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Wall-E
Interview with John Lasseter and Jeff Garlin
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Pedigree: Pixar produces, Finding Nemo's Andrew Stanton directs. Estimated budget: $120 million. Predicted box office: $250 million (US gross), $450 million (worldwide).
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If all Pixar had revealed about Wall-E was the title, in ten-point Arial font on a white background, we'd still be jigging in our seats with unquenchable excitement. The studio may, debatably, have stumbled with Cars, but Ratatouille triumphantly demonstrated that its studio is still the world's most consistent purveyor of utter genius. And even in such company, Wall-E's pedigree is considerable: it's written and directed by Andrew Stanton, who also made Finding Nemo, still the studio's highest-grossing success, and he has the full weight of Pixar behind him to bring its most ambitious film yet to the screen.
Ambitious? You better believe it. Every one of Pixar's films to date has pushed the limits of animation technology a few more notches, but in this case non-animated characters are mixed in with the cutesy robots, so the standards have to be high enough for that to work. Fred Willard, for example, appears on a TV monitor as Shelby Forthright, CEO of a corporation called Buy N Large that has essentially taken over the world 700 years in the future and left it a garbage-covered dump that poor Wall-E labours alone to clean.
But then, historically the animation has never been a problem - even Cars' detractors will admit it's stunningly beautiful. It's the story that has to work, and for Wall-E that could be a tougher sell than usual. The main characters - the eponymous 'bot (which stands for: Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-class) and Eve, the automaton object of his affections - don't speak at all. They just beep, although Pixar did hire Ben Burtt, the legendary Star Wars sound editor, to create beeps that were as expressive and voice-like as possible. Burtt jokingly calls this, "R2-D2: The Movie".
Actor Jeff 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' Garlin, who plays the captain of a starliner ship, said, "I'm one of the only characters that speak. Not one of them: I am the only animated character that speaks." That means the claims that this is, for part of its running time at least, practically a silent movie are perhaps not exaggerated, though Pixar's "lucky charm", John Ratzenberger, will have some sort of role, just to maintain his record.
The future is the logical next frontier for Pixar - as John Lasseter acknowledges: "It's Pixar's first foray into the science-fiction world (except for short, Lifted). It's unlike anything you've ever seen." It's also the studio's first film with a slightly political message - it's rampant consumerism and laziness that has transformed the planet into a dump and humanity into a very large shadow of its former self. But Lasseter assures us it won't be preachy. "It's a very funny, very emotional story. It's really great."
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