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WALL-E

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This article is about the film. For the video game based on it, see WALL-E (video game). For the film's soundtrack, see WALL-E (soundtrack).

WALL-E
WALL-Eposter.jpg
Theatrical release poster

Directed by
Andrew Stanton
Produced by
Jim Morris
Screenplay by
Andrew Stanton
Jim Reardon
Story by
Andrew Stanton
Pete Docter
Starring
Ben Burtt
Elissa Knight
Jeff Garlin
Fred Willard
John Ratzenberger
Kathy Najimy
Sigourney Weaver
MacInTalk
Music by
Thomas Newman
Cinematography
Jeremy Lasky
 Danielle Feinberg
Editing by
Stephen Schaffer
Studio
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Distributed by
Walt Disney Studios
 Motion Pictures
Release date(s)
•June 23, 2008 (2008-06-23) (Los Angeles)
•June 27, 2008 (2008-06-27)
 
Running time
98 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$180 million[1]
Box office
$521,311,860[2]
WALL-E (stylized with an interpunct as WALL·E) is a 2008 American CGI science-fiction romantic comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. The story follows a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future. He falls in love with another robot named EVE, who also has a programmed task, and follows her into outer space on an adventure that changes the destiny of both his kind and humanity. Both robots exhibit an appearance of free will and emotions similar to humans, which develop further as the film progresses.
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. Most of the characters do not have actual human voices, but instead communicate with body language and robotic sounds, designed by Ben Burtt, that resemble voices. It is also Pixar's first animated feature with segments featuring live-action characters.
Walt Disney Pictures released WALL-E in the United States and Canada on June 27, 2008. It grossed $23.2 million on its opening day, and $63.1 million during its opening weekend in 3,992 theaters, ranking #1 at the box office. This ranks as the fifth highest-grossing opening weekend for a Pixar film. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film, Presto, for its theatrical release.
WALL-E was met with critical acclaim, scoring an approval rating of 96% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed $521.3 million worldwide, won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form,[3] the final Nebula Award for Best Script,[4] the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film, and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature as well as being nominated for five other Academy Awards at the 81st Academy Awards. WALL-E ranks first in TIME's "Best Movies of the Decade".[5]
The film is seen as a critique on larger societal issues. It addresses consumerism, nostalgia, environmental problems, waste management, the immense impact humans have on the Earth, and the direction in which the human race is headed.[6]

Contents
 [hide] •1 Plot
•2 Cast and characters
•3 Production ◦3.1 Writing
◦3.2 Design
◦3.3 Animation
◦3.4 Sound
◦3.5 Music
•4 Themes ◦4.1 Environment and Waste
◦4.2 Technology
◦4.3 Christianity
•5 Reception ◦5.1 Release
◦5.2 Box-office performance
◦5.3 Home media
◦5.4 Critical reception
•6 Accolades
•7 References
•8 Further reading
•9 External links
Plot[edit source | edit]
In 2805, Earth is covered in garbage due to decades of mass consumerism facilitated by the megacorporation Buy 'n' Large (BnL). In 2105, BnL evacuates Earth's population in fully automated starliners, leaving behind WALL-E trash compactor robots to clean the planet. Eventually BnL abandons its plan and shuts down the WALL-E robots, except for one which develops sentience after 700 years of life-experience. He manages to remain active by repairing himself using parts from other units. Apart from his regular duties, he inquisitively collects artifacts of human civilization and keeps them in his home, a storage truck.
One day WALL-E discovers a growing seedling. Later, a spaceship lands and deploys EVE, an advanced robot probe sent from the BnL starliner Axiom to search for vegetation on Earth. WALL-E falls in love with the initially cold and hostile EVE, who gradually softens and befriends him. When WALL-E brings EVE to his truck and shows her his collection, she sees the plant, automatically stores it inside herself, and goes into standby mode waiting for her ship to retrieve her. WALL-E, not understanding why EVE seems to have shut down, tries numerous methods to reactivate her, to no avail. When EVE's automated ship returns and collects EVE, WALL-E clings to its hull and thus travels through space back to the Axiom.
On the Axiom, the descendants of the ship's original passengers have become morbidly obese after centuries of relying on the ship's automated systems for their every need. The ship's 6th captain, McCrea, leaves most of the ship's operations under the control of its robotic autopilot, Auto.
WALL-E follows EVE to the bridge of the Axiom, where the Captain learns that by putting the plant in the ship's holo-detector to verify Earth's habitability, the Axiom will make a hyperjump back to Earth so the passengers can recolonize it. However, Auto orders McCrea's robotic assistant GO-4 to steal the plant as part of his own no return directive, which was issued to all BnL autopilots after the corporation incorrectly concluded in 2110 that the planet could not be saved.
With the plant missing, EVE is considered defective and taken to the repair ward along with WALL-E (for cleaning). WALL-E mistakes the process on EVE for torture and tries to save her, accidentally releasing a horde of malfunctioning robots. The on-board security systems then designate both WALL-E and EVE as "rogue robots". Angry with WALL-E's disruptions, EVE brings him to the escape pod bay to send him home. There they witness GO-4 dispose of the missing plant by placing it inside a pod which is set to "self-destruct mode". WALL-E enters the plant's pod, which is then jettisoned into space. WALL-E escapes with the plant before the pod explodes. Reconciling with EVE, they celebrate with a dance in space outside the Axiom.
The plant is brought to the captain, who surveys EVE's recordings of Earth and concludes that mankind must return to restore their ruined home. However, Auto reveals his directive and stages a mutiny. He tasers WALL-E, severely damaging him, when he tries to protect the plant. EVE realizes the only parts for repairing WALL-E are in his truck back on Earth. She helps him bring the plant to the holo-detector to activate the ship's hyperjump. McCrea opens the holo-detector and fights Auto for control of the ship. Auto partially crushes WALL-E by closing the holo-detector on him. Auto is eventually disabled by McCrea, and EVE places the plant in the holo-detector, which frees a crushed WALL-E and sets the Axiom on the instant hyperjump to Earth.
EVE brings WALL-E back to his home where she repairs and reactivates him. After the repair WALL-E no longer recognizes EVE, reverting to his original programming as an unfeeling waste compactor. Heartbroken, EVE gives WALL-E a farewell kiss that jolts WALL-E's memory, and his personality returns. WALL-E and EVE happily reunite as the humans and robots of the Axiom begin to restore Earth and its environment. During the end credits, slideshows through a series of artworks WALL-E and EVE are seen holding hands in front of a large tree, which is revealed to have grown from the tiny plant that brought humankind home.
Cast and characters[edit source | edit]
•Ben Burtt produced the voice of WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth-Class), the title character. WALL-E, a robot who has developed sentience, is the only robot of his kind shown to be still functioning on Earth. He is a small mobile compactor box with all-terrain treads, three-fingered shovel hands, binocular eyes, and retractable solar cells for power. He collects spare parts for himself, which becomes pivotal to the plot, and replaces broken and/or worn out parts on-the-fly by cannibalizing "dead" WALL-Es. Although working diligently to fulfill his directive to clean up the garbage (all the while accompanied by his cockroach friend Hal and music playing from his on-board recorder) he is distracted by his curiosity, collecting trinkets of interest. He stores and displays these "treasures" such as a birdcage full of rubber ducks, a Rubik's Cube, Zippo lighters, disposable cups filled with plastic cutlery and a golden trophy at his home where he examines and categorizes his finds while watching video cassettes of musicals via an iPod viewed through a large Fresnel lens. ◦Burtt is also credited for the voice of M-O (Microbe Obliterator), as well as most of the other robots. M-O is a tiny, obsessive compulsive maintenance robot with rollers for hands who keeps Axiom clean.
•Elissa Knight as EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a sleek robot probe whose directive is to locate vegetation on Earth and verify habitability. She has a glossy white egg-shaped body and blue LED eyes. She moves using antigravity technology and is equipped with scanners, specimen storage and a plasma cannon in her arm, which she is quick to use.
•Jeff Garlin as Captain B. McCrea, the commander, and apparently only officer, on the Axiom. His duties as captain are daily routines, with the ship's autopilot handling all true command functions.
•Fred Willard as Shelby Forthright, historical CEO of the Buy n Large Corporation, shown only in videos recorded around the time of the Axiom's initial launch. Constantly optimistic, Forthright proposed the evacuation plans, then to clean up and recolonize the planet. However, the corporation gave up after realizing how toxic Earth had become. Forthright is the only live action character with a speaking role, the first in any Pixar film.
•MacInTalk, the text-to-speech program for the Apple Macintosh, was used for the voice of Auto, the rogue autopilot artificial intelligence built into the ship. Unlike other robots in the film, Auto is not influenced by WALL-E, instead following directive A113, which is to prevent the Axiom and the humans from returning to Earth because of the toxicity, and he will prevent anyone from deviating from it.
•John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy as John and Mary, respectively. John and Mary both live on the Axiom and are so dependent on their personal video screens and automatic services that they are oblivious to their surroundings, for instance not noticing that the ship features a giant swimming pool. However, they are brought out of their trances after separate encounters with WALL-E, eventually meeting face-to-face for the first time.
•Sigourney Weaver as the voice of the Axiom's computer. Stanton joked about the role with Weaver, saying, "You realize you get to be 'Mother' now?"[7][8] referring to the name of the ship's computer in the film Alien, which also starred Weaver.[8]
Production[edit source | edit]
Writing[edit source | edit]


