Pixar uber-guru Andrew Stanton was on hand at WonderCon to talk about his robot love story, Wall-E (which stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth class), which was inspired by what he calls "the golden age of science fiction," and it's a story he'd been obsessed with ever since he wondered what would happen if we left the planet and "someone forgot to turn off the last robot." He showed off four new clips from the film, and you can read our descriptions of those down below.( We fired up our stealthycam for some video goodness, but the decidedly non-wonderful WonderCon security gave us the clampdown.)
- Clip #1: Wall-E at work. Our little herobot works away in his role as the last working robot on the planet. It's 700 years after the human race was supposed to leave the planet so the disposal bots could clean the place up over the next five years. However, something has gone wrong, and we never returned. Over the intervening centuries, Wall-E keeps at his job, and he's developed a personality. While compacting trash, he keeps the more interesting finds in his lunchbox: a bra, a squeaky toy, an old boot, and so on. Plus, he has his little cockraoch buddy to keep him company.
- Clip #2: Eventually a spaceship lands on the planet and drops off a probe droid named EVE. Wall•E courts her for awhile, and eventually brings her back to his pimped out truck where he keeps all of his Earth junk. She nearly laser-zaps his singing Bigmouth Billy Bass on the wall, enjoys his bubble-wrap, breaks his egg-beater, and nearly brings down the house when she tries to emulate the dancing she sees in an old video Wall•E presents to her on VHS.
- Clip #3: The ship returns and EVE is tucked away onboard, ready to return to wherever she came from. Wall•E is terrified at the thought of losing his new friend, and tries to stow away on her ship but only makes it halfway up the ladder. He hangs on for dear life while they rocket into outer space, and he tags along for the ride all the way back to the megaship they dock in. Along the way, it's a touching tribute to our own space program (although the moon has been turned into an outlet mall), and previous space films like 2001.
- Clip #4: Wall-E creates some work-related problems for EVE, and she tries sending him home in an escape pod. However, she soon regrets her decision and goes off after him, although things are a bit more complicated since his pod is set to auto-destruct. Wall-E narrowly escapes, and with the use of a fire extinguisher as a thruster, he navigates his way back to her. Although Stanton promises that their relationship will become a lot more complicated.
- In response to being told that all the Pixar movies keep looking better and better, Andrew Stanton ask a fan, "Are you saying Toy Story is the ugliest film we've made? Well... it is!" Hey, we love a director with humility.













Comments
That sounds... rather interesting.
I must say I'm more willing to check the film out now than previously, if because I'm always enamored with what we leave behind when we inevitably disappear from the universe.
And finally, thank god, I have some ammo when I have to endure "I liked it better when it was called Short Circuit" for the MILLIONTH time.
Short Circuit was a really good movie, though.
And you know what was even better?
Yes: Short Circuit 2.
SpaceCamp was really good, too.
This movie always starts to sound interesting. And then the retarded cartoon robot love story comes up and I realize this is just another dopey Disney-style cartoon like all the other dopey Disney-style cartoons.
The female robot's name is EVE? Subtle. This movie is starting to sound like a Pixar-ed version of A.I.
second bakana. I don't want no retarded cartoon robot love story, pixar could do better.
@ubik: I wouldn't mind a non-retarded robot love story, though.
So, I wasn't the only one yelling "Five Alive!"
I was the one who asked Andrew the question about Wall•E looking like Johnny Five at Wondercon - gotta admit I was nervous in front of that huge audience but when people were like "whoohoo! Short Circuit!" I felt a lot better :P
I could have sworn it was a tribute to Johnny Five but Andrew's response to an earlier question referencing E.T. prompted him to explain that Wall•E's eyes come from him playing around with binoculars at a baseball game and recognizing the range of emotion from that simple mechanic of moving the lenses closer and farther apart. Then the treads were added for increased mobility and the boxy nature was for him to be able to hide like a turtle to show his timidness.
As Kevin stated in the title, he said he only saw the original Short Circuit like once and barely remembers it. Oh well. I remember you Johnny Five...
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