12th Feb: A new policy is being put in place for TRS threads: Make your case that the name/page is broken in the Opening Post, or the thread will be nuked immediately. See Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names for what "Make your case" means.
5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here
Pixar's 9th film is a Science Fiction love story.Around seven hundred years in the future, humans abandon the now-inhospitable Earth so it can be cleaned up by a small army of "Waste Allocation Load Lifter" robots (WALL-Es - the E stands for Earth) whilst they enjoy a five-year vacation cruise in space. The plan doesn't really work; seven centuries later, the last of those robots to still be running — the titular WALL-E — is still collecting junk and living with his pet cockroach. One day, WALL-E is going about his business as usual when a spaceship carrying a much more modern robot arrives to drop her off. Her name is EVE, and WALL-E is smitten at first sight. When the ship comes back and picks her up, he stows away. We won't spoil the rest — but to say the least, a fantastic adventure ensues.Oh, and it's got awesomeCGI.For information about the DVD short, BURN-E, check the Pixar Shorts page.
This film includes examples of:
Acme Products — BnL makes everything humanity uses (and makes it to last, apparently).
A BnL logo appears after the Disney/Pixar logos in the ending credits, hinting that the film could very well be one of their products as well.
Advert Overloaded Future: BnL adverts are everywhere, from the screens on the dead Earth to the nurseries on the Axiom. And, as mentioned abouve, they own and license north. There also appears to be an ad in the Sea of Tranquility. You know, the site of the first Moon landing.
A.I. Is a Crapshoot — Auto the autopilot program. Averted with ... well, every other robot in the movie. Though outside of the main robot cast, most of the other robots are mostly content with doing their job and so don't really display much personality.
Its not so much that Auto is crazy. He is following orders to the letter, as that last order is what drives him to keep them all in space. He's just doing his job like the rest of them.
The robots in the repair ward however... most of them are crazy and some are violent.
All Animals Are Dogs — A cockroach is made adorable. WALL-E even commands it to sit in one scene. It doesn't work. Though he does it a second time and it DOES work. For the rest of the film.
A little more information is covered on the DVD. For example, Buy N Large started out as two companies. The BUY part sold frozen yogurts. The LARGE part sold Tall and Large clothing. They combined forces after realizing eating one made you need to buy the other.
Apocalypse How — Partially subverted. Earth appears to be barren at the start of the film, but in reality, the humans simply left the planet. Class 1, though the evacuation of humans makes it a technical Class 4.
Artificial Gravity — It's mentioned that the Axiom's artificial gravity is weaker than the Earth's, which caused the humans to lose bone mass (the excessive blubber, though, was obviously the result of them lounging on flying couches for 7 centuries).
"We have a jogging track?" -The Captain, upon listening to the instructional video on how to return to Earth.
Art Shift — The humans of the past, such as the BnL CEO, Shelby Forthworth, are live-action. The humans of the future are computer-generated. Word Of God is that redoing all the "Hello Dolly" scenes in CGI would've been too much trouble, so they just went with this route. This is later lampshaded in the scene of the port-raits of the various Axiom captains, which shows the captains shifting from photo-realistic to cartoonish over time.
The credits also use this trope, showing a series of vignettes in progressively more recent artistic styles, going from cave-paintings and hieroglyphics to straight-up imitations of Seurat and Van Gogh. This is to show how humans relearned the skills they had lost on the Axiom, such as artistry. And then? It goes to not-quite 8-bit sprites.
The 8-bit sprites could be how the robots remember the story - the sequence of events that awakened them to self awareness would probably be very special to them, and what's one way an intelligent computer could record historical events?
Alternately ... the 8-bit sprites would be the next art style.
Which means that the humans would have re-discovered technology and could be heading down the same path as before. This turns into a huge mind screw when you start to wonder how many times the human race has failed before....
Astronomic Zoom — Out there, there's a world outside of Yonkers...
Butt Monkey — M-O, unintentionally caused by WALL-E. WALL-E himself could count as well, especially in the first half of the movie.
Came Back Wrong — WALL-E after being repaired. He gets better.