BACK ON M-O AND WALLY [sic]
M-O just finishes cleaning the floor.
Wally is fascinated.
Impishly makes another mark.
M-O compulsively cleans it. Can’t resist.
 M-O (bleeps): [Look, it stays clean. You got that?]
Wally wipes the bottom of his tread on M-O’s face.
M-O loses it.
Scrubs his own face.
Stanton wrote the screenplay to focus on the visuals
 and as a guide to what the sound effects needed to convey[9]
Andrew Stanton conceived WALL-E during a lunch with fellow writers John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft in 1994. Toy Story was nearing 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?"[7] 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 very strong.[10][11] 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.[12] Stanton also liked the imagery of stacked cubes of garbage.[13] He did not find the idea dark because having a planet covered in garbage was for him a childish imagining of disaster.[14]
Stanton and Pete 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.[15][16] 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.[17] 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.[14] Stanton started writing WALL-E again in 2002 while completing Finding Nemo.[18] 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.[11] 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,[19] though Jobs stated he did not like the title, originally spelled "W.A.L.-E."[20]
While the first act of WALL-E "fell out of the sky" for Stanton,[14] he had originally wanted aliens to plant EVE to explore Earth and the rest of the film was very 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, gelantinous, 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.[7][21][22] Therefore, this was the inspiration of the humans degenerating into the alien Gels,[23] and their ancestry would have been revealed in a Planet of the Apes-style ending.[24] 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.[25] 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.[25] Stanton decided this was too bizarre and unengaging, and conceived humanity as "big babies".[24] Stanton developed the metaphorical theme of the humans learning to stand again and "grow[ing] up",[24][26] wanting WALL-E and EVE's relationship to inspire humanity because he felt very few films explore how utopian societies come to exist.[27] The process of depicting the descendants of humanity as the way they appear in the movie was very 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.[25]
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 a homage to Get Smart,[28] 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 been unempathetic.[23] 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 assumes real command of the Axiom.[25]
Originally, EVE would have been electrocuted by Auto, and then be quickly saved from ejection at the hands of the 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. 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.[23] 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 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.[29]
Design[edit source | edit]
WALL-E was the most complex Pixar production since Monsters, Inc. because of the world and the history that had to be conveyed.[10] Whereas most Pixar films have up to 75,000 storyboards, WALL-E required 125,000.[30] Production designer Ralph Eggleston wanted the lighting of the first act on Earth to be romantic, while 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.[7] 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.[31][32] 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 very 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.[33]

WALL-E holding a bra

WALL-E finds a bra. Roger Deakins and Dennis Muren were consulted on realistic lighting including backgrounds that are less focused than foregrounds.
Stanton also wanted the lighting to look realistic and evoke the science fiction films of his youth. He felt Pixar had captured the physics of being underwater with Finding Nemo, so for WALL-E he wanted to push that for air. It was while rewatching some of his favorite science fiction films he realized Pixar's films lacked the look of 70 mm film and its barrel distortion, lens flare and racking focus.[10] 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.[27] 1970s Panavision cameras were used to help the animators understand and replicate handheld imperfections like unfocused backgrounds in digital environments.[7] The first lighting test consisted of building a three-dimensional replica of WALL-E, filming it with a 70 mm camera, and then trying to replicate that in the computer.[34] 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.[14]
Stanton wanted the Axiom's interior to resemble Shanghai and Dubai.[10] Eggleston studied 1960s NASA paintings and the original concept art for Tomorrowland for the Axiom, to reflect that era's sense of optimism.[7] 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.[10] Pixar also studied the Disney Cruise Line and visited Las Vegas, which was helpful in understanding artificial lighting.[7] 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.[33] In keeping with the artificial Axiom, camera movements were modeled after those of the steadicam.[35]
The use of live action was a stepping stone for Pixar, as Stanton was planning to make John Carter of Mars his next project.[10] Storyboarder Derek Thompson noted introducing live action meant they had to make the rest of the film look even more realistic.[36] Eggleston added that if the historical humans had been animated and slightly caricaturized, then the audience would not have recognized how serious their devolution was.[33] Stanton cast Fred Willard as the historical Buy n Large CEO because "He's the most friendly and insincere car salesman I could think of."[24] The CEO says "stay the course," which Stanton used because he thought it was funny.[37] Industrial Light & Magic did the visual effects for these shots.[7]
Animation[edit source | 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. or R2-D2.[11] 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!'"[38] He added, "We wanted the audience to believe they were witnessing a machine that has come to life."[7] 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,[18] 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.[7]
Stanton wanted WALL-E to be a box and EVE to be like an egg.[39] 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.[40] The director was reminded of Buster Keaton and decided the robot would not need a nose or mouth.[41] Stanton added a zoom lens to make WALL-E more sympathetic.[41] Ralph Eggleston noted this feature gave the animators more to work with and gave the robot a child-like quality.[33] Pixar's studies of trash compactors during their visits to recycling stations inspired his body.[7] His tank treads were inspired by a wheelchair someone had developed that used treads instead of wheels.[39] The animators wanted him to have elbows, but realized this was unrealistic because he is only designed to pull garbage into his body.[7] His arms also looked very flimsy when they did a test of him waving.[39] Animation director Angus MacLane suggested they attach his arms to a track on the sides of his body to move them around, based on the inkjet printers his father designed. This arm design contributed to creating the character's posture, so if they wanted him to be nervous, they would lower them.[42] Stanton was unaware of the similarities between WALL-E and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit until others pointed it out to him.[11]

From left to right, characters Auto, the captain, and EVE are pictured in a room within the Axiom ship.

Auto, the captain and EVE
Stanton wanted EVE to be at the higher end of technology, and asked iPod designer Jonathan Ive to inspect her design. He was very impressed.[10] Her eyes are modelled on Lite-Brite toys,[41] but Pixar chose not to make them overly expressive as it would be too easy to have her eyes turn into hearts to express love or something similar.[39] Her limited design meant the animators had to treat her like a drawing, relying on posing her body to express emotion.[7] They also found her similar to a manatee or a narwhal because her floating body resembled an underwater creature.[39] Auto was a conscious homage to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the usage of Also sprach Zarathustra for the showdown between the captain and Auto furthers that.[11][not in citation given] The manner in which he hangs from a wall gives him a threatening feel, like a spider.[43] Originally, Auto was designed entirely differently, resembling EVE, but masculine and authoritative; the Steward robots were also more aggressive Patrol-bots.[23] The majority of the robot cast were formed with the Build-a-bot program, where different heads, arms and treads were combined together in over a hundred variations.[7] The humans were modelled on sea lions due to their blubbery bodies,[33] as well as babies. The filmmakers noticed baby fat is a lot tighter than adult fat and copied that texture for the film's humans.[44]
To animate their robots, the film's story crew and animation crew watched a Keaton and a Charlie Chaplin film every day for almost a year, and occasionally a Harold Lloyd picture.[11] Afterwards, the filmmakers knew all emotions could be conveyed silently. Stanton cited Keaton's "great stone face" as giving them perseverance in animating a character with an unchanging expression.[41] As he rewatched these, Stanton felt that filmmakers – since the advent of sound – relied on dialogue too much to convey exposition.[11] The filmmakers dubbed the cockroach WALL-E keeps as a pet "Hal", in reference to silent film producer Hal Roach (as well as being an additional reference to HAL 9000).[7] They also watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf, films that had sound but were not reliant on dialogue.[36] Stanton acknowledged Silent Running as an influence because its silent robots were a forerunner to the likes of R2-D2,[27] and that the "hopeless romantic" Woody Allen also inspired WALL-E.[15]
Sound[edit source | edit]
Producer Jim Morris recommended Ben Burtt as sound designer for WALL-E because Stanton kept using R2-D2 as the benchmark for the robots.[28] Burtt had completed Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and told his wife he would no longer work on films with robots, but found WALL-E and its substitution of voices with sound "fresh and exciting".[7] He recorded 2500 sounds for the film, which was twice the average number for a Star Wars film,[18] and a record in his career.[7] Burtt began work in 2005,[45] and experimented with filtering his voice for two years.[46] Burtt described the robot voices as "like a toddler [...] universal language of intonation. 'Oh', 'Hm?', 'Huh!', you know?"[47]
During production Burtt had the opportunity to look at the items used by Jimmy MacDonald, Disney's in-house sound designer for many of their classic films. Burtt used many of MacDonald's items on WALL-E. Because Burtt was not simply adding sound effects in post-production, the animators were always evaluating his new creations and ideas, which Burtt found an unusual experience.[48] He worked in sync with the animators, returning their animation after adding the sounds to give them more ideas.[7] Burtt would choose scientifically-accurate sounds for each character, but if he could not find one that worked, he would choose a dramatic if unrealistic noise.[48] Burtt would find hundreds of sounds by looking at concept art of characters, before he and Stanton pared it down to a distinct few for each robot.[10]
Burtt saw a hand-cranked electrical generator while watching Island in the Sky, and bought an identical, unpacked device from 1950 on eBay to use for WALL-E moving around.[49] Burtt also used an automobile self starter for when WALL-E goes fast,[48] and the sound of cars being wrecked at a demolition derby provided for WALL-E's compressing trash in his body.[50] The Macintosh computer chime was used to signify when WALL-E has fully recharged his battery. For EVE, Burtt wanted her humming to have a musical quality.[48] Burtt was only able to provide neutral or masculine voices, so Pixar employee Elissa Knight was asked to provide her voice for Burtt to electronically modify. Stanton deemed the sound effect good enough to properly cast her in the role.[37] Burtt recorded a flying 10-foot-long (3.0 m) radio-controlled jet plane for EVE's flying,[7] and for her plasma cannon, Burtt hit a slinky hung from a ladder with a timpani stick. He described it as a "cousin" to the blaster noise from Star Wars.[51]
MacInTalk was used because Stanton "wanted Auto to be the epitome of a robot, cold, zeros & ones, calculating, and soulless [and] Stephen Hawking's kind of voice I thought was perfect."[27] Additional sounds for the character were meant to give him a clockwork feel, to show he is always thinking and calculating.[48]
Burtt had visited Niagara Falls in 1987 and used his recordings from his trip for the sounds of wind.[50] He ran around a hall with a canvas bag up to record the sandstorm though.[7] For the scene where WALL-E runs from falling shopping carts, Burtt and his daughter went to a supermarket and placed a recorder in their cart. They crashed it around the parking lot and then let it tumble down a hill.[52] To create Hal (WALL-E's pet cockroach)'s skittering, he recorded the clicking caused by taking apart and reassembling handcuffs.[7]
Music[edit source | edit]
See also: WALL-E (soundtrack)
Thomas Newman recollaborated with Stanton on WALL-E since the two got along well on Nemo, which gave Newman the Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Feature. He began writing the score in 2005, in the hope that starting this task early would make him more involved with the finished film. But, Newman remarked that animation is so dependent on scheduling he should have begun work earlier on when Stanton and Reardon were writing the script. EVE's theme was arranged for the first time in October 2007. Her theme when played as she first flies around Earth originally used more orchestral elements, and Newman was encouraged to make it sound more feminine.[53] Newman said Stanton had thought up of many ideas for how he wanted the music to sound, and he generally followed them as he found scoring a partially silent film difficult. Stanton wanted the whole score to be orchestral, but Newman felt limited by this idea especially in scenes aboard the Axiom, and used electronics too.[54]

WALL-E watching a clip from Hello, Dolly!

