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Saving Humans From Humanity: WALL-E
For a robot to know what a sense of purpose is, is no small feat. So went the tagline for incredibly successful WALL-E. This touching story of a robot who manages to teach humanity about what it means to be human become one of the most beloved films ever produced by Pixar and Disney.
Known as the director of FINDING NEMO, Andrew Stanton wanted WALL-E to push the limits of what the Pixar animation team was capable of producing. The film was a technological achievement in and of itself. Stanton insisted the film replicate the visual depth of focus and detail of 70mm film -- a last never attempted before. Consequently, this required exhaustive layering and rendering man-hours.
Dialogue is not the pivot-point for this story, rather, it is a piece of brilliant characterization. Stanton intentionally kept the dialogue to a minimum, often only scripting emotional states and gestures. This allowed the animators to have a broader range of motion and placed the onus of communicating the emotions of the characters on legendary sound designer Ben Burtt.
Both the innovative sound design and sumptuous visuals helped catapult WALL-E to the top of the box office. In fact, it managed to earn $23 million on its opening day. By the close of its opening weekend, it had made over $63 million. By the end of the year, the worldwide take was well over $534 million. This was a tremendous hit for Pixar, marking the film as the highest grossing animated feature to date.
The movie was justly lauded by critics worldwide. Consequently, WALL-E not only won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film, but it also took home the Hugo Award for best Dramatic Presentation. The cap off its impressive awards run, it also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
An ecological warning that doesn't make the mistake of stumping the pulpit, WALL-E manages to fuse a range of environmental and cultural concerns into a film that is essentially a love story. Furthermore, the film manages to make a few points about our modern proclivities towards fast food and video gaming. Astoundingly, as Kyle Smith of the New York Post makes clear, "I'm also not sure I've ever seen a major corporation spend so much money to issue an insult to its customers.
About the Author If you are eager to share the magic of WALL-E with your family -- or add it to your home collection -- be sure to look for the superb Blu-ray version available this winter.
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