Pixar and Andrew Stanton, the makers of Finding Nemo, are now working on Wall-E, due for a 2008 release. What will it be about? Jim Hill has some spoilers.

Teaser trailer now online.

Wow. Pure Pixar power. That teaser just gives me chills.

I'm so glad to be living in the time when this team is at their prime, to see one classic after another rolled out for the first time. It's like living in the first golden age of Disney feature animation. Only better.

Yes, better.

The Disney team produced four early masterpieces -- Snow White, Fantasia, Pinocchio and Bambi, with one lesser effort, Dumbo, tucked in the middle, kind of like A Bug's Life in the Pixar canon (though I like A Bug's Life better than Dumbo).

But then, after a holding pattern of "package" films, mostly musicals (Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad), Disney began reliably knocking out competent three-star features -- Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp -- interspersed with a few better efforts -- Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians -- that still fell short of the early masterpieces.

Pixar now has eight films under their belt, only two of which I would put at the three-star level, A Bug's Life and Cars. Among the others, I'm reluctant to assign a lesser status to any; I like Monsters, Inc. a lot better than Jeff does, I guess, although if I had to single out one lesser effort among the Big Five it would be that one. Ratatouille is at least at that same level.

Looking foward to Wall-E.

SDG wrote:
: But then, after a holding pattern of "package" films . . .

Necessitated by "the war", alas. I don't think Pixar has had to deal with any external factors on THAT level.

: . . . Disney began reliably knocking out competent three-star features -- Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp -- interspersed with a few better efforts -- Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians -- that still fell short of the early masterpieces.

Interesting that you say "interspersed", since those two films came out in 1959 and 1961, whereas all the others came out between 1950 and 1955. Perhaps Disney, after a decade of corporate reprioritization (a new theme park, a commitment to live-action feature films, a plethora of documentaries and TV shows), was finally rising to its feet again? (These films were then followed by The Sword and the Stone, in 1963, and The Jungle Book, which came out in 1967 only a few months after Uncle Walt's death -- are those in the "competent three-star" camp or the "better efforts" camp?)

: Looking foward to Wall-E.

Me, I'm intrigued by the distinction the trailer draws between what Wall-E was "built" for and what he was "meant" for. Kind of ties into recent discussions I've been having elsewhere over which "creator" -- the human one or the divine one -- a robot with a soul would be answerable to.

Alan Thomas wrote:
: Well, OK. But you *did* get the title wrong...

Hmmm. My original source on this was the Jim Hill item linked above. He spells it "WALL E" consistently -- all caps, no punctuation -- and I rejected this approach because (1) all caps are kinda ugly and (2) the graphic included on his page put a dot between "wall" and "e".

The dot was easily translatable to a hyphen, moreso than an asterisk, especially given the rounded corners of the letters in the graphic. And apparently Disney's own corporate documents call it "WALL-E", with a hyphen, as do the trade papers. So I go with the hyphen, definitely.

We could possibly go the all-caps approach, though. But I think we've refrained from that before, and I would lean in that direction only if the robot's name were an acronym, a la D.A.R.Y.L. (1985).

The original thread also has the advantage of having search-able key-words, apart from the movie's title, the spelling of which is apparently debatable.

WALL-E's voice is wicked cool.

I'm just commenting on the results, not providing a total evaluation of the talents or situations involved.


The first four films were illustrative; the other two were exceptional.

I would put The Sword and the Stone very comfortably in the "competent three-star" camp; Jungle Book does threaten to break out into "better effort" territory, but I'm not sure it quite succeeds. Oh, and there's also The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, a "package film" that's also a "better effort" film in my book.

But the rest of the ledger continues the three-star (if that) trend, in my opinion: The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron (yuck!), The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company. And then you have the Disney Renaissance, beginning with The Little Mermaid.

So, three exceptional films (maybe four) out of, like, sixteen -- and even those three or four aren't quite up there with the first four masterpieces (Sleeping Beauty comes closest IMO).

So, Pixar's current trajectory looks better to me.

Jeffrey Overstreet wrote:
: WALL-E's voice is wicked cool.