A live-action clip of the song "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello, Dolly!, which inspires WALL-E to hold hands with EVE
Stanton originally wanted to juxtapose the opening shots of space with 1930s French swing music, but he saw The Triplets of Belleville (2003) and did not want to appear as if he were copying it. Stanton then thought about the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello, Dolly!, since he had portrayed the sidekick Barnaby Tucker in a 1980 high school production.[55] Stanton found that the song was about two naive young men looking for love, which was similar to WALL-E's own hope for companionship. Jim Reardon suggested WALL-E find the film on video, and Stanton included "It Only Takes a Moment" and the clip of the actors holding hands, because he wanted a visual way to show how WALL-E understands love and conveys it to EVE. Hello Dolly! composer Jerry Herman allowed the songs to be used without knowing what for; when he saw the film, he found its incorporation into the story "genius".[56] Coincidentally, Newman's uncle Lionel worked on Hello, Dolly![7]
Newman travelled to London to compose the end credits song "Down to Earth" with Peter Gabriel, who was one of Stanton's favorite musicians. Afterwards, Newman rescored some of the film to include the song's composition, so it would not sound intrusive when played.[7] Louis Armstrong's rendition of "La Vie en rose" was used for a montage where WALL-E does not get EVE's attention on Earth. The script also specified using Bing Crosby's "Stardust" for when the two robots dance around the Axiom,[9] but Newman asked if he could score the scene himself. A similar switch occurred for the sequence in which WALL-E attempts to wake EVE up through various means; originally, the montage would play with the instrumental version of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", but Newman wanted to challenge himself and scored an original piece for the sequence.[57]
Themes[edit source | edit]
This movie is widely recognized as a critique on society. It brings up very real issues that the world, and especially densely populated areas, are dealing with today and even more so in the future. Katherine Ellison asserts that “Americans produce nearly 400 million tons of solid waste per year but recycle less than a third of it, according to a recent Columbia University study.” Landfills are filling up so quickly that the UK may run out of landfill space by the year 2017.[58]
Environment and Waste[edit source | edit]
Because WALL-E overtly critiques consumerism, it also critiques Disney's production values and aesthetic, without being too obvious.[6] In the DVD commentary, Stanton said that he has been asked if it was his intention to make a movie about consumerism. His answer was it was not; it was a way to answer the question of how would the Earth get to the state where one robot would be left to continue the cleanup by itself.
In "WALL-E: from environmental adaption to sentimental nostalgia," Robin Murray and Joseph Heuman explain the important theme of nostalgia in this film. Nostalgia is clearly represented by human artifacts, left behind, that WALL-E collects and cherishes, i.e. Zippo lighters, hubcaps, and plastic sporks. These modern items that we use out of necessity, are made sentimental through the lens of the bleak future of Earth. Nostalgia is also expressed through the musical score, as the film opens with a camera shot of outer space that slowly zooms in to a waste filled Earth while playing "Put on Your Sunday Clothes," reflecting on simpler and happier times in human history. This film also expresses nostalgia through the longing of nature and the natural world, as it is the sight and feeling of soil, and the plant brought back to the space ship by EVE, that make the captain decide it is time for humans to move back to Earth. WALL-E expresses nostalgia also, by reflecting on heterosexual romantic themes of older Disney and silent films.[6]
Stanton describes the theme of the film as "irrational love defeats life's programming":[24]

I realized the point I was trying to push with these two programmed robots was the desire for them to try and figure out what the point of living was ... It took these really irrational acts of love to sort of discover them against how they were built ... I realized that 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. I thought, 'That's a perfect amplification of the whole point of the movie.' I wanted to run with science in a way that would sort of logically project that.[24]
Technology[edit source | edit]
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 or the planet".[59] Stanton said that by taking away effort to work, the robots also take away humanity's need to put effort into relationships.[43] Christian journalist Rod Dreher 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 each other to renew the Earth. "WALL-E is not a Luddite 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."[60]

 