Character Development — EVE learns to embrace her "defects" by the end of the film. While she had sentience at the beginning, she was forced to keep it hidden because of her directive. Her voice also evolves into something more feminine and emotional when it was originally robotic and distant. There's a very interesting interpretation of her emotional development here.
Also, upon planetfall she is somewhat trigger-happy, blasting anything with her Arm Cannon if it offers the slightest sign of threat to herself. By the end of the movie she uses it only to help or defend others.
Chatty Hairdresser — Any of the PR-Ts (beautician robot). Even if the person they're working on is silent, or asleep.
Chekhov's Gun — The plant, the tape, the parts replacement/cannibalization, the lighter, the fire extinguisher, heck, even the lawn gnomes, somewhat. Andrew Stanton even talks about the concept of this trope, without naming it, during the DVD Commentary.
The Axiom's docking port, which WALL-E rolls past at the very beginning and onto which the Axiom lands at the very end. Stanton quotes Chekhov directly in the commentary when mentioning it.
When Auto makes his first appearance and scans EVE, A113 appears over his eye. Additionally, WALL-E uses laser to cut open a wall and find the plant. He later uses this laser to break free in the Repair Ward. For one more, when the Captain is waking up, he accidentally hits WALL-E instead of his alarm clock, and it starts playing music from Hello Dolly. He later hears the same song while watching EVE's video footage of Earth, and this starts a short chain of events that motivates him to return to Earth.
FOREIGN CONTAMINANT. At first, it causes M-O much consternation as WALL-E leaves a trail of it throughout the Axiom. But in the end, it allows M-O to instantly spot the plant, a proverbial needle in a haystack, amongst the commotion near the end of the movie.
Also subverted, in that Wall-E never ends up using the wedding ring box. (Which seems like an obvious way to go for a romance.)
Chekhov's Gunman — Not only are Shelby Forthright and Auto both shown in the ad for the Axiom cruise, but so are most of the bots WALL-E winds up meeting in the repair ward.
There's also M-O, who at first seems like comic relief, but stops WALL-E and EVE from getting thrown out the garbage airlock, and recovers the plant later.
Chekhov's Skill — WALL-E using a fire extinguisher to jet-propel himself.
Also, WALL-E swapping his worn-out treads with newer ones, showing he doesn't have a problem scavenging for parts to repair himself with. First referenced when he was knocked into the wall by EVE, which transfers the skill to her, so she can bring it up later on her own.
Not to mention the electric power of EVE's kiss is demonstrated in the space dancing sequence.
M-O's ability to identify "foreign contaminants" lets him find the plant easily in a crowd of people.
The Collector of the Strange — WALL-E keeps a wide assortment of random trinkets that catch his fancy. The items he collects don't seem to have any particular theme.
They all tend toward the "interesting," though. Things he wouldn't interact with every day, things that aren't usually considered trash. Rubik's cubes, shoes, cutlery, other things like that.
Although, in this instance, "Interesting" is a definition we never see, as it's entirely without pattern within WALL-E's head (See when he finds the diamond ring, and finds theringboxmore interesting).
That one's not that hard to comprehend if you think about it. WALL-E has no concept of value or wealth, so while the ring might just be some sparkly thing, the box would be infinitely more interesting to him (since it opens, closes, and makes a clicking noise when it shuts) once he got done giving the ring a once-over. Most of the stuff he finds interesting would probably be the sort of thing you'd find a young child collecting before they pick up on concepts like money and value.
Also, diamond and gold in a relatively pure form is something unextraordinary (it's a rock that had value because we give it value) where as the ring box demonstrates skill and intelligence. Those are things Wall-e seems to enjoy.
Also humans who switch their clothing from blue back to red are the ones who have been "awakened." See Shout Out.
Comic Book Adaptation — A prequel series by Boom! Studios following WALL-E's exploits as he collects his various trinkets while his friends around him gradually begin to all die out.
Computer Voice — The filmmakers deliberately sought out Sigourney Weaver to voice the Axiom's computer as a Shout Out to Alien
Context Sensitive Button — The amount of damage EVE's Arm Cannon does varies, mostly in inverse proportion to the distance of the target. In one scene, she fires at an electromagnet holding her, which only deactivates it, then immediately fires at the ship below, causing an enormous explosion.