According to Wikipedia (which cites Time magazine, but gives no URL), "Lucasfilm sound designer, Ben Burtt, will electronicaly voice the main robotic roles." He was involved with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) too, no? (Speaking of the rumours of a Christian contingent around Pixar... If memory serves, Burtt is a Christian, and his daughter reportedly attended Trinity Western University here in B.C. while I was an instructor there. Although I can find no data on that via Google.)

SDG wrote:
: Oh, and there's also The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, a "package film" that's also a "better effort" film in my book.

That film came out in 1977 and combines three short films, only one of which, I think, was produced during Walt's lifetime.

: But the rest of the ledger . . .

... takes place after Walt's death, and is thus definitely not part of Disney's "golden age"!

Teaser #2, from the Ratatouille video game:

Cool use of the youtube code! I'd even forgotten that I put that in place.

FYI, in case anyone wants to embed a YouTube video, just encode it:

USA Today has a new picture:

There's a new teaser/trailer here. It's in French, but that doesn't really matter as there's no dialog per se.

My fave bit is the Pixar logo gag at the very beginning, which gets me chuckling everytime.

(The WALL*E commercial, not the French promo)

opus wrote:
: There's a new teaser/trailer here. . . . My fave bit is the Pixar logo gag at the very beginning, which gets me chuckling everytime.

There seem to be only two real new bits here: The revised Pixar logo, which to my mind is a little too reminiscent of that THX reel with the flying robot farmer who fixes the THX logo, and the insect bit, which increases the impression one gets that this film is borrowing elements from the Short Circuit movies (1986-1988) -- just as A Bug's Life ripped off !Three Amigos! and Cars, I am told, ripped off Doc Hollywood. (Never seen Doc Hollywood myself. Saw !Three Amigos! only once. Saw Short Circuit a LOT.)

Wow, I never thought of those comparisons. Cars is a lot like Doc Hollywood, with a thick layer of nostalgia spread on top. And A Bug's Life is sorta like Three Amigos, only not as funny.

Three Amigos, of course, riffing off The Magnificent Seven, itself an adaptation of--everybody now--The Seven Samurai. All roads lead to Kurosawa (or at least they should).

Doc Hollywood is based on the book What? Dead again?.

Alan beat me too it, but I was going to say the same thing. A Bug's Life is a version of Seven Samurai for children.

Anders wrote:
: A Bug's Life is a version of Seven Samurai for children.

Except the samurai really were samurai.

New trailer:

http://media.movies.ign.com/media/879/879322/vids_1.html

Faaaaaaaaaaaantastic!

Pixar has that wonderful ability to make what one wouldn't think cute at all into something that is just so darn cute.

That little robot? Adorable.

Totally agree.

Everything I see about this movie makes me love it more.

See also this web site:

http://www.buynlarge.com/

It is the website for the fictional corporation that runs everything in Wall-E.

There's nothing really new in the trailer, except for the bit with the rocket coming down and then lifting off again. Maybe I've bought into my Pixar-always-remakes-the-1980s thesis a little too much, and maybe I'm being unduly influenced by the fact that I saw Twilight Zone: The Movie last night (which includes a segment directed by Joe Dante), but the new trailer, apart from recycling the bits that borrow heavily from Short Circuit, gets me worrying that this could turn into another Explorers. It's all very well and good to have a story about leaving the planet, but ... but ... once you've left, where do you go?

I was getting more of an ET vibe from the trailer.

Embedding...

Exactly right. Especially the way he trembles when he's coming out from the red-hot rocks -- that's very E.T.-in-Elliott's-room.

Well, Short Circuit always had an E.T. vibe, so that's all incorporated into the derivativeness.

Move fast, before this disappears.

It's the most revealing trailer yet.

Or here:

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2008/02/walle_i..._trailer_is.php

It's gone.

It's back. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR2_l7fqzRw

Easy to understand why Disney's not happy . . . there's a major plot point that gets revealed in this one.

David Smedberg wrote:
: Easy to understand why Disney's not happy . . . there's a major plot point that gets revealed in this one.

Um, then who made the trailer, then?