The Axiom and EVE have been compared to Noah's Ark and the dove in that story.
Christianity[edit source | edit]
Stanton, who is Christian,[12] named EVE after the Biblical character because WALL-E's loneliness reminded him of Adam, before God created his wife.[61] Dreher noted EVE's biblical namesake and saw her directive as an inversion of that story; EVE uses the plant to tell humanity to return to Earth and move 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 creating brand loyalty in children.[60] Megan Basham of World magazine felt the film criticizes the pursuit of leisure, whereas WALL-E in his stewardship learns to truly appreciate God's creation.[12]
During writing, a Pixar employee noted to Jim Reardon that EVE was reminiscent of the dove with the olive branch from the story of Noah's Ark, and the story was reworked with EVE finding a plant to return humanity from its voyage.[62] WALL-E himself has been compared to Prometheus,[28] Sisyphus,[60] and Butades: in an essay discussing WALL-E as representative of the artistic strive of Pixar itself, Hrag Vartanian 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."[63]
Reception[edit source | edit]
Release[edit source | edit]
Continuing a Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film for its theatrical release, Presto. The film was dedicated to Justin Wright (1981–2008), a Pixar animator who had worked on Ratatouille and died of a heart attack before WALL-E's release.[7]
Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) built animatronic WALL-Es to promote the picture, which made appearances at Disneyland Resort;[64] the Franklin Institute; the Miami Science Museum; the Seattle Center; and the Tokyo International Film Festival.[65] Due to safety concerns, the 318 kg robots were always strictly controlled and WDI always needed to know exactly what they were required to interact with. For this reason, they generally refused to have their puppets meet and greet children at the theme parks in case a WALL-E trod on a child's foot. Those who wanted to take a photograph with the character had to make do with a cardboard cutout.[66]
Very small quantities of merchandise were sold for WALL-E, as Cars items were still popular, and many manufacturers were more interested in Speed Racer, which was a successful line despite the film's failure at the box office. Thinkway, which created the WALL-E toys, had previously made Toy Story dolls when other toy producers had not shown an interest.[65] Among Thinkway's items were a WALL-E that danced when connected to a music player, a toy that could be taken apart and reassembled, and a groundbreaking remote control toy of him and EVE that had motion sensors that allowed them to interact with players.[67] There were even plushies.[68] The "Ultimate WALL-E" figures were not in stores until the film's home release in November 2008,[65] at a retail price of almost $200, leading The Patriot-News to deem it an item for "hard-core fans and collectors only".[67]
Box-office performance[edit source | edit]
WALL-E grossed $223,808,164 in the USA and Canada and $297,503,696 overseas for a worldwide total of $521,311,860, marking it the ninth highest grossing film of 2008.[2]
The film premiered at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on June 23, 2008.[69]
In the USA and Canada, it opened in 3,992 theaters on June 27, 2008. During its opening weekend, it topped the box office with $63,087,526[70] which is currently the fifth-best opening weekend for a Pixar film[71] and the fourth-best opening among films released in June.[72] The movie earned $94.7 million in its first week and crossed the $200 million mark during its sixth weekend.[73]
Countries where it grossed over $10 million are the following: Japan ($44,005,222), UK, Ireland and Malta ($41,215,600), France and the Maghreb region ($27,984,103), Germany ($24,130,400), Mexico ($17,679,805), Spain ($14,973,097), Australia ($14,165,390), Italy ($12,210,993) and Russia and the CIS ($11,694,482).[74]
Home media[edit source | edit]
The film was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on November 18, 2008. The various editions included Presto, a new short film BURN-E, the Leslie Iwerks documentary film The Pixar Story, shorts about the history of Buy n Large, the behind-the-scenes special features and a Digital Copy of the film that can be played through iTunes or Windows Media and compatible devices.[75] It sold 9,042,054 DVD units ($142,633,974) in total becoming the second best-selling animated DVD among those released in 2008 in terms of units sold (behind Kung Fu Panda), the best-selling animated feature in terms of sales revenue and the 3rd best-selling among all 2008 DVDs.[76]
Critical reception[edit source | edit]
WALL-E was met with overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics.[77] Rotten Tomatoes reported that 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 236 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10.[78] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 94, based on 39 reviews, which represents "universal acclaim".[77] indieWire named WALL-E the third 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.[79]
Richard Corliss of Time named WALL-E as his favorite film of 2008 (and later of the decade), 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 and Katharine Hepburn.[80] Other critics who named WALL-E as their favorite film of 2008 included Tom Charity of CNN,[81] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, A. O. Scott of The New York Times, Christopher Orr of The New Republic, Ty Burr and Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe, Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal, and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker.[82]
Todd McCarthy of Variety 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 was its optimism.[83] Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter 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 films. 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."[84]
Roger Ebert writing in the Chicago Sun-Times 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 thoughts for the younger viewers."[85] He named it as one of his twenty favorite films of 2008 and argued it was "the best science-fiction movie in years".[86]
The film was interpreted as tackling a topical, ecologically-minded agenda,[78] though McCarthy said it did so with a lightness of touch that granted the viewer the ability to accept or ignore the message.[83] Kyle Smith of the New York Post, 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, adding, "I'm also not sure I've ever seen a major corporation spend so much money to issue an insult to its customers."[87] Maura Judkis of U.S. News & World Report 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".[88] The interpretation led to criticism of the film by conservative commentators such as Glenn Beck, and contributors to National Review Online including Shannen W. Coffin and Jonah Goldberg (although he admitted it was a "fascinating" and occasionally "brilliant" production).[89][not in citation given]
A few notable critics have argued that the film is vastly overrated,[90] claiming it failed to "live up to such blinding, high-wattage enthusiasm",[91] and that there were "chasms of boredom watching it", in particular "the second and third acts spiraled into the expected".[92] Other labels included "preachy"[90] and "too long".[91] Child reviews sent into CBBC were mixed, some citing boredom and an inadequate storyline.[93]
Patrick J. Ford of The American Conservative said WALL-E's conservative critics missed lessons in the film that he felt appealed to traditional conservatism. He argued that the mass consumerism in the film was not shown to be a product of big business, but of too close a tie between big business and big government: "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."[94]
Director Terry Gilliam praised the film as "A stunning bit of work. The scenes on what was left of planet Earth are just so beautiful: one of the great silent movies. And the most stunning artwork! It says more about ecology and society than any live action film – all the people on their loungers floating around, brilliant stuff. Their social comment was so smart and right on the button."[95]
Movie Room Reviews praised the film and gave it 4 stars saying "Plenty of sight gags and one-liners will keep audiences both young and old giggling, and the storyline is easy to follow, even for younger viewers."[96]
Accolades[edit source | edit]
Main article: List of accolades received by WALL-E
WALL-E won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing at the 81st Academy Awards, which it lost to Slumdog Millionaire (Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing), The Dark Knight (Sound Editing), and Milk (Original Screenplay).[97][98] Walt Disney Pictures also pushed for an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination,[99] but it was not nominated, provoking controversy as to whether the Academy deliberately restricted WALL-E to the Best Animated Feature category.[100] Peter Travers commented that "If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for best picture it's Wall-E."[101] Only three animated films, 1991's Beauty and the Beast and Pixar's next two films, 2009's Up and 2010's Toy Story 3, have ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. 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."[17]
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 (tied with Slumdog Millionaire),[102] the Chicago Film Critics Association,[103] the Central Ohio Film Critics awards,[104] the Online Film Critics Society,[105] and most notably the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, where it became the first animated feature to win the prestigious award.[106] It was named as one of 2008's ten best films by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.[107][108]
It won Best Animated Feature Film at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, 81st Academy Awards and the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008.[109][110] It was nominated for several awards at the 2009 Annie Awards, including Best Feature Film, Animated Effects, Character Animation, Direction, Production design, Storyboarding and Voice acting (for Ben Burtt);[111] but was beaten out by Kung Fu Panda in every category.[112] It won Best Animated Feature at the 62nd British Academy Film Awards, and was also nominated there for Best Music and Sound.[113] Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel won two Grammy Awards for "Down to Earth" and "Define Dancing".[114] It won all three awards it was nominated for by the Visual Effects Society: Best Animation, Best Character Animation (for WALL-E and EVE in the truck) and Best Effects in the Animated Motion Picture categories.[115] It became the first animated film to win Best Editing for a Comedy or Musical from the American Cinema Editors.[116] In 2009, Stanton, Reardon and Docter won Nebula Award, beating The Dark Knight and the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Shrine".[117][118] It won Best Animated Film and was nominated for Best Director at the Saturn Awards.[119]
At the British National Movie Awards, which is voted for by the public, it won Best Family Film.[120] It was also voted Best Feature Film at the British Academy Children's Awards.[121] WALL-E was listed at #63 on Empire's online poll of the 100 greatest movie characters, conducted in 2008.[122] In early 2010, TIME ranked WALL-E #1 in "Best Movies of the Decade".[5]
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78.^ Jump up to: a b "WALL-E Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2012-07-05.
79.Jump up ^ David Poland (2008). "The 2008 Movie City News Top Ten Awards". Retrieved 2009-01-13. [dead link]
80.Jump up ^ Richard Corliss (2008-12-09). "Top 10 Movies". Time. Retrieved 2008-12-09.
81.Jump up ^ Tom Charity (2008-12-31). "The best (and worst) films of 2008". CNN. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
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83.^ Jump up to: a b Todd McCarthy (2008-06-26). "WALL-E Review". Variety. Archived from the original on 2008-08-22. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
84.Jump up ^ Kirk Honeycutt (2006-06-25). "WALL-E". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 2008-06-30. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
85.Jump up ^ Roger Ebert (2008-06-26). "WALL-E review". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2008-06-30.
86.Jump up ^ Roger Ebert (2008-12-05). "The best films of 2008... and there were a lot of them". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2008-12-09.
87.Jump up ^ Kyle Smith (2008-06-26). "Disney's "Wall-E": A $170 Million Art Film". kylesmithonline.com. Retrieved 2008-07-01.
88.Jump up ^ Maura Judkis (2008-06-30). "Will 'WALL-E' Make Us Greener?". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved 2008-07-02.
89.Jump up ^ Ali Frick (2008-07-01). "Right-Wing Apoplectic Over Pixar’s WALL-E: 'Malthusian Fear Mongering,' 'Fascistic Elements'". Think Progress. Center for American Progress. Retrieved 2008-07-01.
90.^ Jump up to: a b Daniel Treiman (2008-07-10). "Thumbs Up for 'Wall-E'? Ed Kooch Dissents". The Forward. Retrieved 2009-10-06.
91.^ Jump up to: a b "/ UK – Everyday tale of droid meets probe". Ft.com. 2008-07-17. Retrieved 2010-04-22.
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99.Jump up ^ Michael Cieply, Brooks Barnes (2008-10-27). "Studios Are Pushing Box Office Winners as Oscar Contenders". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
100.Jump up ^ Bandyk, Matthew (2009-01-22). Academy Awards Controversy: Wall-E Gets Snubbed For Best Picture Oscar. U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved 2009-01-22.
101.Jump up ^ Academy accused of snubbing Dark Knight, Wall-E. ABC News. 2009-01-22. Retrieved 2009-01-22.
102.Jump up ^ Peter Sciretta (2008-12-14). "AFI’s Top 10 Movies of 2008; Boston Critics Name WALL-E and SlumDog Best Picture". /film. Retrieved 2008-12-15.
103.Jump up ^ Chicago Film Critics Association (2008-12-18). "WALL-E Cleans Up Chicago Film Critics Awards". Retrieved 2008-12-18.
104.Jump up ^ Frank Gabrenya (2009-01-10). "'WALL-E' picks up top honors". The Columbus Dispatch.
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106.Jump up ^ Justin Chang (2008-12-09). "L.A. critics wired for 'WALL-E'". Variety. Retrieved 2008-12-09.
107.Jump up ^ Hayes, Dade (2008-12-14). "NBR names 'Slumdog' best of year". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-13. [dead link]
108.Jump up ^ "AFI Awards 2008". American Film Institute. Retrieved 2009-01-12. [dead link]
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112.Jump up ^ Pete DeBruge (2009-01-30). "'Kung Fu Panda' rules Annie Awards". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-31.
113.Jump up ^ Emily Phillips (2009-02-08). "Slumdog Bags The BAFTAs". Empire Online. Retrieved 2009-02-08.
114.Jump up ^ "51st Grammy Awards". Grammy.com. Archived from the original on 2009-02-07. Retrieved 2009-02-09.
115.Jump up ^ Thomas J. McLean (2009-02-22). "Button, WALL•E Dominate VES Awards". Animation Magazine. Retrieved 2009-02-23.
116.Jump up ^ "59th Annual ACE Eddie Awards". American Cinema Editors. Retrieved 2009-02-16. [dead link]
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120.Jump up ^ "National Movie Awards". Archived from the original on August 22, 2008. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
121.Jump up ^ Post your opinion. "Children's Awards Winners – Children's – Awards – The BAFTA site". Bafta.org. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
122.Jump up ^ "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters". Empire Online. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
Further reading[edit source | edit]
•Hauser, Tim (2008). The Art of WALL-E. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ISBN 978-0-8118-6235-6. OCLC 377889575.
External links[edit source | edit]
 Wikimedia Commons has media related to: WALL-E
 Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: WALL-E
•Official website
•WALL-E at the Internet Movie Database
•WALL-E at the TCM Movie Database
•WALL-E at the Big Cartoon DataBase
•WALL-E at AllRovi
•WALL-E at Box Office Mojo
•WALL-E at Rotten Tomatoes
•WALL-E at Metacritic

[show]
•v
•t
•e
WALL-E
 
Music
Soundtrack
"Down to Earth"

 
Shorts
Presto
BURN-E

 
Related
Characters WALL-E
EVE
Video game
Accolades

 

[show]
•v
•t
•e
Films by Andrew Stanton
 
Written and directed
Finding Nemo (2003)
WALL-E (2008)
John Carter (2012)
Finding Dory (2016)

 
Written only
Toy Story (1995)
A Bug's Life (1998, also co-director)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Toy Story 3 (2010)

 

[show]
•v
•t
•e
John Lasseter
 
Directed


Feature films
Toy Story (1995)
A Bug's Life (1998)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Cars (2006)
Cars 2 (2011)

 

Short films
Luxo Jr. (1986)
Red's Dream (1987)
Tin Toy (1988)
Knick Knack (1989)
Mater and the Ghostlight (2006)
Cars Toons: Mater's Tall Tales (2008)


 
Produced


Feature films
Secret of the Wings (2012)
Frozen (2013)
Inside Out (2015)
The Good Dinosaur (2015)

 

Short films
Luxo Jr. (1986)


 
Written


Feature films
Toy Story (1995)
A Bug's Life (1998)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Cars (2006)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Cars 2 (2011)
Planes (2013)

 

Short films
Luxo Jr. (1986)
Red's Dream (1987)
Tin Toy (1988)
Knick Knack (1989)
Mater and the Ghostlight (2006)


 
Studios
Walt Disney Animation Studios
Pixar
DisneyToon Studios

 

[show]
•v
•t
•e
Pixar
 
Feature films


Released
Toy Story (1995)
A Bug's Life (1998)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Finding Nemo (2003)
The Incredibles (2004)
Cars (2006)
Ratatouille (2007)
WALL-E (2008)
Up (2009)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Cars 2 (2011)
Brave (2012)
Monsters University (2013)

 

Forthcoming
Inside Out (2015)
The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Finding Dory (2016)


 
Shorts


Original
Luxo Jr. (1986)
Red's Dream (1987)
Tin Toy (1988)
Knick Knack (1989)
Geri's Game (1997)
For the Birds (2000)
Boundin' (2003)
One Man Band (2005)
Lifted (2006)
Presto (2008)
Partly Cloudy (2009)
Day & Night (2010)
La Luna (2011)
The Blue Umbrella (2013)

