan the planet for signs of sustainable life. WALL·E is smitten by the sleek, otherworldly robot, and the two begin to connect, until EVE goes into standby mode when WALL·E shows her his most recent find: a living seedling. The probe ship eventually returns and collects EVE and the plant, with WALL·E clinging on in fear of losing her. The probe ship then returns to its mothership, the starliner Axiom.

In the centuries since the Axiom left Earth, its passengers have degenerated into helpless obesity due to microgravity and laziness, with robots catering to their every whim. Even Captain B. McCrea is used to sitting back while his robotic AI autopilot helm, nicknamed AUTO, pilots the ship. McCrea is unprepared to receive the positive probe response, but discovers that placing the plant in the ship's Holo-Detector will trigger a hyperjump back to Earth so that humanity can begin recolonization. When McCrea inspects EVE's storage compartment, the plant is missing, with EVE blaming WALL·E for its disappearance.

EVE is deemed faulty and taken to diagnostics. Mistaking the process for torture, WALL·E intervenes and inadvertently releases all the other faulty bots, causing him and EVE to be designated as rogue robots. Frustrated, EVE tries to send WALL·E home in an escape pod, but before she can, the two witness McCrea's first mate robot, GO-4, stowing the plant in a pod set to self-destruct, revealing that WALL·E did not steal the plant. WALL·E enters the pod to retrieve the plant just as it launches, but both he and the plant survive unscathed. EVE catches up to him and they reconcile, celebrating with a dance in space around the Axiom.

EVE brings the plant back to McCrea, who watches her recordings of Earth, concluding that they can and must save it. However, AUTO reveals that he has been ordered to not return to Earth by a secret no-return directive A113, issued by BnL CEO Shelby Forthright, also revealing that GO-4 attempted to dispose of the plant on AUTO's instruction. When McCrea goes against the directive, AUTO and GO-4 electrocute WALL·E, forcefully puts EVE into standby, throws them both down a garbage chute and confines McCrea to his quarters. EVE (having been reactivated by a mouse-like robot) and WALL·E are nearly ejected into space with the ship's refuse, but Microbe Obliterator (M-O), a cleaning robot who had been following WALL·E's dirt trail across the ship since his arrival, inadvertently jams the door and saves the two, prompting the Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Axiom-class (WALL·A) garbage bots to abort the ejection. As humans and robots help in securing the plant, McCrea and AUTO fight for control of the Axiom. AUTO crushes WALL·E using the Holo-Detector in a last-ditch attempt to keep the human passengers in space; McCrea eventually overpowers and deactivates AUTO by switching him to manual mode, and EVE successfully inserts the plant, initiating the hyperjump.

Arriving back on Earth, EVE quickly repairs WALL·E, but finds that his memory and personality have been erased. Heartbroken, EVE gives WALL·E a goodbye "kiss", which releases a static electricity shock, restoring him to his normal self. WALL-E and EVE reunite as the Axiom inhabitants take their first steps on Earth. Humans and robots turn the ravaged planet into a paradise, and the plant grows into a mighty tree, which WALL·E and EVE rest beneath.

Cast[edit]

Voice cast[edit]

• Ben Burtt as WALL·E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class),^[20] a compactor robot who has achieved sentience, he is the only one still functioning on Earth. He is a small mobile compactor box accompanied by his cockroach friend Hal. He collects trinkets from the garbage and displays them at his home, where he watches a video cassette of 20th Century Studios' Hello, Dolly!, mimicking the dance sequences.
  • Burtt also voices M-O (Microbe-Obliterator), a cleaning robot.
• Elissa Knight as EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator),^[20] a glossy white egg-shaped probe robot with blue LED eyes, whose directive is to verify the habitability of planets for humans. She moves using antigravity and is equipped with scanners, specimen storage, and a cannon which she is quick to use.
• Jeff Garlin as Captain B. McCrea, the captain of the Axiom. (While McCrea's name was never spoken, it does appear on a portrait of him in his quarters. He is only ever referred to as the Captain.)
• MacInTalk, the text-to-speech program for Apple Macintosh computers, is the voice of AUTO, the Axiom's villainous AI autopilot which handles command functions of the ship. Loyal only to directive A113, he and GO-4 are the only computers not influenced by WALL-E.
• John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy as John and Mary, who live on the Axiom, so dependent on their automatic services as to be oblivious to their surroundings. They are brought out of their trances by encounters with WALL-E and fall in love with each other.
• Sigourney Weaver as the Axiom's computer. Stanton joked to Weaver: "You realize you get to be 'Mother' now?"^[21][22] referring to the ship's computer in the film Alien, starring Weaver.^[22]

Live-action cast[edit]

• Fred Willard as Shelby Forthright, CEO of the Buy n Large Corporation and President of Earth. The only major live-action character, appearing only in videos recorded around the time of the Axiom's launch in the 22nd century. Forthright proposed the plan to evacuate Earth's population and then clean up the planet so they could return within five years. Discovering that Earth had become too toxic to support life, the cleanup and recolonization were abandoned. Forthright issued directive A113 preventing anyone from returning to Earth. As of 2024, Forthright is the only live-action character with a speaking role in any Pixar film.
• Michael Crawford and Marianne McAndrew appear in an archival recording performing "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello, Dolly!.