Convection Schmonvection — Well, technically 'no radiant heat'. WALL-E has no problem on the outside of a ship while it's buzzing the sun. In fact, he just takes the opportunity to charge his solar-cells pretty much instantly. He apparently was able to endure very high temperatures as evidenced by when EVE's ship lands on top of him.
Corrupt Corporate Executive — The BnL CEO, especially once it's revealed that he ordered all the autopilots to never return to Earth, and to never tell anyone about said order.
Earth was completely uninhabitable, and he had no reason to believe that it would ever be able to support life again.
Forthright didn't even have to make a secret conspiracy of it, but he did anyway, to keep the Muggles placated.
Let's face it, almost everybody in charge of BnL during most of its history would count, considering how epically they messed up the planet. As a point in their favor, though, they also built a massive fleet of spacecraft to shuttle mankind off-world and accommodate their every need and whim indefinitely, all presumably on the company's dime. It's weird.
The Axiom was an executive cruise ship that had advertisements running for it. BnL was more than happy to save lives, just not for free. Also, given that they call the Axiom the "jewel" of the fleet, the other ships would have to be at least a little bit worse than it. Most likely the mass of ships meant for poor people, if there were any at all, would be in absolutely terrible condition.
Although from all indications (and more importantly all exterior shots of the ship and navigational maps) the Axiom is the ONLY SHIP left of the BnL fleet. Which depressingly means that all that is left of humanity now resides there.
The end credits prove that this, at least, is untrue. One of the images is of other lifepods arriving on Earth to join the Axiom's passengers, suggesting that there are other humans out there and that they do eventually come home.
Crapsaccharine World — The Axiom. The humans seem to lead a cheerful and carefree life, if it isn't an incredibly confused and often boring one, but the utter disregard for responsibility on part of the humans and the history regarding Earth's decay and the plans behind the Axiom is depressing.
Crapsack World — Earth, though thanks to WALL-E and his ilk it's become a crap-cube world.
Creative Closing Credits — The credits start with a series of vignettes depicting the Axiom's passengers readjusting to Earth life represented by evolving art styles (cave paintings -> Egyptian -> Greek -> mosaic -> Da Vinci-style sketches -> Monet-style Impressionism -> Pointillism -> Van Gough-style), then shifts to various scenes of the characters running around with faux 8-bit video game graphics.
Creepy Monotone — Auto, who speaks using the old MacInTALK "Ralph" voice. While M-O also has a monotone voice to announce the presence of "Foreign Contaminants", he primarily communicates with cute beeps and hums, as do the other nice robots.
"A" is for Axiom, your home sweet home. "B" is for Buy 'N' Large, your very best friend...
Cue the Sun — Literally aboard the Axiom: when the captain awakens somewhere around afternoon he rewinds everything, including the sun of course, back to morning so he can give his morning speech.
Cute Machines — The title character as well as most of the other robots in this movie.
Cyber Cyclops — Yet another thing that makes Auto an Expy for the HAL 9000...
The Danza — John Ratzenberger (aka Pixar's Mascot, aka Pixar's Good Luck Charm) plays John.
Disney Death — Clever variation — WALL-E is almost crushed to bits in the climax, but EVE knows how to fix him; the real tension is that once she has, he doesn't remember anything about the 700 years of his life, including her. His acquired sentience appears lost. He then gets it back a few minutes later...only after she "kisses" him, of course.
Disney Villain Death — GO-4 gets kicked out a window and smashes on to the deck, but they do show the impact, making this an aversion—maybe even a subversion, since it had such a clear setup.
Even more of a subversion because some people might think he'll land in the pool that's shown just before he smashes into the ground right in front of it.
Either way, he was gonna die, be it the floor or the water.
Dude, She's Like, In a Coma! — Sorta. Like other examples, it's only creepy if you overthink it. And WALL-E probably doesn't understand what's going on, and definitely has just had his only chance to ever have a friend suddenly disappear. In any case, WALL-E doesn't do anything particularly inappropriate (not that he really could), which turns out to be a good thing since EVE was recording everything and recalls it later.