 

Feature-related
Mike's New Car (2002)
Jack-Jack Attack (2005)
Mater and the Ghostlight (2006)
Your Friend the Rat (2007)
BURN-E (2008)
Dug's Special Mission (2009)
George & A.J. (2009)
Hawaiian Vacation (2011)
Small Fry (2011)
Partysaurus Rex (2012)
The Legend of Mor'du (2012)
Party Central (2014)

 

Short series
Cars Toons (2008–)
Toy Story Toons (2011–)


 
Franchises
Toy Story (1995–)
Monsters, Inc. (2001–)
Finding Nemo (2003–)
Cars (2006–)

 

Associated
productions
The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)
1906 (TBA)

 
Compilations
Tiny Toy Stories (1996)
Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1 (2007)
Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 2 (2012)

 
Documentaries
The Pixar Story (2007)

 
Products
Pixar Image Computer
RenderMan
Marionette

 
People
John Lasseter
Edwin Catmull
Steve Jobs
Alvy Ray Smith
Jim Morris
Pete Docter
Andrew Stanton
Brad Bird
Lee Unkrich
Gary Rydstrom
Brenda Chapman
Brad Lewis
Bob Peterson
Joe Ranft
Mark Andrews
Doug Sweetland
Ronnie del Carmen
Dan Scanlon

 
See also
List of Pixar characters
List of Pixar awards and nominations (feature films
shorts)
List of Pixar film references
Woody's Roundup
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (The Adventure Begins)
Lucasfilm Animation
Circle 7 Animation
Pixar Canada
Industrial Light & Magic
A Computer Animated Hand
Planes
The Pixar Theory

 

[show] 
Awards for WALL-E
 


[show]
v
t
e
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
 
Shrek – Aron Warner (2001)
Spirited Away – Hayao Miyazaki (2002)
Finding Nemo – Andrew Stanton (2003)
The Incredibles – Brad Bird (2004)
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – Steve Box and Nick Park (2005)
Happy Feet – George Miller (2006)
Ratatouille – Brad Bird (2007)
WALL-E – Andrew Stanton (2008)
Up – Pete Docter (2009)
Toy Story 3 – Lee Unkrich (2010)
Rango – Gore Verbinski (2011)
Brave – Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews (2012)

 

[show]
v
t
e
BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film
 
2006–present
Happy Feet (2006)
Ratatouille (2007)
WALL-E (2008)
Up (2009)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Rango (2011)
Brave (2012)

 

[show]
v
t
e
Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film
 
2006–present
Cars – John Lasseter (2006)
Ratatouille – Brad Bird (2007)
WALL-E – Andrew Stanton (2008)
Up – Pete Docter (2009)
Toy Story 3 – Lee Unkrich (2010)
The Adventures of Tintin – Steven Spielberg (2011)
Brave – Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman (2012)

 

[show]
v
t
e
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
 
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2004)
The Incredibles (2005)
Serenity (2006)
Pan's Labyrinth (2007)
Stardust (2008)
WALL·E (2009)
Moon (2010)
Inception (2011)
Game of Thrones (season 1) (2012)
The Avengers (2013)

 

[show]
v
t
e
Nebula Award for Best Script/Bradbury Award (2001–present)
 
Nebula Award for Best Script
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – James Schamus, Kuo Jung Tsai and Hui-Ling Wang (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair & Peter Jackson (2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson (2004)
Serenity – Joss Whedon (2005)
Howl's Moving Castle – Hayao Miyazaki, Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt (2006)
Pan's Labyrinth – Guillermo del Toro (2007)
WALL-E – Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon and Pete Docter (2008)

 
Ray Bradbury Award for
Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
2000X — Tales of the Next Millennia – Yuri Rasovsky and Harlan Ellison (2001)
Joss Whedon (2008)
District 9 – Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell (2009)
Inception – Christopher Nolan (2010)
Doctor Who: "The Doctor's Wife" – Neil Gaiman & Richard Clark (2011)

 
Complete list
(1973–2000)
(2001–present)

 

[show]
v
t
e
Satellite Award for Best Animated or Mixed Media Feature
 
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Men in Black (1997)
A Bug's Life (1998)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Chicken Run (2000)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) (2002)
The Triplets of Belleville (Les triplettes de Belleville) (2003)
The Incredibles (2004)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
Pan's Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno) (2006)
Ratatouille (2007)
WALL-E (2008)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)
Rise of the Guardians (2012)

 

[show]
v
t
e
Saturn Award for Best Animated Film
 
Watership Down (1978)
The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Spirited Away (2002)
Finding Nemo (2003)
The Incredibles (2004)
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005)
Cars (2006)
Ratatouille (2007)
WALL-E (2008)
Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Puss in Boots (2011)
Frankenweenie (2012)



 
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Contact film

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Contact (film)

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Contact
Contact ver2.jpg
Theatrical release poster

Directed by
Robert Zemeckis
Produced by
Robert Zemeckis
Steve Starkey
Screenplay by
James V. Hart
Michael Goldenberg
Story by
Carl Sagan
Ann Druyan
Based on
Contact
 by Carl Sagan
Starring
Jodie Foster
Matthew McConaughey
James Woods
Tom Skerritt
William Fichtner
John Hurt
Angela Bassett
David Morse
Jake Busey
Music by
Alan Silvestri
Cinematography
Don Burgess
Editing by
Arthur Schmidt
Distributed by
Warner Bros.
Release date(s)
July 11, 1997

Running time
150 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$90 million[1]
Box office
$171,120,329



 Uniforms from the film at Stockholm International Fairs 2011.
Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film adapted from the Carl Sagan novel of the same name and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Both Sagan and wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film adaptation of Contact.
Jodie Foster portrays the film's protagonist, Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds strong evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. The film also stars Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Jake Busey, and David Morse.
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan began working on the film in 1979. Together, they wrote a 100+ page film treatment and set up Contact at Warner Bros. with Peter Guber and Lynda Obst as producers. When the project to make the film became mired in development hell, Sagan published Contact as a novel in 1985 and the film adaptation was rejuvenated in 1989. Roland Joffé and George Miller had planned to direct it, but Joffé dropped out in 1993 and Warner Bros. fired Miller in 1995. Robert Zemeckis was eventually hired to direct, and filming for Contact lasted from September 1996 to February 1997. Sony Pictures Imageworks handled most of the visual effects sequences.
The film was released on July 11, 1997, to mostly positive reviews. Contact grossed approximately $171 million in worldwide box office totals. The film won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and received multiple awards and nominations at the Saturn Awards. The release of Contact was publicized by controversies from the Clinton administration and CNN, as well as individual lawsuits from George Miller and Francis Ford Coppola.

