A New Kind of Space Adventure

November 7th, 2009

A New Kind of Space Adventure

In space, no one can hear you clean. Given the laws of gravity, I imagine as much is true. So went the tagline for incredibly successful WALL-E. This touching story of a robot who manages to teach humanity about what it means to be human become one of the most acclaimed films ever produced by Pixar and Disney.

The film was a technological achievement in and of itself. Directed by Andrew Stanton, the director of FINDING NEMO, WALL-E pushed the limits of what Pixar was capable of producing. Stanton insisted the film replicate the visual depth of focus and detail of 70mm film — a task never attempted before. Consequently, this required exhaustive layering and rendering man-hours.

The appeal of the story is not necessarily its dialogue, but the characterizations of the robots. Stanton intentionally kept the dialogue to a minimum, often only scripting emotional states and gestures. This allowed the animators to have a broader range of motion and placed the onus of communicating the emotions of the characters on legendary sound designer Ben Burtt.

The rich and deeply layer sound design and sumptuous visual helped propel WALL-E to the top of the box office. In fact, it managed to earn $23 million on its opening day. By the close of its opening weekend, it had made over $63 million. By the end of the year, the worldwide take was well over $534 million. This was a tremendous hit for Pixar, marking the film as the highest grossing animated feature to date.

Most film critics nationwide lauded the film — and for good reason. In fact, Roger Ebert named it one of his favorite films of 2008, stating that it was “the best science-fiction movie in years.” Consequently, WALL-E not only won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film, but it also took home the Hugo Award for best Dramatic Presentation. The cap off its impressive awards run, it also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Few films in recent history have elicited as much positive emotion as WALL-E. If you are keen to add it to your collection, you would be well advised to buy the lush Blu-ray edition. Visit the Uber Article Directory to get a totally unique version of this article for reprint.