Dying Like Animals — The people of Earth blissfully allowed their own destruction.
Earth-that-Was — The premise of the film, as humanity departed Earth 700 years before the film began. Emphasized by the Captain suddenly spending hours and hours bringing up articles about the earth of the past and later relating his glee over planting pizza.
Fake Out Opening — For the first 30 seconds or so, it appears to be a typically optimistic Disney flick. Then you see Earth. The music is so loud and surprising it serves as a Scare Chord.
False Camera Effects — What seems to be a focus pull error, when WALL-E is trying to escape an avalanche of shopping carts.
The DVD commentary points out here that legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins was brought in to teach the animators how to make the camera act more like a real camera instead of a virtual one, and to deliberately insert anomalies like this. Who was amused that Pixar would spend loads of money and time trying to create effects that cinematographers have spent loads of money and time trying to get rid of.
Food Pills — It's actually more like Food Smoothies than pills. "Sep-tu-a-cen-tennial cupcake in a cup!)
Word Of God is that BnL was originally a yogurt company.
The Fool — All WALL-E wants to do is hold hands with a girl-bot and groove to the old-time "Hello Dolly." Without being the slightest bit aware of it, every human (and most robots) he meets (even if it's just a Crash into Hello) gets knocked out of their hum-drum daily existence maintaining the status quo and learns how to not just "survive, but to live," and he gets really, really lucky regarding survival.
Fictional Counterpart — Buy n Large to Wal-Mart, though on a much more massive scale.
Flaw Exploitation — The Captain to Auto's lack of depth perception. First he uses an image of the plant to pretend he has it, and then he hides in front of a picture of himself
Friend to Bugs: WALL-E regards said cockroach as a pet, but most people in real-life consider them disgusting pests.
Gaussian Girl — Played straight with EVE, and her sleek shiny design seems to exist to make this happen as much as possible.
On close inspection she seems to emit a diffuse white light from her (shiny, white) skin, essentially making her a self-generating, in-universe Gaussian Girl.
Genre Busting — IMDb has this movie listed as an Animation-Adventure-Comedy-Drama-Family-Romance-Sci-Fi.
Humans Are Special — Humanity was fully responsible for Earth's sad state, and aboard the Axiom, they live a very confusing but often boring life of endless consumerism and reliance on high-technology. But they also fully repair their societies and the environment with the help of their robot companions.
Indestructible Edible — WALL-E's pet cockroach can still eat a 700-year-old Twinkie, though that's more of an homage of the traditional post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland: Nothing left but the cockroaches and twinkies.
Inspector Javert — M-O, who relentlessly hunts the one who would tarnish his germ-free domain. Then makes friends with him.
Little No — EVE whispers "No...no..." after the escape pod WALL-E is in self-destructs. She utters another one while cradling his crushed, dead body after he falls out of the Holo-Detector.
Axiom: a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true. By this point in time, people have stopped questioning their situation and accepted their lives as they are.
John and Mary, who get a lot of kids from nowhere.
Also, WALL-E's pronunciation of EVE ("Eevuh") could be discerned as Eva, the name for the Biblical Eve in certain other languages.
Misfit Mobilization Moment — When WALL-E, EVE, the defective robots, and the Captain work together to return the plant to the holo-detector.
Moe Anthropomorphism — Nearly every robot in the movie has a piece of humanization fanart lurking on deviantArt somewhere.
M-O, whose name should already be a direct indication about this. Andrew Stanton even admitted that they "turned up the cute dial too much" with this character.
Monochrome Casting: Try and find a non-white character with a speaking role. Go ahead, try. And let's not be obtuse and use the robots as examples.
Mood Whiplash — When Auto tries to take the plant from WALL-E, the resulting "keep-away" is rather humorous, even having WALL-E smack Auto with the door to his garbage compartment. Moments after, however, Auto electrocutes him.
EVE is flying around happily, as WALL-E watches her. Clunk. BOOM
After Wall-E's body falls out of the Holo-Detector and the ship goes into Hyper Jump. We're in tears because Wall-E's dead, then we cut to the Captain making one of the goofiest faces as he's pushed backwards from the speed of the ship and we laugh...And two seconds later we cut to EVE desperately calling WALL-E's name and we start crying again.