Contents
  [hide] 1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production 3.1 Development
3.2 Filming
3.3 Visual effects
3.4 Music
3.5 Science and religion
4 Release 4.1 Box office
4.2 Home video
4.3 Critical reception
4.4 Awards
4.5 In popular culture
5 Controversies 5.1 Bill Clinton
5.2 CNN
5.3 Lawsuits
5.4 NASA
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Plot[edit source]
Encouraged to explore as a child by her late father, Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway works for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. She listens to radio transmissions hoping to find signals sent by extraterrestrial life. Government scientist David Drumlin pulls the funding from SETI because he believes the endeavor is futile. Arroway gains backing from secretive billionaire industrialist S. R. Hadden, who has followed her career and allows her to continue her studies at the Very Large Array (VLA) in Socorro County, New Mexico.
Four years later, with Drumlin seeking to close SETI, Arroway finds a signal repeating a sequence of prime numbers, apparently sent from the star Vega. This announcement causes Drumlin and the National Security Council, led by National Security Advisor Michael Kitz, to attempt to take control of the facility. As Arroway, Drumlin and Kitz argue, members of the team at the VLA discover a video source buried in the signal: Adolf Hitler's welcoming address at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Arroway and her team postulate that this would have been the first significantly strong television signal to leave Earth's atmosphere, which was then transmitted back from Vega, 25 light years away.
The project is put under tight security and its progress followed worldwide. Arroway learns that the signal contains more than 60,000 "pages" of what appear to be technical drawings. Hadden decodes the pages; the drawings are meant to be interpreted in three dimensions. This reveals a complex machine allowing for one human occupant inside a pod to be dropped into three spinning rings.
The nations of the world fund the construction of the machine in Cape Canaveral at the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39. An international panel is assembled to choose a candidate to travel in the machine. Although Arroway is one of the top selections, Christian philosopher Palmer Joss, a panel member whom Arroway met in Puerto Rico and with whom she had a brief romantic encounter, brings attention to her lack of religious faith. As this differentiates her from most humans, the panel selects Drumlin as more representative. On the day the machine is tested, a religious fanatic destroys the machine in a suicide bombing, killing Drumlin and many others.
Hadden reveals to Arroway that a second machine is hidden in Hokkaido, Japan, and that Arroway will be its pilot. Arroway, outfitted with several recording devices, is locked into the pod of the Japanese machine, dropped into the spinning rings, and disappears. When the pod apparently travels through a series of wormholes, she experiences displacement and can observe the outside environment, including a radio array-like structure at Vega and signs of an advanced civilization on an unknown planet. Arroway finds herself in a surreal beachfront landscape similar to a childhood picture she drew of Pensacola, Florida, and a blurry figure approaches that becomes her deceased father. Arroway recognizes him as an alien taking her father's form and attempts to ask questions. The alien deflects her inquiries, explaining that this journey was just humanity's first step to joining other spacefaring species.
Arroway considers these answers and falls unconscious. She awakens to find herself on the floor of the pod; the machine's control team is repeatedly calling for her. She learns that from outside the machine it appears the pod merely dropped through the machine's rings and landed in the safety net. Arroway insists that she was gone for approximately 18 hours, but her recording devices show only static. Kitz resigns as national security advisor to lead a congressional committee to determine whether the machine was a hoax designed by Hadden, who has died. Arroway is described as an unwitting accomplice in the hoax; she asks them to accept her testimony on faith. In a private conversation, Kitz and White House Chief of Staff Rachel Constantine reflect on confidential information that although Arroway's recording device only recorded static, it recorded 18 hours of it. Arroway and Joss reunite, and Arroway receives ongoing financial support for the SETI program at the Very Large Array.
Cast[edit source]
Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Ann Arroway: SETI scientist who first discovers the alien contact message Jena Malone as Young Ellie Arroway
Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss: Renowned Christian philosopher who becomes romantically involved with Arroway
James Woods as Michael Kitz: National Security Advisor who also heads the Congressional investigation of Arroway
Tom Skerritt as David Drumlin: Scientific aide to the President of the United States
William Fichtner as Kent Clark: A blind SETI scientist who assists Arroway in her studies
John Hurt as S.R. Hadden: An eccentric and reclusive billionaire industrialist who is fundamental in financing Dr. Arroway's research and deciphering the alien's message
Angela Bassett as Rachel Constantine: White House Chief of Staff to President Clinton
David Morse as Theodore Arroway: Arroway's father, who encourages his daughter to study amateur radio. He also later plays the alien: the first extraterrestrial to make contact with humanity.
Jake Busey as Joseph: a religious fanatic
Rob Lowe as Richard Rank: leader of the Conservative Coalition (a parody of Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition[2])
Geoffrey Blake as Fisher: SETI scientist
Max Martini as Willie: SETI scientist
Production[edit source]
Development[edit source]
Carl Sagan conceived the idea for Contact in 1979. The same year, Lynda Obst, one of Sagan's closest friends, was hired by film producer Peter Guber to be a studio executive for his production company, Casablanca FilmWorks. She pitched Guber the idea for Contact, who commissioned a development deal.[1] Sagan, along with wife Ann Druyan, wrote a 100+ page film treatment, finishing in November 1980.[3][4] Druyan explained, "Carl's and my dream was to write something that would be a fictional representation of what contact would actually be like, that would convey something of the true grandeur of the universe." They added the science and religion analogies as a metaphor of philosophical and intellectual interest in searching for the truth of both humanity and alien contact.[5]
Sagan incorporated Kip Thorne's study of wormhole space travel into the screenplay.[6] The characterization of Dr. Ellie Arroway was inspired by Dr. Jill Tarter, head of Project Phoenix of the SETI Institute; Jodie Foster researched the lead role by meeting her.[7] Tarter served as a consultant on the story, realistically portraying struggling careers of women scientists from the 1950s to 1970s. The writers debated whether Arroway should have a baby at the film's end.[8] Although Guber was impressed with Sagan and Druyan's treatment, he hired various screenwriters to rewrite the script. New characters were added, one of them a Native American park ranger-turned-astronaut.[1] Guber suggested that Arroway have an estranged teenage son, whom he believed would add more depth to the storyline. "Here was a woman consumed with the idea that there was something out there worth listening to," Guber said, "but the one thing she could never make contact with was her own child. To me, that's what the film had to be about."[1] Sagan and Druyan disagreed with Guber's idea and it was not incorporated into the storyline. In 1982, Guber took Contact to Warner Bros. Pictures and with the film laboring in development hell, Sagan started to turn his original idea into a novel, which was published by Simon & Schuster in September 1985. The film adaptation remained in development and Guber eventually vacated his position at Warner Bros. in 1989.[1]
Guber became the new president of Sony Pictures Entertainment and tried to purchase the film rights of Contact from Warners, but the studio refused. Coincidentally, in 1989, Obst was hired as a new executive at Warners and began to fast track the film, by hiring more writers.[1] Roland Joffé was eventually hired to direct,[9] using a screenplay by James V. Hart.[10] Joffé almost commenced pre-production before he dropped out[9] and Obst then hired Michael Goldenberg to rewrite the script, who finished his second draft[1] in late 1993. Goldenberg's second draft rekindled Warner Bros.' interest in Contact[9] and Robert Zemeckis was offered the chance to direct, but he turned down the opportunity[1] in favor of making a film based on the life of Harry Houdini.[11] "The first script [for Contact] I saw was great until the last page and a half," Zemeckis recalled. "And then it had the sky open up and these angelic aliens putting on a light show and I said, 'That's just not going to work.'"[1]
In December 1993, Warner Bros. hired George Miller to direct[9] and Contact commenced pre-production. Miller cast Jodie Foster in the lead role, approached Ralph Fiennes to play Palmer Joss and also considered casting Linda Hunt as the President of the United States. In addition to having aliens put on a laser lighting display around Earth, another version of the Goldenberg scripts had an alien wormhole swallow up the planet, transporting Earth to the center of the galaxy. Miller also asked Goldenberg to rewrite Contact in an attempt to portray the Pope as a key supporting character. Warner Bros. was hoping to have the film ready for release by Christmas 1996, but under Miller's direction pre-production lasted longer than expected.[1] The studio fired the director, blaming pushed-back start dates, budget concerns, and Miller's insistence that the script needed five more weeks of rewriting. Robert Zemeckis, who previously turned down the director's position, decided to accept the offer. Warner Bros. granted Zemeckis total artistic control and the right of final cut privilege.[1] The director cast Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss, who dropped out of the lead role in The Jackal to take the role in Contact.[12] Despite being diagnosed with myelodysplasia in 1994, Sagan continued to be involved in the production of the film. For the cast and main crew members, he conducted an academic conference that depicted a detailed history of astronomy.[1]
During the development of Contact, the production crew simultaneously watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for inspiration.[8]
Filming[edit source]



 Concept drawing of early NASA site idea
Principal photography for Contact began on September 24, 1996, and ended on February 28, 1997. The first shooting took place at the Very Large Array (VLA) near Socorro, New Mexico. "Shooting at the VLA was, of course, spectacular but also one of the most difficult aspects of our filming," producer Steve Starkey said. "It is a working facility, so in order for us to accomplish shots for the movie, we had to negotiate with the National Science Foundation for 'dish control' in order to move the dishes in the direction we needed to effect the most dramatic shot for the story."[6] After arduous first weeks of location shooting in New Mexico and Arizona, production for Contact returned to Los Angeles for five months' worth of location and sound stage shooting that used a total of nine soundstages at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, and Culver Studios. All together, the art department created more than 25 sets.[6]
In an attempt to create a sense of realism for the storyline, principal CNN news outlet commentators were scripted into Contact. More than 25 news reporters from CNN had roles in the film and the CNN programs Larry King Live and Crossfire were also included. Ann Druyan makes a cameo appearance as herself, debating Rob Lowe's character, Richard Rank, on Crossfire. In January 1997, a second unit was sent to Puerto Rico for one week at the Arecibo Observatory.
Other second unit work took place in Fiji and Newfoundland, Canada. Also essential to the production were a host of technical consultants from the SETI Institute, the California Institute of Technology, the VLA and a former White House staff member to consult on Washington D.C. and government protocol issues.[13] Sagan visited the set a number of times, where he also helped with last-minute rewrites. Filming was briefly delayed with the news of his death on December 20, 1996. Contact was dedicated in part to his legacy.[1]
Cinematographer Don Burgess shot the film in anamorphic format using Panavision cameras as well as using large format 65mm and VistaVision for special effects shots. The sound designers used Pro Tools software for the audio mixing, which was done at Skywalker Sound.[14]
Visual effects[edit source]



 The film's (second) Machine in operation at Hokkaidō, Japan
Designing Contact's visual effects sequences was a joint effort among eight separate VFX companies. This team included Sony Pictures Imageworks, Peter Jackson's Weta Digital, George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic, and Effects Associates. Weta Digital, in particular, was responsible for designing the wormhole sequence.[15] Jodie Foster admitted she had difficulty with blue screen technology because it was a first for the actress. "It was a blue room. Blue walls, blue roof. It was just blue, blue, blue," Foster explained. "And I was rotated on a Lazy Susan with the camera moving on a computerized arm. It was really tough."[1]
News footage of then-President Bill Clinton was digitally altered to make it appear as if he is speaking about alien contact. This was not the original plan for the film;[1] Zemeckis had initially approached Sidney Poitier to play the president, but the actor turned the role down in favor of The Jackal.[16] Shortly after Poitier's refusal, Zemeckis saw a NASA announcement in August 1996. "Clinton gave his Mars rock speech," the director explained, "and I swear to God it was like it was scripted for this movie. When he said the line 'We will continue to listen closely to what it has to say,' I almost died. I stood there with my mouth hanging open."[1]
One notable feature of Contact is its use of digital color correction. This approach helped solve continuity errors during the location shooting at the Very Large Array in New Mexico. "The weather killed us, so we were going back in and changing it enough so that the skies and colors and times of day all seem roughly the same," visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston commented.[17]
The opening scale view shot of the entire universe, lasting approximately three minutes, was inspired by the short documentary film Powers of Ten (1977). At the time, it was the longest continuous computer-generated effect for a live-action film, a distinction now held by the opening sequence from The Day After Tomorrow (2004).[18]
The decoding of the extraterrestrial message, with its architectural drawings of the machine, was created by Ken Ralston and Sony Pictures Imageworks. This is the sixth film collaboration between director Zemeckis and VFX supervisor Ralston. Imageworks created more than 350 visual effects shots, using a combination of model and miniature shots and digital computer work. On designing the Machine, Zemeckis explained that "The Machine in Sagan's novel was somewhat vague, which is fine for a book. In a movie, though, if you're going to build a giant physical structure of alien design, you have to make it believable." He continued that "it had to be huge, so that the audience would feel like it was bigger than man should be tinkering with. It had to look absolutely real."[6] The machine was then designed by concept artist Steve Burg, reusing a conceptual design he had originally created to appear as the "Time Displacement Device" in Terminator 2 in a scene that did not make the final cut.[19]
Early conceptual designs of the Pod itself were based, as it existed in the novel, on one of the primary shapes in geometry, a dodecahedron, or a twelve-sided figure. Eventually the Pod was modified to a spherical capsule that encases the traveler. Zemeckis and the production crew also made several visits to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, where officials allowed them access to sites off-limits to most visitors. Filmmakers were also brought onto Launch Complex 39 before the launch of the space shuttle.[6] There, they concentrated on the mechanics of the elevator and the gantry area and loading arm. The resulting photographs and research were incorporated into the design of the machine's surrounding supports and gantry. Once the concept met with the filmmakers' approval, physical construction began on the sets for the Pod itself, the interior of the elevator, and the gantry, which took almost four months to build. The rest of the effects were compiled digitally by Imageworks.[6]
The climactic scene depicting the mysterious beach near the galactic core where Arroway makes contact, in particular, called for major visual innovations. The goal was an idyllic seashore with a sky blazing with stars that might exist near the core of the galaxy. Ralston said that "the thought was that this beach would have a heightened reality. One that might make the everyday world seem like a vague daydream."[8] To keep the question alive whether any of it was real in Arroway's mind, elements such as ocean waves running in reverse and palm tree shadows swaying with sped-up motion were applied.[8]
The Hitler newsreel also required digital manipulation.[8]
Music[edit source]

