1161 WALL•E

[hearthesilence]

I've always considered Ratatouille - WALL-E - Up to be Pixar's golden trilogy.

Same here. It was especially disappointing that WALL-E was passed over for a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. It actually topped or came in as a runner-up in all the major critics polls, but the Academy went with some dreary films that seemed made for Oscars. IIRC criticisms of the Oscars being too out of touch peaked that year and led to the new ten-nominee ceiling for Best Picture the following year. I think a lot of people were actually rooting for The Dark Knight, but WALL-E would've a perfect nominee that hit the sweet spot of being massively popular and possibly the year's most acclaimed film.

[aox]

I am in the minority, but I think the first 40 minutes of this film might be the best Pixar sequence ever made. It's absolutely brilliant even from a silent film perspective. But, once he gets to space, the film completely falls apart for me. I have always resented this film for that.

[captveg]

Of course, we're all burying the lede here: finally (a fraction of) Hello, Dolly! makes it into the collection.

[bearcuborg]

I am in the minority, but I think the first 40 minutes of this film might be the best Pixar sequence ever made. It's absolutely brilliant even from a silent film perspective. But, once he gets to space, the film completely falls apart for me. I have always resented this film for that.

I feel the same way. Once it starts telling a story, I check out.

[Kracker]

I am in the minority, but I think the first 40 minutes of this film might be the best Pixar sequence ever made. It's absolutely brilliant even from a silent film perspective. But, once he gets to space, the film completely falls apart for me. I have always resented this film for that.

Nah, that first act of WALL-E definitely gets regarded as the most cinematically brilliant thing Pixar ever did, probably even earlier in this thread. It did get rather upstaged by the first 5 minutes of Up, which is another great tribute to the silent era. While its natural to want to keep that going, I thought having the silent premise carry through the entire film would have come with consequences: you'd either have that open end of what happened to the humans (not to mention the explanation of Eva's origin) which would never get the happy conclusion we see in the ending or the downbeat dismal idea that the humans wound up not surviving that wouldn't set well with families leaving the theater.

[denti alligator]

Thought this was a joke. Would have preferred Ratatouille.

[Computer Raheem]

Whilst I am annoyed that you guys had to miss my "WTF" double-take reaction when this was announced (and it was glorious), I'm honestly quite happy this is getting a release. Not only does it signals a potential opening of the Disney vault (Touchstone titles! Fox films!), but it makes me happy that Criterion is making a big deal out of them releasing an animated movie. We're still only at 8 animated films in the collection (Akira Laserdisc being included), and I'm praying this means that they are planning on releasing more animation titles in the future. It also helps that WALL•E is a great film too; I agree with heathesilence that it would've been the perfect "populist" Best Picture nominee for that year's Oscars.

[Maltic]

WALL-E infuses everyone he meets on the space ship with his romanticism and independent spirit, traits which were laid out in the first part of the film, so the two parts cohere, imo.

[ryannichols7]

I am in the minority, but I think the first 40 minutes of this film might be the best Pixar sequence ever made. It's absolutely brilliant even from a silent film perspective. But, once he gets to space, the film completely falls apart for me. I have always resented this film for that.

I feel the same way. Once it starts telling a story, I check out.

agreed on all counts here, but also haven't revisited the movie in ages. no one has mentioned (unless in the older pages of the thread, which I should read) the brilliant teaser trailer (and really, all of Pixar's teasers are incredible) that features music from Brazil - another reason this was all meant to be.

speaking of other Criterion connections, can anyone who's watched the existing extras say if Roger Deakins appears at all? he was a consultant on the film and has contributed to other releases (including movies he wasn't involved in), plus had Lee Kline on his podcast. I love listening to Deakins talk and think he'd be a good addition here if he's not in any of the archival stuff

[domino harvey]

For those who weren’t around when Benjamin Button was announced, it felt a lot like this

[Kracker]

For those who weren’t around when Benjamin Button was announced, it felt a lot like this

I was around albeit not on this forum but wasn't the chatter surrounding Benjamin Button the fact that it was announced mere days after winning its Oscar in an, at the time, unprecedented move, 'The Curious Case of the Instant Classic" as Newsweek dubbed it. Appropriately enough, its status aged in reverse as it was released on Criterion first then grew to become significant as well as my favorite Fincher film long after. Wall-E on the other hand has had its time to solidify its legacy as one of the greatest and culturally significant animated films of our times.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm always surprised when people compare the opening act of the movie to a silent film. Tho' there's no dialogue, I remember sound playing a crucial role in the story telling and characterization.

[domino harvey]

I was referring more to the general reception of “Why does this need to be a Criterion?” plus it being a title literally no one foresaw as coming (I’d go as far as saying that this is the most surprising announcement in the history of the label, for a variety of reasons)

[ryannichols7]

I feel like this is being better received than Benjamin Button was, which at the time was seen as some sort of "sellout" thing. there are still some strange gatekeep-y attitudes out there today, but the Pixar team's involvement in many things Criterion has done in the past can't make this too surprising I don't think. it would certainly be more shocking if say, they announced George Lucas and Disney were partnering with them to bring forward the original Star Wars theatrical cuts, but even then, Lucas has recorded for Criterion before! but obviously that seems about as likely as Song of the South I get that this is certainly another case of "this can be released by someone else" that everyone complains about, but clearly this is something both parties wanted, and if it means more Fox titles, I would hope people would be pleased. I prefer this to deals with Netflix and Amazon, where we've gotten some good titles, but a lot of mid tier stuff that's too recent to be exciting to me. Wall-E may not be a masterpiece to me, but several other Pixar films are, let alone the classic Disney titles that maybe we will get to see Criterion release now. and of course I'd love to see more Fox titles and UHDs of All That Jazz and such