No Flow in CGI: Granted, there isn't a lot in this film that does flow.
No Water Proofing In The Future — The robot that supervises the swimming pool is not waterproof. Note that John and Mary were the only two people actually using the pool. And it doesn't seem to do much besides say rules.
Off the Rails: After a mustering of willpower, M-O jumps off the floor guideline to chase after WALL-E and his trail of foreign contaminants.
Open Sesame — A machine requires voice authorization from the Captain. (Parodied when all he can say is "uhh" and the machine accepts it.)
Pac Man Fever — Some how, an 830-year-old Pong console has survived the apocalypse. The humans on the Axiom are seen playing tennis with robots controlled by a variation of Pong, although it might have made more sense if they used a more current device made for the purpose of sports. Then again, that would take more physical effort on the part of the humans.
Post-Kiss Catatonia — WALL-E completely freezes the first time EVE "kisses" him. Inverted in the ending: a kiss is what wakes him up.
Power Glows — Not only does EVE glow very faintly (the better to invoke a Gaussian Girl), her presence and touch cause electrical lights to glow as well.
Precision F-Strike — BURN-E delivers one of these (albeit in a mechanical tone) in the bonus features when he realizes he's cut through the new light he's supposed to be installing after being shocked by WALL-E and EVE flying by.
The transcript lists BURN-E's reaction to being locked outside the ship as "Crap."
Product Placement — WALL-E's makeshift television is an iPod with a magnifier in front of it.
EVE was designed by Jonathan Ive - product designer for Apple responsible for the design of the iMac, their laptops, the iPod and iPhone. Not coincidentally, Steve Jobs is both CEO of Apple and was CEO of Pixar, until they merged with Disney, when he became the single largest shareholder of Disney/Pixar.
WALL-E's Boot-Up noise is also the noise a Mac makes when you turn it on.
Auto is voiced by MacInTalk, the voice read-back program of Macintosh.
In-universe, Buy 'n' Large itself. Their logo even appears after the film credits alongside the Disney and Pixar logos, implying that the film itself is partly theirs.
Punny Name — Buy 'n' Large = By and large, also Buying large (amounts of products)
And "Wally" (definition 2 is probably the most apt).
All the robot's names are puns: Eve (obviously), Otto, Bernie...
Ridiculously Human Robots — WALL-E teaches other robots human traits, and learned them himself from old recordings, but they all seem to have a really strong baseline to begin with.
WALL-E = Waste Allocation Load Lifter — Earth Class, a global Earth-cleaning bot. He later meets his larger cousin, WALL-A, which of course, is Axiom Class.
EVE = Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator.
BURN-E the repair-bot locked outside the Axiom gets his own DVD bonus feature.
Many others. BRL-A (umbrella-bot), D-FIB (defibrillator-bot), M-O ("Moe"), PR-T ("pretty"), HAN-S (the massage bot), VAQ-M (vacuum-bot), VN-GO (the painter bot)...
M-O is stated in the DVD bonus material to stand for Microbe Obliterator.
Reflective Eyes — The lens that make up WALL-E's eyes naturally do this.
Robo Speak — The only one really guilty of this is Auto, as the other robots can only say a few words, or use voice samples. They mostly communicate through beeps, hums, etc.
This fact allows for a few cases of Getting Crap Past the Radar - EVE seems to be the primary offender here. For example, when GO-4 throws the plant down the garbage chute she makes a sound that is suspiciously similar to "crap!" Later, when she tries unsuccessfully to replace the badly damaged WALL-E's circuit board in the Axiom's garbage disposal area, it sounds rather like she sets off a literal Precision F-Strike (she makes a noise that sounds like 'Faaaah!').
Thgere is another good example of this earlier when Wall-E is chasing EVE through the ship, on the way to the bridge. One of the robots he cuts off beeps something sounding very much like "Asshole"
The above examples may not count as getting anything past the radar. Robot speech is meant to sound completely random, so when these sounds were used, the people behind them probably weren't even thinking about how they sound a little like profanity. What matters is if the people MEANT for them to sound that way, so Your Mileage May Vary on whether it's coincidence or not since only those people know.
