Wall-E - Pixar's next film (after Ratatouille)

[Rumpelstiltskin]

A little late perhaps, and I don't know if it has already been discussed, but I found some info regarding the original concept of the movie:

http://end-of-something.blogspot.no/200 ... r-not.html

During the film’s first couple years of development, the humans were green jelly blobs (very similar to the alien characters in the short ‘Lifted’ that preceded Ratatouille). Eventually it was to be revealed in a sort of Planet of the Apes fashion that they were human all along (!), and that the microgravity aboard the spaceship caused total bone loss. The kingdom of the space jellies was, as Stanton said, “too silly.”

The human characters were then changed into large, infantile creatures. This clarified and streamlined the story, and perhaps made them more likeable. But what’s important to realize is that it was the microgravity that degenerated the bodies of the humans aboard the spaceship Axiom, rather than increasing sloth. But, ah, it is still more complicated.

http://says.com/my/entertainment/these- ... ifferently

In an interview with the New Yorker magazine, Andrew Stanton, the lead writer for films like Finding Nemo and Toy Story explained that in the second part of Wall-E, the beloved robot was roped in to fight an intergalactic battle with alien lifeforms known as 'Gels'. The plot twist was to reveal that they were once humans but after living so long with zero gravity, they have evolved to to look like jelly. Pixar even consulted NASA to discuss how humans will evolve in a weightless environment, proving that this might be scientifically possible.

P.S. In the original script, the 'Gels' even speak in a language taken from the IKEA catalogue.

https://www.newsarama.com/358-how-andre ... rt-ii.html

“[Hicks is researching] long term residency in space. He told me this fact of they still are arguing about how exactly to correctly set it up so that when a human does go all the way to Mars and back, they won't start losing their bones. Because disuse atrophy kicks in if you don't simulate gravity just right the entire time. That's sort of a form of osteoporosis and you won't get that back. They actually said they've had arguments where they go, ‘If we don't get this right, they're just going to be a big blob.’ And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, that's perfect! That's perfect!’

“To be honest, in a very early version, I actually went so weird I made them like big blobs of Jello,” says Stanton, “because I thought Jello was funny and they would just sort of wiggle and stuff. There was sort of a Planet of the Apes conceit where they didn't even know they were humans anymore and they found that out, but it was so bizarre I had to pull back. I needed some more grounding.


“So I thought alright, I'll make them big babies. There's actually a scientific term that Peter Gabriel, actually, told me about. It's called neoteny. [It’s] where there's this belief that nature kind of figures out that you don't have to use these parts of yourself anymore to survive so why give it to you? Why let you grow any farther? And I thought that's perfect. It was almost again sort of a metaphor for ‘It's time to get up and grow up!’"

http://www.slashfilm.com/pixar-scrapped-ideas/

An early version featured “gelatinous blobs” that spoke gibberish. The idea was scrapped and the blobs became humans that lived on the Axiom that WALL-E discovers in space.

Yes, I know it was an excellent chance to make some social comments about consumerism and all that, but honestly I think such stuff is a little boring. I liked the idea about the blobs a lot better for several reasons.

We could have had a movie that dealt with the concepts of evolution. And the blobs speaking gibberish meant that the whole movie, or at least almost the whole movie, wouldn't require any subtitles or dubbing or anything. Just like the first part of the movie didn't contain any real dialogue. When the truth is revealed at the end, that the blobs have actually evolved form humans, I suppose that would require some sort of recorded language or an A.I. explaining it. It would have made it even more unique.

Also the idea of a rather primitive society living inside a huge technologically advanced ship where robots takes care of all the maintenance. They live there, but they don't understand the technology around them and has forgotten everything about their past (has anyone read Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop by the way?). And with zero gravity instead of artificial gravity, they wouldn't really need legs either, making them even more bloblike.

And it could have represented some sort of the awakening of humanity again. A revelation that made them realize who they evolved from, and both the (now sentient) robots and the blobs would be descendants from present day humanity, each in their own way, and each carry on humanity's legacy the way they can best. By meeting each other, the organic line and the technological line, would fuse and offer the best of each other. The blobs could then return to earth and starting all over again, even if they would require exoskeletons.

Of course this would probably have taken some million years, which would require an explanation about how Wall-E and Eve could still be around. So what if humans were still humans when Eve and Wall-E returned to the ship, and Eve was permanently retired after she found the plant by the ship's A.I.? Wall-E would find her and run out of energy as well. The A.I. would then seal certain areas of the ship, and million of years would pass after that. The A.I. has gone into hibernation or is destroyed when a small meteorite penetrates the ship or something. Some young adventurous blob decides to explore a never before seen section of the ship after discovering a crack in the wall. Being both small and having no bones in his or her body the blob is able to squeeze through the crack. There he discovers and accidentally activate either Wall-E or Eve, and the ship is gradually waking up again. In the meantime the earth has become green again, and has new forms of plants and animals living there (maybe even intelligent life).