(BTW, is that McKellen doing the narration?)

It doesn't sound like him to me, except at the beginning.

Who released it, is more the question.

There's no guarantee that this was actually a final cut of the trailer . . . they could have decided to tone back the couple of shots which are most clear about the romantic relationship, or they could have made any number of other changes.

David Smedberg wrote:

: : : Easy to understand why Disney's not happy . . . there's a major plot point that gets revealed in this one.
: :
: : Um, then who made the trailer, then?
:
: Who released it, is more the question.

Not really. If Disney made the trailer, then Disney was planning on revealing the major plot point in question. (Incidentally, which plot point did you have in mind? Nothing in this trailer was new to me, plot-wise, though it could be I'm forgetting what the spoilers are and what they aren't.)

: There's no guarantee that this was actually a final cut of the trailer . . .

Fair enough. Though of course, studios typically release multiple trailers that reveal different things, and sometimes they reveal things in one market that they don't reveal in others. (If memory serves, this was the INTERNATIONAL trailer, no?)

As far as I know (and you can correct me if I'm wrong), the existence of the other main character, the white robot had not been revealed before. That leads to the plot point that apparently Wall-E falls in love with her.

Hmmm, I actually mentioned that at my blog back in July (i.e. seven months ago), and all I was doing was passing on what Disney had revealed about the film at Comic-Con. So, yes, it has been officailly "revealed" to those who follow fanboy conventions and the like, though I guess it might not have been mentioned in any trailers so far.

I had no idea that he was involved with this project, but here is a video blog from Peter Gabriel talking about his contributions to Wall-E. The Wall-E portion starts at about the halfway point of the video.

So... which member of Genesis will score a Disney film next?

It probably would have made more sense for Gabriel to wait for Pixar's Up.

I wonder what Mike + the Mechanics are doing these days?

A new trailer... and in HD... reveals more than ever about this story. For crying out loud -- the detail is so incredible that I get jittery when I think about Pixar launching their *next* movies in 3D. I am so glad to be alive to see this happening.

"WALL * E" trailer soft-pedals the more controversial aspects of this new Pixar film
Jim Hill points out the stuff in this trailer that the Mouse's marketing department was hoping you'd overlook. WARNING !! There be spoilers ahead !
Jim Hill, March 13

Chris Thilk: " . . . the Judeo-Christian overtones in this trailer - and seemingly the movie as a whole - are pretty hard to miss. We see Wall-E, after being described as lonely, folding his mechanical hands as if in prayer, a prayer which apparently answered when the craft, bearing a fellow robot named Eve, lands in front of him."

First Look: Disney/Pixar's WALL•E
First the potential flaws: The premise of the movie is that Earth was so overrun with rampant commercialism and therefore garbage from all those purchases, that the inhabitants had to flee Earth. The population left in Starship (The Axiom) to wait out the cleanup efforts by the robots left behind. Even the cleanup robots fall into disrepair and WALL•E is the last one left, doing what he his programmed to do.
I'm not sure how the moviegoing public will react to such in-your-face preaching about the dangers of Wal-Mart and Costco. Nor the hints at weather run amok, like the hyper-dust storms that whip up out of nowhere to savage the city where WALL•E lives.
Also, within the Axiom – the logical conclusion of life without the need for physical movement is life as a couch potato – "slugs" plugged into their own personal Xbox/PlayStation.
Sci-Fi movies have preached before -- Planet of the Apes; Them, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Soylent Green -- and still they entertain. So WALL•E is just following along in a rich tradition. The question is will the love story between WALL•E and EVE stand above the distractions or be dragged down with the weight of them?
ComingSoon.net, April 7

Cinematical is going to be updating this post about Disney's newest production-calendar announcements.

Among the interesting tidbits: Sigourney Weaver provides one of the voices in WALL•E.

Apple and Eve
Revealed: The heroine of Pixar's new release, Wall-E, was born from an iPod.
Fortune, May 12

FWIW, I saw the footage from WALL*E at Comicon. I am trying, not entirely successfully, to keep my hopes and expectations somewhere within the stratosphere.