According to the closed captions, WALL-E says "pathetic" while he's hiding behind the towel cart.
"Save The Last Bullet For Yourself"; in some situations, it would be wiser to kill oneself in an escape pod than have it captured by enemies for interrogation or whatever. But this really only means anything for military duty... And the Axiom isn't a battleship...
Possibly an option if rescue or recovery is an impossibility. Though both dying in a fiery explosion and starvation are both rather painful ways to die, explosions are at least quick...
Slow Electricity — The Hard Light barriers in the holding cells fail sequentially instead of all at once.
Soundtrack Dissonance — Oh yeah. In the very first minute, "Put On Your Sunday Clothes", a bright, cheery song, matches well with the opening shots of the galaxy...not so much with the revelation of what Earth has become that follows.
At the moment the song breaks into "There's lots of world out there", we get our first glimpse of Earth's barren wasteland surface.
Space Clothes — Mostly monochromatic jumpsuits and no shoes. When people want to wear another outfit (to wit: 'blue is the new red') the clothes change without being taken off. This is apparently an attribute of the chairs they ride in, as the suits quickly change back to red once the chair's functions are disabled or the person gets out of it. The suits are also very elastic, as a the humans go from obese to fit during the closing credits and never change clothes or create new ones. Since the humans are never shown off their chairs we can also assume the jumpsuits are very ...hygienic.
Subverted with the Captain, as his nonelastic jacket is shown hanging off his shoulders, impossible to close.
The PR-Ts are said to help with hygiene as well as beautification.
Space Clouds: The Axiom is parked next to a nebula which initially hides its presence as the Earth-ship approaches.
Space Is an Ocean — The part of the climactic sequence when the "Axiom" tilts in space and everybody slides to one side. This would make sense if the "Axiom" was a ship listing in the ocean, but it's in space. There is no external gravitational field. So there's no reason for everybody to slide to the side when the ship tilts, since the Artificial Gravity inside the ship is working fine. How the ship is oriented in space doesn't matter.
To be fair, we have no idea how the artificial gravity works. It's possible that there is some kind of gyroscopic effect that causes the force to be exerted in a constant direction, regardless of the orientation of the ship.
Space Is Cold — Averted. The robots function perfectly well in space, and the plant is unharmed from a brief stint in the vacuum before being sealed back into EVE's presumably airtight compartment.
Space Sailing — The Axiom was definitely reminiscent of a sea-going cruise ship.
Spanner in the Works — Now let's see what happens to this perfectly planned community in space when we add one robot not built for the community's function...
Stalker with a Crush / Stalking Is Love — WALL-E. You don't even have to think about it. They brought it up on the Blu-Ray geek track. "He's got stalker charm!"
Stand-In Portrait — How the Captain is able to hide from Auto, as well as convince him that he has the plant. Makes sense, though, since we briefly see through Auto's one eye and he has little depth perception.
Super Powered Robot Vegetation Scout: EVE, whose laser arm is capable of destroying dedicated guard robots. Possibly justified considering she probably surveys planets which may have hostile life.
Technology Porn: In addition to all the robots and gadgets on the Axiom, there's the various loading/unloading/folding/rotating arms and waldos during EVE's expedition.
Tertiary Sexual Characteristics — EVE is sleeker, more slender, has a lighter color scheme and larger eyes then the more masculine WALL-E.
Theme Music Power-Up — When the Axiom's captain gets out of his hover-chair in order to turn off Auto. This is accompanied by the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey (the opening for "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss)
Time Passes Montage — Several, some more subtle than others. WALL-E's initial courtship with EVE, EVE's hibernation upon finding the plant, WALL-E's trip through space, and the credit sequence. Interestingly, none of these montages provide any cues as to how much time is passing. They could take place over anything from a number of days, to many years or even centuries. Because the robots are functionally immortal, there's just no way to tell.
Although the plant that EVE is carrying doesn't grow at all, and between her picking it up and arriving on the AXIOM it is only just starting to dehydrate. In real life that'd take less than a week, but the film implies that several seasons have passed just waiting for EVE's dropship to return....