Contact: Music from the Motion Picture

Soundtrack album by Alan Silvestri

Released
August 19, 1997
Label
Warner Bros. Records
The original score was composed by Alan Silvestri, most of which was released on August 19, 1997, by Warner Bros. Records.[20] The full score is approximately an hour long, 44 minutes of which is on the CD, including every major cue. The CD track entitled "Good to Go" features a slightly different opening—a brief brass motif that is not in the film—but all other cues are identical in orchestration to the mix in the film.
The Region 2 Special Edition DVD release contains a 5.1 isolated score track,[21] which presents the complete score (this feature, as with many isolated scores, is not mentioned in most product descriptions of the DVD).[22][23]

Contact: Music from the Motion Picture

No.
Title
Length

1. "Awful Waste of Space"   1:41
2. "Ellie's Bogey"   3:23
3. "The Primer"   6:19
4. "Really Confused"   1:18
5. "Test Run Bomber"   4:25
6. "Heart Attack"   1:29
7. "Media Event"   1:24
8. "Button Me Up"   1:18
9. "Good to Go"   5:11
10. "No Words"   1:42
11. "Small Moves"   5:35
12. "I Believe Her"   2:31
13. "Contact"   7:58
Total length:
 44:14 
Science and religion[edit source]
Contact often suggests that cultural conflicts between religion and science would be brought to the fore by the apparent contact with aliens that occurs in the film. A point of discussion is the existence of God, with several different positions being portrayed.[8] A description of an emotionally intense experience by Palmer Joss, which he describes as seeing God, is met by Arroway's suggestion that "some part of [him] needed to have it"—that it was a significant personal experience but indicative of nothing greater. Joss compares his certainty that God exists to Arroway's certainty that she loved her deceased father, despite her being unable to prove it.[8]
Contact depicts intense debate occurring as a result of the apparent contact with aliens. Many clips of well-known debate shows such as Crossfire and Larry King Live are shown, with participants discussing the implications of the message, asking whether it is proof of the existence of alien life or of God, and whether science is encroaching upon religious ground by, as one believer puts it, "talking to your god for you."[24] The head of a religious organization casts doubt on the morality of building the machine, noting: "We don't even know whether [the aliens] believe in God." The first machine is ultimately destroyed by a religious extremist, in the belief that building it was detrimental to humankind.[8]
Although the revelation at the end of the film that Arroway's recording device recorded approximately 18 hours of static is arguably conclusive proof of the fact of—if not the experience of—her "journey", several coincidences and indications throughout the film cast doubt on its authenticity. Director Robert Zemeckis indicated: "The point of the movie is for there always to be a certain amount of doubt [as to whether the aliens were real]."[24] These indications consist mostly of visual cues during the "journey" that echo Ellie's experiences earlier in the film (which Ellie believed to be the result of the aliens "downloading [her] thoughts and memories"), but the timing of the message's arrival and its eventual decoding are also highly coincidental: the message was first received shortly before Arroway and her team were to be ejected from the VLA facility and was successfully decoded only by S.R. Hadden (Arroway's only sponsor, who was close to death from cancer) after weeks of failed attempts by the team at the VLA.[24]
At the end of the film, Arroway is put into a position that she had traditionally viewed with skepticism and contempt: that of believing something with complete certainty, despite being unable to prove it in the face of not only widespread incredulity and skepticism (which she admits that as a scientist she would normally share) but also evidence apparently to the contrary.[24]
Zemeckis stated that he intended the message of the film to be that science and religion can coexist rather than being opposing camps,[24] as shown by the coupling of scientist Arroway with the religious Joss, as well as his acceptance that the "journey" indeed took place. This, and scattered references throughout the film, posit that science and religion are not nominally incompatible: one interviewer, after asking Arroway whether the construction of the machine—despite not knowing what will happen when it is activated—is too dangerous, suggests that it is being built on the "faith" that the alien designers, as Arroway puts it, "know what they're doing."[8]
Release[edit source]
Box office[edit source]
Contact had its premiere on July 1, 1997, at the Westwood Theater in Los Angeles, California.[25] The film was released in the United States on July 11, 1997, in 1,923 theaters, earning $20,584,908 in its opening weekend. Contact eventually grossed $100.92 million in the US and $70.2 million in foreign countries, reaching a worldwide total of $171.12 million.[26] The release of Contact in July 1997 rekindled public interest in Sagan's 1985 novel. The book remained on the The New York Times Best Seller list from July 27 to September 21, 1997.[27][28]
Home video[edit source]
With VHS release in early December 1997, Contact earned an additional $49 million in rental figures.[29] Warner Home Video released Contact on DVD later that month, containing three separate audio commentaries by director Robert Zemeckis and producer Steve Starkey, another by visual effects supervisors Ken Ralston and Stephen Rosenbaum, along with one by star Jodie Foster.[30] Contact was released on Blu-ray Disc on October 6, 2009.[31]
Critical reception[edit source]
Contact received a generally average-favorable response from critics.[32][33] On the basis of 62 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, 63% of critics enjoyed the film, with an average score of 6.8/10.[32] Metacritic calculated an average score of 62/100, based on 22 reviews.[33] Roger Ebert gave a largely positive review, believing that Contact was on par with Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) as Hollywood's most cinematic study of extraterrestrial life. "Movies like Contact help explain why movies like Independence Day leave me feeling empty and unsatisfied," Ebert commented.[34] On December 21, 2011, Ebert added Contact to his Great Movies collection.[35]
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film carried a more philosophical portrait of the science fiction genre than did other films, but he believed that Contact still managed "to satisfy the cravings of the general public who simply want to be entertained," he said.[36] Internet reviewer James Berardinelli called Contact "one of 1997's finest motion pictures, and is a forceful reminder that Hollywood is still capable of making magic." Berardinelli also felt that the film was on par with Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to be one of the greatest science fiction films ever made.[37] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle largely enjoyed the first 90 minutes of Contact but felt that director Robert Zemeckis was too obsessed with visual effects rather than cohesive storytelling for the pivotal climax.[38] Rita Kempley, writing in The Washington Post, gave a largely negative review: she did not like the film's main premise, which Kempley described as "a preachy debate between sanctity and science."[39]
Awards[edit source]
Sound designers Randy Thom, Tom Johnson, Dennis S. Sands and William B. Kaplan were nominated for the Academy Award for Sound but lost to Titanic.[40][41] Jodie Foster was nominated the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama, but Judi Dench was awarded the category for her work in Mrs. Brown.[42] Contact won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation over The Fifth Element, Gattaca, Men in Black and Starship Troopers.[43] The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films awarded individual awards to Jodie Foster (Best Actress) and Jena Malone (Best Performance by a Younger Actor) at the 24th Saturn Awards. Director Robert Zemeckis, writers James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg, film score composer Alan Silvestri and the visual effects supervisors also received Saturn Award nominations. Contact was nominated the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, but lost to Men in Black.[44]
American Film Institute listsAFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated[45]
AFI's 10 Top 10 – Nominated Science Fiction Film[46]
In popular culture[edit source]
South Park's creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are well known for poking fun at the movie. In the episode "Tom's Rhinoplasty" where Mr. Garrison is waking up from his nose job operation, the doctor asks whether he has seen the movie. Garrison, in response, vomits in disgust of the movie. The film was also referred to in the episode "Cancelled".[47] It has also been briefly mentioned in the animated series Family Guy on 2 occasions: in "Three Kings" and "Da Boom".
Controversies[edit source]
Bill Clinton[edit source]
A meteorite was found in Antarctica in 1984, thought to be from Mars. Twelve years later, a paper by a NASA scientist was published in the journal, Science, proposing that the meteorite might contain evidence for microscopic fossils of Martian bacteria (later, a disputed interpretation).[48][49] The announcement made headlines around the world and the following day, on 7 August 1996, the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, made remarks about the news at a press conference that were, in places, sufficiently generic in nature to allow fragments of his videotaped statement to be included in Contact, implying that Clinton was speaking about contact with extraterrestrial life, congruent with the film's story:[50]
“ Good afternoon. I'm glad to be joined by my science and technology adviser ...[words cut by film editors]... This is the product of years of exploration ...[words cut]... by some of the world's most distinguished scientists. Like all discoveries, this one will and should continue to be reviewed, examined, and scrutinized. It must be confirmed by other scientists. But clearly, the fact that something of this magnitude is being explored is another vindication ...[film scene performed over recording, with dialogue obscuring Clinton's remarks and creating a gap]... If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our universe that science has ever uncovered. Its implications are as far reaching and awe inspiring as can be imagined. Even as it promises answers to some of our oldest questions, it poses still others even more fundamental. We will continue to listen closely to what it has to say as we continue the search for answers and for knowledge that is as old as humanity itself but essential to our people's future. Thank you.[51] ”
Later in the film, a separate fragment of generic remarks by President Clinton, speaking about Saddam Hussein and Iraq at a different press conference in October 1994, was lifted out of context and inserted into Contact:
“ I would encourage you not to inflame this situation beyond the facts. Let us deal with this on the facts. We are monitoring what has actually happened.[52] ”
On July 14, 1997, three days after Contact's opening day release in the United States, Warner Bros. received a letter from White House Counsel Charles Ruff protesting against the use of Clinton's digitally-composited appearance. The letter made no demands to director Robert Zemeckis or Warner Bros. in terms of pulling release prints, film trailers or other marketing, but called the duration and manner of Clinton's appearance "inappropriate". No legal action was planned; the White House Counsel simply wanted to send a message to Hollywood to avoid unauthorized uses of the President's image. Zemeckis was reminded that official White House policy "prohibits the use of the President in any way ... (that) implies a direct ... connection between the President and a commercial product or service."[53]