Production[edit]

Writing[edit]

As depicted in the teaser trailer, Andrew Stanton conceived WALL-E during a lunch with fellow writers John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft in 1994. Toy Story was near 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?"^[21] 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 strong.^[24][25] 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.^[26] Stanton also liked the imagery of stacked cubes of garbage.^[27] He did not find the idea dark because having a planet covered in garbage was for him a childish imagining of disaster.^[28]

Stanton and 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. instead.^[29][30] 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.^[31] 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.^[28] Stanton started writing WALL-E again in 2002 while completing Finding Nemo.^[32] Stanton formatted his script in a manner reminiscent of 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.^[25] 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,^[33] though Jobs stated he did not like the title, originally spelled "W.A.L.-E."^[34]

While the first act of WALL-E "fell out of the sky" for Stanton,^[28] he had originally wanted aliens to plant EVE to explore Earth and the rest of the film was 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, gelatinous, boneless, legless, see-through, green creatures that resemble Jell-O). James Hicks, a physiologist, mentioned to Stanton the concept of atrophy and the effects prolonged weightlessness would have on humans living in space for an inordinately extended time period.^[21][35][36] Therefore, this was the inspiration of the humans degenerating into the alien Gels,^[37] and their ancestry would have been revealed in a Planet of the Apes-style ending.^[38] 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.^[39] 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.^[39] Stanton decided this was too bizarre and unengaging, and conceived humanity as "big babies".^[38] Stanton developed the metaphorical theme of the humans learning to stand again and "grow[ing] up",^[38][40] wanting WALL-E and EVE's relationship to inspire humanity because he felt few films explore how utopian societies come to exist.^[41] The process of depicting the descendants of humanity as the way they appear in the movie was 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.^[39]

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 an homage to Get Smart,^[42] 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 not been sympathetic.^[37] 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 really takes command of the Axiom.^[39]

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. Originally, EVE would have been electrocuted by AUTO, and then be quickly saved from ejection at the hands of the Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Axiom-class (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.^[37] The idea of WALL-E losing his memory and personality came after the braintrust team abandoned a scene where EVE had been shot in her heart battery and WALL-E gave her his own battery instead.^[43] Stanton felt half the audience at the screening believed the humans would be unable to cope with living on Earth and would have died out after the film's end. Jim Capobianco, director of the Ratatouille 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.^[44]

Design[edit]

WALL-E was the most complex Pixar production since Monsters, Inc. because of the world and the history that had to be conveyed.^[24] Whereas most Pixar films have up to 75,000 storyboards, WALL-E required 125,000.^[45] Production designer Ralph Eggleston wanted the lighting of the first act on Earth to be romantic, and that of the second act on the Axiom to be cold and sterile. During the third act, the romantic lighting is slowly introduced into the Axiom environment.^[21] 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.^[46][47] Eggleston bleached out the whites on Earth to make WALL-E feel vulnerable. The overexposed light makes the location look more vast. Because of the haziness, the cubes making up the towers of garbage had to be 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, 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.^[48]

Stanton also wanted the lighting to look realistic and evoke the science fiction films of his youth. He thought that Pixar captured the physics of being underwater with Finding Nemo and so for WALL·E, he wanted to push that for air. While rewatching some of his favorite science fiction films, he realized that Pixar's other movies had lacked the look of 70 mm film and its barrel distortion, lens flare, and racking focus.^[24] 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.^[41] 1970s Panavision cameras were used to help the animators understand and replicate handheld imperfections like unfocused backgrounds in digital environments.^[21] The first lighting test included building a three-dimensional replica of WALL-E, filming it with a 70 mm camera, and then trying to replicate that in the computer.^[49] 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.^[28]

Stanton wanted the Axiom's interior to resemble Shanghai and Dubai.^[24] Eggleston studied 1960s NASA paintings and the original concept art for Tomorrowland for the Axiom, to reflect that era's sense of optimism.^[21] 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.^[24] Pixar also studied the Disney Cruise Line and visited Las Vegas, which was helpful in understanding artificial lighting.^[21] Eggleston based his Axiom designs on the futuristic 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 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.^[48] In keeping with the artificial Axiom, camera movements were modeled after those of the steadicam.^[50]

The use of live action was a stepping stone for Pixar, as Stanton was planning to make John Carter of Mars his next project.^[24] Storyboarder Derek Thompson noted introducing live action meant that they would make the rest of the film look even more realistic.^[51] Eggleston added that if the historical humans had been animated and slightly caricaturized, the audience then would not have been able to recognize how serious their devolution was.^[48] Stanton cast Fred Willard as the historical Buy n Large CEO because "[h]e's the most friendly and insincere car salesman I could think of."^[38] The CEO says "stay the course", which Stanton used because he thought it was funny and a "natural thing to say at the time".^[52] Industrial Light & Magic did the visual effects for these shots.^[21]

Animation[edit]

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., the Pixar lamp or R2-D2.^[25] Stanton explained there are two types of robots in cinema: "human[s] with metal skin", like the 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!'"^[53] He added, "We wanted the audience to believe they were witnessing a machine that has come to life."^[21] 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,^[32] 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.^[21]

Stanton wanted WALL·E to be a box and EVE to be like an egg.^[54] WALL·E's eyes were inspired by a pair of 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.^[55] The director was reminded of Buster Keaton and decided the robot would not need a nose or mouth.^[56] Stanton added a zoom lens to make WALL-E more sympathetic.^[56] Ralph Eggleston noted this feature gave the animators more to work with and gave the robot a childlike quality.^[48] Pixar's studies of trash compactors during their visits to recycling stations inspired his body.^[21] His tank treads were inspired by a wheelchair someone had developed that used treads instead of wheels.^{CategoriesMovies/TV Shows}