Tinman Typist — The Axiom is full of them. Especially notable is Auto. Whereas the others could maybe be excused by being separate mobile units, Auto is built into the bridge itself.
SUPPLY-R from the BURN-E short does this for the one thing that seems to be his entire function.
Trash of the Titans — Earth is covered with garbage, including a layer of defunct satellites in the upper atmosphere which spaceships have to plow through.
True Love's Kiss — When WALL-E is essentially killed and then rebuilt by EVE, his memory is lost and EVE tries everything she can think of to bring him back, practically giving up she finally sadly "kisses" him and the electric spark jolts his memory.
It could be Fridge Logic if the motherboard gets fried the hard disk could be intact and still be retaining memory; but have to go through a boot sequence which, in Wall-E's case, could be compacting trash to test if he could still function.
Trigger Happy — Upon arriving on Earth, EVE shoots pretty much anything that moves. She does learn to calm down.
Tsundere — EVE. Well, she's a girl with a temper that falls in love, anyway.
Understatement — "We're having a slight malfunction — [SLAM!]with the autopilot!"
Unusual User Interface — In the future, even advanced robots like COM-T will use keyboards and the hunt and peck method of typing... but the buttons will be nothing but Zeroes and Ones.
Auto even uses the standard human approach of "If it doesn't work, press harder."
In his defense, it would have worked, If WALL-E wasn't in the way.
Counter to that, applying pressure enough to break the button while giving it a massive electric shock should have just shorted out the button's attached circuit completely and caused it to stop functioning.
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife — Well, a worn, rusted trash compactor and a sleek, futuristic robot, anyway.
Used Future — Played as straight as it gets with Earth, but adverted aboard the Axiom, which looks just as clean and shiny as when it was launched 700 years ago.
Villainous Breakdown — Upon realizing that WALL-E and EVE are very close to sending everyone home, Auto begins to subtly lose his cold, logical demeanor ("Not... possible..."), sending waves of stewards to pursue them throughout the Axiom. When WALL-E tries to prevent the plant-platform from descending, a clearly-panicked Auto jabs the button increasingly rapidly. Then presses it so hard the glass cracks. Then tasers it.
Viral Marketing — Pixar set up a realistic Buy-N-Large website before the movie came out, which can be found at [1]
Sadly, the link now sends you to the official Disney website for WALL-E.
Visual Pun — When EVE wakes up in the bowels of the Axiom, she's covered in strange oval machines that scamper away, clicking. Yeah, they're mice.
Well-Intentioned Extremist — Auto, arguably. Either that or he was afraid of becoming obsolete upon returning to Earth.
He was probably just aggressively following his program.
A program ordered by another Well-Intentioned Extremist, the CEO of Buy-N-Large, Shelby Forthworth. Sure, he ordered the Autopilots to keep the liners from returning to Earth, but for around seven hundred years, it was the accurate decision.
White and Grey Morality — There are no clear villains in WALL-E. Auto simply does as he's programmed to do, as are any other "evil" robots. The humans of the story, once jolted out of their reverie, proceed to repair the earth with new found love for nature and life. The CEO of Buy-N-Large is more panicked and shortsighted than anything.
Wiki Walk: The captain becomes entranced by the encyclopedia of Earth life. We leave him at the entry for "Sea" and come back at the entry for "Hoedown".
Wiper Start — WALL-E's attempts to cancel the escape pod's self-destruct sequence activate just about every other gadget it has, including, yes, wipers.
The World Is Just Awesome: The humans' reaction when they first actually notice their surroundings, having been so immersed in their luxuries that they failed to notice everything around them.
Worthless Yellow Rocks — WALL-E finds a diamond ring in a box, and tosses the ring aside to play with the box. And walks on a carpet of dollar, er, B&L bills.
Reiterated in the 2009 Oscar's Animation Yearbook montage, where WALL-E finds an Oscar statue and a battered tape of said montage inside the plant's fridge. He naturally tosses the statue and takes the tape back home to watch. Ironic in that WALL-E had just won Best Animated Feature.
4 reviews