A Warner Bros. spokeswoman explained that "we feel we have been completely frank and upfront with the White House on this issue. They saw scripts, they were notified when the film was completed, they were sent a print well in advance of the film's July 11 opening, and we have confirmation that a print was received there July 2." However, Warner Bros. did concede that they never pursued or received formal release from the White House for the use of Clinton's image. While the Counsel commented that parody and satire are protected under the First Amendment, press secretary Mike McCurry believed that "there is a difference when the President's image, which is his alone to control, is used in a way that would lead the viewer to believe he has said something he really didn't say."[53]
CNN[edit source]
Shortly after the White House's complaint, CNN chairman, president, and CEO Tom Johnson announced he believed that in hindsight it was a mistake to allow 13 members of CNN's on-air staff (including Larry King and Bernard Shaw) to appear in the film, even though both CNN and Warner Bros. are owned by Time Warner. Johnson added that, for Contact, the CNN presence "creates the impression that we're manipulated by Time Warner, and it blurs the line." CNN then changed their policies for future films, which now requires potential appearances to be cleared through their ethics group.[53]
Lawsuits[edit source]
Director George Miller, who had developed Contact with Warner Bros. before Zemeckis' hiring, unsuccessfully sued the studio over breach of contract policies.[1]
During the filming of Contact on December 28, 1996, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola filed a lawsuit against Carl Sagan and Warner Bros. Sagan had died the previous week.[54][55] Coppola claimed that Sagan's novel was based on a story the pair had developed for a television special[56] back in 1975,[54] titled First Contact. Under their development agreement,[56] Coppola and Sagan were to split proceeds from the project, as well as from any novel Sagan would write, with American Zoetrope and Children's Television Workshop Productions. The TV program was never produced, but in 1985, Simon & Schuster published Contact and Warner Bros moved forward with development of a film adaptation. Coppola sought at least $250,000 in compensatory damages and an injunction against production or distribution of the film.[54]
In February 1998, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ricardo Torres dismissed Coppola's claim. Although Torres agreed that Sagan violated some terms of the contract, he explained that Coppola waited too long to file his lawsuit, and that the contract might not be enforceable as it was written. Coppola then appealed his suit,[56] taking it to The California Courts of Appeal (CCA). In April 2000, the CCA dismissed his suit, finding that Coppola’s claims were barred because they were brought too late. The court noted that it was not until 1994 that the filmmaker thought about suing over Contact.[55]
NASA[edit source]
The scene where the NASA scientists give Arroway the "cyanide pill" caused some controversy during production and also when the film came out. Gerald D. Griffin, the film's NASA advisor, insisted that NASA has never given any astronaut a cyanide pill "just in case," and that if an astronaut truly wished to commit suicide in space, all he or she would have to do is cut off their oxygen supply.[24] However, Carl Sagan insisted that NASA did indeed give out cyanide pills and they did it for every mission an astronaut has ever flown. Zemeckis said that because of the two radically different assertions, the truth is unknown, but he left the suicide pill scene in the movie as it seemed more suspenseful that way and it was also in line with Sagan's beliefs and vision of the film.[24]
See also[edit source]
List of films featuring space stations
References[edit source]
1.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Benjamin Svetkey (1997-07-18). "Making Contact". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
2.Jump up ^ Bryan P. Stone (2000). Faith and Film: Theological Themes at the Cinema. Chalice Press. p. 20.
3.Jump up ^ Carl Sagan (October 1985). Contact: A Novel. New York City: Simon & Schuster. p. 432. ISBN 0-671-43400-4.
4.Jump up ^ "Ann Druyan". Warner Bros. Archived from the original on 2000-10-18. Retrieved 2009-02-01. "Carl and I wrote the more than 100-page treatment in November of 1980..."
5.Jump up ^ "About the production". Warner Bros. Archived from the original on 2001-05-17. Retrieved 2009-01-30.
6.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Contact – High Technology Lends a Hand/Science of the Soundstage". Warner Bros. Archived from the original on 2001-03-04. Retrieved 2009-01-30.
7.Jump up ^ William J. Broad (1998-09-29). "Astronomers Revive Scan of the Heavens for Signs of Life". The New York Times. |accessdate= requires |url= (help)
8.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i Norman Kagan (2003). "Contact". The Cinema of Robert Zemeckis. Lanham, Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishing. pp. 159–181. ISBN 0-87833-293-6.
9.^ Jump up to: a b c d John Evan Frook (1993-12-16). "WB makes 'Contact'". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
10.Jump up ^ Bernard Weinraub (1997-07-06). "Using a Big Budget To Ask Big Questions". The New York Times. |accessdate= requires |url= (help)
11.Jump up ^ Michael Fleming (1997-07-10). "Verhoeven eyes 'Houdini'". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
12.Jump up ^ Michael Fleming (1996-12-16). "McConaughey inks with WB". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
13.Jump up ^ "Creating Strange New Worlds". Warner Bros. Retrieved 2009-01-30.[dead link]
14.Jump up ^ Richard Buskin. "Making Contact". FilmSound.org. Retrieved 2009-01-30.
15.Jump up ^ Ian Pryor (2003). Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of the Rings. New York City: Thomas Dunne Books. p. 206. ISBN 0-312-32294-1.
16.Jump up ^ Army Archerd (1996-08-16). "Two 'Titanics' on collision course". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
17.Jump up ^ Michael Mallory (1997-05-08). "Invisible tricks of the trade". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-28.
18.Jump up ^ Tim Dirks. "Milestones in Film History: Greatest Visual and Special Effects and Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) - Part 16". Filmsite.org. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
19.Jump up ^ "Steve Burg homepage". Steve Burg. Retrieved 2009-09-09.
20.Jump up ^ Amazon.com: Contact: Music From The Motion Picture: Alan Silvestri: Music
21.Jump up ^ DVD Music - Soundtrack.Net
22.Jump up ^ Contact (Special Edition) [1997] [DVD]: Amazon.co.uk: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Jena Malone, David Morse, Geoffrey Blake, William Fic...
23.Jump up ^ http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/1871/Contact-Special-Edition/Product.html
24.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey, DVD audio commentary, 1997, Warner Home Video
25.Jump up ^ Anita M. Busch (1997-07-03). "'Contact's' starry night". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
26.Jump up ^ "Contact". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
27.Jump up ^ "Paperback Best Seller: July 27, 1997". The New York Times. 1997-07-27. Retrieved 2009-01-28.
28.Jump up ^ "Paperback Best Sellers: September 21, 1997". The New York Times. 1997-09-21. Retrieved 2009-01-28.
29.Jump up ^ Staff (1997-12-16). "Rental champs: Rate of return". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
30.Jump up ^ "Contact (1997)". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
31.Jump up ^ http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Contact-Blu-ray/5891/
32.^ Jump up to: a b "Contact". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2010-01-06.
33.^ Jump up to: a b "Contact (1997): Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
34.Jump up ^ Roger Ebert (1997-07-11). "Contact". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
35.Jump up ^ "Contact (1997)". Chicago Sun-Times.
36.Jump up ^ Kenneth Turan (1997-07-11). "Foster Passes Hearing Test". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 20, 2007. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
37.Jump up ^ James Berardinelli. "Contact". ReelViews.net. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
38.Jump up ^ Mick LaSalle (1997-07-11). "Anybody There?". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
39.Jump up ^ Rita Kempley (1997-07-11). "Contact". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
40.Jump up ^ "The 70th Academy Awards (1998) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-11-19.
41.Jump up ^ "Contact". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2009-01-30.
42.Jump up ^ "Contact". Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved 2009-01-30.
43.Jump up ^ "1998 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. Retrieved 2009-01-30.
44.Jump up ^ "Past Saturn Awards". Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. Retrieved 2009-01-30.
45.Jump up ^ AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills Nominees
46.Jump up ^ AFI's 10 Top 10 Ballot
47.Jump up ^ Tom's Rhinoplasty (Season 1, Episode 11) - Full Episode Player - South Park Studios
48.Jump up ^ Crenson, Matt (2006-08-06). "After 10 years, few believe life on Mars". Associated Press (on usatoday.com]). Retrieved 2009-12-06.
49.Jump up ^ McKay, David S.; et al. (1996). "Search for Past Life on Mars: Possible Relic Biogenic Activity in Martian Meteorite ALH84001". Science 273 (5277): 924–930. Bibcode:1996Sci...273..924M. doi:10.1126/science.273.5277.924. PMID 8688069.
50.Jump up ^ The real Adolf Hitler and the real Bill Clinton in Contact (Video from Contact, and commentary) Critical Commons. Retrieved: 2013-07-21.
51.Jump up ^ Remarks on the Possible Discovery of Life on Mars and an Exchange With Reporters William J. Clinton at The American Presidency Project, 1996-08-07.
52.Jump up ^ The President's News Conference William J. Clinton at The American Presidency Project, 1994-10-07.
53.^ Jump up to: a b c Staff (1997-07-15). "Cameo crisis on 'Contact'". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
54.^ Jump up to: a b c Staff (1996-12-30). "Zoetrope sues over 'Contact'". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
55.^ Jump up to: a b Janet Shprintz (2000-02-13). "Coppola loses 'Contact'". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-28.
56.^ Jump up to: a b c Paul Karon (1998-02-17). "Coppola's 'Contact' claim is dismissed". Variety. Retrieved 2009-01-28.
Further reading[edit source]
Keay Davidson (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life. New York City: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-25286-7.
External links[edit source]
 Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Contact (film)
Contact at the Internet Movie Database
Contact at AllRovi
Contact at Rotten Tomatoes
Contact at Box Office Mojo
Cinematography analysis
Visual effects analysis
September 8, 1995 screenplay
In-depth analysis of the realism of the film and novel
SETI Institute - Contact the Movie
On Location: Revisiting Contact - a Tribute to Carl Sagan

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Carl Sagan



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Carl Sagan



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Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation


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