WALL-E

WALL-E (stylized with an interpunct as *WALL·E*) is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed and co-written by Andrew Stanton, produced by Jim Morris, and co-written by Jim Reardon. It stars the voices of Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy and Sigourney Weaver, and was the overall ninth feature film produced by the company. It follows a trash compactor robot in a deserted world, left to clean a largely abandoned city. However, he is visited by a probe sent by the *Axiom* ship, whom he falls in love with and pursues across the galaxy.

## Plot

In 2805, Earth is abandoned and covered in garbage, its population having been evacuated by megacorporation Buy-N-Large (BnL) on giant starliners 700 years earlier. BnL has left behind WALL-E robot trash compactors to clean up; however, all have since stopped functioning, except one unit who has gained sentience and is scavenging parts from other units to remain active. One day, WALL-E discovers a healthy seedling, which he returns to his home. Later, an unmanned spaceship lands and deploys an EVE probe to scan the planet. WALL-E is infatuated with EVE, who is initially hostile but gradually befriends him. When WALL-E brings EVE to his trailer and shows her the plant, however, she suddenly takes the plant and goes into standby mode. WALL-E, confused, unsuccessfully tries to reactivate her. The ship then returns to collect EVE, and with WALL-E clinging on, returns to its mothership, the starliner *Axiom*.

The *Axiom*'s passengers have become obese and feeble due to microgravity and reliance on an automated lifestyle, including the ship's current captain, McCrea, who leaves the ship under the control of the robotic autopilot, AUTO. EVE is taken to the bridge, with WALL-E tagging along. McCrea is unprepared for a positive probe response, but learns that placing EVE's plant in the ship's Holo-Detector for verification will trigger a hyperjump back to Earth so humanity can recolonize it. The plant proves to be missing from EVE's storage compartment, though, and she blames WALL-E for its disappearance.

With the plant missing, EVE is deemed faulty and taken to Diagnostics. WALL-E misinterprets the procedure as torture, and in intervening accidentally frees a group of malfunctioning robots and causes both EVE and himself to be designated as rogue robots. Frustrated, EVE takes WALL-E to an escape pod to send him home, but they are interrupted when GO-4 arrives with the plant, having stolen it from EVE on AUTO's orders. GO-4 places the plant in an escape pod and sets it to self-destruct, but WALL-E enters just before it is jettisoned. WALL-E escapes, saving the plant, and he and EVE reconcile and celebrate with a dance in space around the *Axiom*.

EVE brings the plant back to McCrea, who watches EVE's recordings of Earth and concludes that they have to return. However, AUTO refuses, revealing his own secret no-return directive A113, issued to BnL autopilots after the corporation concluded in 2110 that the planet could not be saved. AUTO mutinies, electrocuting WALL-E and shutting EVE down, and throwing them both down the garbage chute before confining the captain to his headquarters. EVE automatically reboots herself and helps WALL-E bring the plant to the ship's Holo-Detector chamber; AUTO tries to close the chamber, crushing WALL-E as he struggles to keep it open. Seeing WALL-E's sacrifice, McCrea successfully deactivates AUTO while EVE inserts the plant to activate the hyperjump.

Arriving back on Earth, EVE repairs WALL-E, but finds that his memory has been reset and his personality is gone. Heartbroken, EVE gives WALL-E a farewell kiss, which sparks his memory and restores his original personality. WALL-E and EVE reunite as the humans and robots of the *Axiom* begin to restore Earth and its environment. During the credits, scenes of the crew learning to farm, fish, and build are shown in various art styles, with the implication being that the earth is turned into a paradise over several generations.

## Cast

* Ben Burtt as WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-Class),[8] the title character. WALL-E, a robot who has achieved sentience, and 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. 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, Zippos, disposable cups filled with plastic cutlery and a golden trophy at his home where he examines and categorizes his finds while throwing away things like a diamond ring, and watching a video cassette of *Hello, Dolly!* via an iPod viewed through a large Fresnel lens.
	+ Burtt is also credited for the voice of M-O (Microbe-Obliterator), a tiny, obsessively clean maintenance cleanerbot with rollers for arms who keeps the *Axiom* clean.
* Elissa Knight as EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator),[8] 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 "quasar ion cannon" in her arm, which she is quick to use.
* Jeff Garlin as Captain B. McCrea, the commanding officer of the *Axiom*. He is merely a figurehead, with the ship's autopilot handling all true command functions. He is credited simply as "Captain" and his name is only seen on a wall depicting portraits of all the ship's captains.
* Fred Willard as Shelby Forthright, the CEO of the Buy n Large Corporation and the only major live-action character, shown only in videos recorded around the time of the *Axiom*'s initial launch in the early 22nd century. Constantly optimistic, Forthright proposed the plan to evacuate Earth's population to space, then clean up the planet so they could return within five years. However, the corporation soon abandoned the cleanup and recolonization, believing that Earth had become too toxic to support life. Forthright is the first live-action character with a speaking role in any Pixar film.
* 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?"[9][10] referring to the name of the ship's computer in the film *Alien*, which also starred Weaver.[10]
* MacInTalk, the text-to-speech program for the Apple Macintosh computers, was used for the voice of AUTO, the rogue artificial intelligence autopilot built into the ship. Unlike other robots in the film, AUTO is not influenced by WALL-E, but instead follows directive A113, which is to prevent the *Axiom* and the humans from returning to Earth because of the toxicity, and it works to prevent anyone from deviating from it.

## Critical Response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 253 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Wall-E's stellar visuals testify once again to Pixar's ingenuity, while its charming star will captivate younger viewers -- and its timely story offers thought-provoking subtext." [83] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 95 based on 39 representing "universal acclaim".[84] 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 10 lists, out of 286 different critics lists surveyed, the most mentions on a Top 10 list of any film released in 2008.[85]