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 solitary trash compactor 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.

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. WALL-E has minimal dialogue in its early sequences; many of the characters do not have voices, but instead communicate with body language and robotic sounds designed by Burtt. The film criticizes consumerism, corporatism, nostalgia, waste management, human environmental impact and concerns, obesity, and global catastrophic risk. It is also Pixar's first animated film with segments featuring live-action characters. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film titled Presto for its theatrical release.

WALL-E was released in the United States on June 27, 2008. The film was an instant blockbuster, grossing $533.3 million worldwide over a $180 million budget, and winning 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 fans and critics as the best film of 2008. The film also 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.

Plot
In the 29th century, rampant consumerism and environmental neglect have turned Earth into a garbage-strewn wasteland. Humanity is nowhere to be found, having been evacuated by the megacorporation Buy-N-Large (BnL) on giant starliners seven centuries earlier. Of the robotic trash compactors left by BnL to clean up, only one remains: a Waste Allocation Load-Lifter (Earth Class), or WALL-E. One day, WALL-E's routine is broken by the arrival of an unmanned probe carrying an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator or EVE, sent to scan the planet for plant life. WALL-E is smitten by the sleek, otherworldly robot, but she goes into standby when he shows her his most recent find: a living seedling. The probe returns to collect 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 machines. Captain McCrea, used to sitting back while his robotic lieutenant AUTO flies the ship, is taken aback by a positive probe response, but learns that placing the plant in the ship's Holo-Detector will trigger a hyperjump back to Earth so humanity can begin recolonization. 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 proceeds to "free" her along with the other faulty robots, causing them to be designated rogue. Frustrated, EVE tries to send WALL-E home on an escape pod, but they are interrupted when AUTO's first mate GO-4 arrives and stows the stolen plant in a pod set to self-destruct. WALL-E saves the plant from being lost for good, and he and EVE reconcile, celebrating 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 refuses, revealing his own secret no-return directive A113, issued after BnL concluded in 2110 that the planet could not be saved. When McCrea countermands this directive, AUTO mutinies, electrocuting WALL-E and shutting EVE down, and throwing them both down the garbage chute before confining the captain to his quarters. EVE automatically reboots herself and helps WALL-E bring the plant to the ship's Holo-Detector. AUTO crushes WALL-E in his attempt to stop the return protocol initializing, but McCrea deactivates him while EVE starts 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 take their first steps on Earth. During the credits, humans and robots are shown learning to farm, fish, and build, turning the ravaged planet into a paradise.

Cast

 * Ben Burtt as WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-Class), 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 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 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 (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator; which WALL-E pronounces Eva), 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, upon discovering that Earth had become too toxic to support life, the BNL corporation soon abandoned the cleanup and recolonization, issued to all the autopilots of any Axiom's the directive to prevent anyone to return 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.
 * 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?" referring to the name of the ship's computer in the film Alien, which also starred Weaver.
 * 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.