WALL-E is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction romantic comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by 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, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy and Sigourney Weaver, with Fred Willard in the film's (and Pixar's) only prominent live-action role. The overall ninth feature film produced by the company, WALL-E follows a solitary robot on a future, uninhabitable, deserted Earth, left to clean up garbage. However, he is visited by a probe sent by the starship Axiom, a robot called EVE, with whom he falls in love and pursues across the galaxy.
WALL-E was released in the United States on June 27, 2008. The film was critically praised for its animation, story, voice acting, characters, visuals, score, use of minimal dialogue, and scenes of romance. It was also commercially successful, grossing $521.3 million worldwide over a $180 million budget. It won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation, the final Nebula Award for Best Script, the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with five nominations. It is considered by many critics as the best film of 2008. The film topped Time's list of the "Best Movies of the Decade", and in 2016 was voted 29th among 100 films considered the best of the 21st century by 117 film critics from around the world.
In the 29th century, rampant consumerism and environmental neglect have turned Earth into a garbage-strewn wasteland; humanity is nowhere to be found and has been evacuated by the megacorporation Buy-n-Large (BnL) on giant starliners seven centuries earlier. Of all the Waste Allocation Load-Lifter: Earth-class (WALL-E) robots left by BnL to clean up, only one remains operational. One day, WALL-E's routine of compressing trash and collecting interesting objects is broken by the arrival of an unmanned probe carrying an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) robot, sent to scan the planet for human-sustainable life. WALL-E is smitten by the sleek, otherworldly robot, and the two begin to connect until EVE goes into standby when WALL-E shows her his most recent find: a living seedling. The probe then collects EVE and the plant, and — with WALL-E clinging on — returns to its mothership, the starliner Axiom.
In the centuries since the Axiom left Earth, its passengers have degenerated into helpless corpulence due to laziness and microgravity, their every whim catered to by machinery; even the captain, B. McCrea, is used to sitting back while his robotic steering wheel AUTO flies the ship. McCrea is unprepared to receive the positive probe response, but discovers that placing the plant in the ship's Holo-Detector will trigger a hyperjump back to Earth so humanity can begin recolonization. Upon inspecting EVE's storage compartment, however, the plant is missing, and EVE blames WALL-E for its disappearance.
EVE is deemed faulty and taken to Diagnostics. Mistaking the process for torture, WALL-E intervenes, causing him and EVE to be designated as rogues. Frustrated, EVE tries to send WALL-E home in an escape pod, but they witness AUTO's gopherbot GO-4 stowing the stolen plant in a pod set to self-destruct. WALL-E saves 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 go back. However, AUTO is revealed to be loyal only to his own secret no-return directive A113 — issued after BnL incorrectly concluded centuries ago that the planet could not be saved — even when McCrea countermands it; AUTO mutinies with GO-4 as a result, electrocuting and frying WALL-E's circuit board, putting EVE into standby, throwing them both down the garbage chute, and locking McCrea in his quarters. EVE and WALL-E are nearly ejected into space along with the ship's trash but are saved by a Microbe Obliterator robot named M-O, who has been following WALL-E's dirt trail across the ship. As humans and robots help in securing the plant, McCrea and AUTO fight for control, resulting in WALL-E being crushed in the Holo-Detector when he tries to keep it open; McCrea eventually overpowers and deactivates AUTO, and the plant is inserted into the Holo-Detector, initiating 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 inhabitants of the Axiom take their first steps on Earth. During the credits, humans and robots turn the ravaged planet into a paradise, and the plant is shown to have grown into a mighty tree.
Casting
- Ben Burtt as WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-Class), the title character. As a compactor robot who has achieved sentience, he is the only one 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 named Hal and music playing from his on-board recorder), he is distracted by his curiosity, collecting trinkets of interest from amongst the garbage. 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. He ignores items valued by humans, throwing away a diamond ring but keeping the ring box. He neatly organizes his finds at the home he has created, where he watches a video cassette of Hello, Dolly! via an iPod viewed through a large Fresnel lens, mimicking the dance sequences.
- Burtt also voices M-O (Microbe-Obliterator), a tiny, obsessive cleaning robot with a brush on his arms. He spends the majority of his appearances cleaning up the dirt trail WALL-E leaves behind.
- Elissa Knight as EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator; which WALL-E and M-O pronounce Eva), a sleek probe robot whose directive is to verify that planets can have human habitability; she provides plant life as evidence specimens. 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 — though a mere figurehead — of the Axiom. 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, upon discovering that Earth had become too toxic to support life, the BnL corporation soon abandoned the cleanup and recolonization, with Forthright issuing to all starliner autopilots directive A113 which prevents anyone from returning to Earth, and subsequently dissolved. Forthright is the first (and so far the only) live-action character with a speaking role in any Pixar film.
- MacInTalk, the text-to-speech program for the Apple Macintosh computers, was used for the voice of AUTO, the artificial intelligence that is the Axiom's robotic steering wheel and autopilot, and handles all true command functions of the ship. AUTO is loyal only to directive A113, to the point of preventing even the captain from deviating from it; he is consequently the only computer not influenced by WALL-E.
- 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, most notably 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 as they observe him and EVE "dancing in space".
- Sigourney Weaver as the Axiom's computer. Stanton joked about the role with Weaver, saying, "You realize you get to be 'Mother' now?" referring to the name of the ship's computer in the film Alien, which also starred Weaver.