[Disney's Divinity]

We could have had a movie that dealt with the concepts of evolution. And the blobs speaking gibberish meant that the whole movie, or at least almost the whole movie, wouldn't require any subtitles or dubbing or anything. Just like the first part of the movie didn't contain any real dialogue. When the truth is revealed at the end, that the blobs have actually evolved form humans, I suppose that would require some sort of recorded language or an A.I. explaining it. It would have made it even more unique.

Good point. I like the idea of WALL E with no dialogue. I never did like the human scenes, but I guess that's because the unspoken communication between the robots and the roach was more entertaining. I would've preferred if the whole film could have been that way.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Prefer the first non-human part as well. Wall-E is the Full Metal Jacket of Pixar: First the Earth/boot camp and then Axiom/Vietnam. Most people I have heard of prefer the first part.
(And I'm probably very picky now, but I wish they could have come up with a different name than Axiom as well.)

Well, maybe Disney or another studio decide to make Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator one day. Then we could finally have a movie about blobs in a spaceship.

[estefan]

Well, maybe Disney or another studio decide to make Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator one day. Then we could finally have a movie about blobs in a spaceship.

Roald Dahl flat-out refused to sell the film rights to Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator and stipulated that nobody could make a movie based on that book, because of how much he hated Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So that's unlikely to happen. Even after the enormous success of Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which had the heavy involvement of the Dahl Family, his wishes have been respected.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

It's sad if the Dahl family don't want to sell the rights even with the right script and director. It may have been hard or impossible to make the movie some decades ago, but not today. Even Tolkien once claimed it was impossible to turn his books into movies (and now they are even turning them into a TV-show).

I know Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator is not as popular as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I don't understand since I was very grateful for a sequel to the book when I was a kid.



And another idea regarding Wall-E (even if it was completed a decade ago one can always speculate about other directions it may have taken):

If, hypothetically, they have went for the blobs, no reason to keep their origin a secret. When Eve arrive, the captain could accidentally almost find out about her discovery. To prevent that from happening, and to "protect" humans further, the A.I. (AUTO) would shut the captain out from his own quarters, cover all the windows for psychological reasons and simply make them happy by covering their basic needs. Believing it is just temporarily, humans tolerate it (not that there is much they can do about it anyway), then get used to it and in the end forget it has ever been anything different than what they now know.
As Wall-E and Eve goes into hibernation, we see a sequence of humans passing by in the corridors, like the time passing sequence in The Time Machine (the best scene in the movie in my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJRzcX5ryNE). Relaxing music playing while one ghostly image gradually overlapping the other, and the passing of time represented by how the corridors looked more worn out and dirty as the robots stopped functioning one by one, and the humans became more blob-like as one generation followed the next. The artificial gravity becoming weaker and weaker, and in the end very low. Only the light, temperature and recycling system would function properly, providing humanity with food, water, air and light.
And then a blob, an outsider, would accidentally wake up and befriend Eve and Wall-E, which in turn would wake up the other robots.

And perhaps AUTO would eventually understand that it would be impossible to protect humanity by keeping them on the ship as they would sooner or later degenerate also mentally, or become extinct for other reasons, and that returning to earth was the only option.
On earth some other technology had survived in the form of self-replicating machines and robots, like "trees" that harvested energy from the sun through solar panels. An integrated ecosystem consisting of both organic flora and fauna and mechanical flora and fauna proving that nature and technology can peacefully co-exist if done right. Giving both the robots and the human descendants a place and role in the new world.
To Wall-E's delight, descendants from his pet cockroach were still around, and the species was an important part of the ecosystem. And because AUTO now no longer had a purpose in existence, it could be reprogrammed to take care of the cockroach population's needs instead, making both happy.

Just an idea. Others may have other ideas.

[D82]

Fred Willard reveals how he got to be Pixar's first live-action character in WALL-E
https://ew.com/movies/2018/08/20/fred-w ... character/

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Thinking about it; what if the humans were instead completely absent because they were in cryogenic sleep, waiting for the right moment to wake up? So instead we just have robots interacting with each other, where different programming and goals creates the conflict. The good guys wins, and the humans are finally waking up.

So what about all the social commentary? To heck with that, as mentioned it's nothing we haven't heard hundreds times before. But they could make the frozen people in the pods the adult children and younger grandchildren of those who left the earth behind, where their parents taught them about past mistakes and how to take care of the planet in the future.

It didn't even have to be in space, it could be a large robotic city on the other side of the continent, or subterranean areas. Not that I mind that Wall-E did end up in space.