[yoloswegmaster]

At least there is one notable fan of this release:

[MitchPerrywinkle]

Count me in as another person who thinks the first third of this film is and remains marvelous while the second third has some wonderfully pointed commentary on the way consumerism thrives on incuriosity and stagnancy. It's only in the final third where the film coasts into disappointingly predictable territory, with the characterization of the antagonist, while thematically germane to what came before, still ends up indulging in the laziest cliches (if there's a point to be made about how a seemingly omniscient AI can only spout tired variations of "not possible" and "no", the script fails to develop that thread into a compelling character).

But while I can't say that I love it as much as others do, I have no qualms with the love it's received, and it does feature some of the boldest creative ventures in Pixar's history. All I can say is that I hope the success of this release will yield further physical media editions of long-neglected Fox catalog titles rather than reissues of Pixar films that have been widely available in sterling editions for decades.

[bottlesofsmoke]

While I love the opening act of WALL-E too, my favorite part of the movie is WALL-E and Eve "dancing" in space to most beautiful little piece of music Thomas Newman ever wrote.

This certainly feels like it might be the begining of some sort of series - it would be a strange one-off - but I do wonder what kind of films they will actually be able to get. Hopefully their desire to bury the old Fox titles and other non-Disney films they have the rights to has changed, but with Disney it's hard to have much confidence.

[R0lf]

I am in the minority, but I think the first 40 minutes of this film might be the best Pixar sequence ever made. It's absolutely brilliant even from a silent film perspective. But, once he gets to space, the film completely falls apart for me. I have always resented this film for that.

I feel the same way. Once it starts telling a story, I check out.

It doesn’t help that the story becomes torturing a cute robot to emotionally manipulate the audience. This movie takes the make your children cry fake pathos of killing Bambi’s mother and dials it way up. It’s complete scraping the bottom of the barrel storytelling. Like a Zack Snyder movie without the camp.

[movielocke]

I've hung onto numerous Disney laserdiscs over the years precisely because they retain the original film grain and colors of these animated classics from their original release. I don't like Disney's practice of removing the grain and bringing up the saturation of their classic titles.

Laserdiscs aren't original film grain, they're at best the film grain of an inter-positive (the elaborate laserdisc boxsets) and at worst the unrepresentative grainy film grain of a quickie print made for television distribution pulled off the shelf and scanned for video release.

Even the film grain of a nice inter-positive isn't original film grain, three strip animated films were sometimes successive exposure, meaning, one negative strip, three exposures in a row of the same frame, successively set to the different color filters. Then the successive exposure would be step printed to the three separation masters (which could create the gelatin matrices for the famous dye inimbition prints), or in the 70s/80s to create a duplicate color negative--either is another optical generation; and that duplicate negative could then be used to create your duplicate inter-positive, which is yet another optical generation.

So an inter-positive is probably four generations away from "the original film grain."

and given that laserdiscs only have 240 lines of resolution, how do you visually disentangle the video noise in the laserdisc image from actual film grain in the laser disc image. How much of what is on the laserdisc is noise masquerading as grain and how much is actually film grain?

As to colors, those image harvests were ran through video filtration and compression to yield a color range that was legal to broadcast on standard def tvs, which was the same profoundly limited color space from the introduction of color tv to the introduction of rec709 in the 90s. And even within that colorspace, the colors changed over time. When they ran an animated classic on Disneyland TV show in the 60s, it had a different color as tele-cined and broadcast than when they released that animated classic on video in the 80s (a new and different telecine).

What is on the laserdiscs is the best (subjective) approximation that color space could represent of the color preferred by the eyes of technician overseeing the video grading and/or telecine. It doesn't necessarily reflect the original color, but rather the color preferences at the time the video master was approved. the original colors are a whole separate animal and are rarely to never seen on home video because the color preferences and expectations of society have changed over the decades. The preference for 1980s home video color is subjectively not different from a preference for 1960s TV broadcast color. Neither is going to be 1930s/1940s theatrical color.

[movielocke]

Does Wall*E already have a 4K release?

I remember when they re-released toy story 1 & 2 in 3D there were articles about how they had to resurrect the old files and re-render-and-output the movies to a higher resolution to create the new digital masters. I assume Wall*E was finished in 2K in 2008, so did they have to to do the same thing to generate a 4K master (whether for some other release, or for this one)?

[swo17]

Does Wall*E already have a 4K release?

Yes

[Peter McM]

Does Wall*E already have a 4K release?

Yes

This could be a significant improvement from the studio 4K (now out two years) as it will get a Dolby Vision and HDR10+ boost. The original was HDR10 only.

[R0lf]

I've hung onto numerous Disney laserdiscs over the years precisely because they retain the original film grain and colors of these animated classics from their original release. I don't like Disney's practice of removing the grain and bringing up the saturation of their classic titles.

Laserdiscs aren't original film grain, they're at best the film grain of an inter-positive (the elaborate laserdisc boxsets) and at worst the unrepresentative grainy film grain of a quickie print made for television distribution pulled off the shelf and scanned for video release.

Even the film grain of a nice inter-positive isn't original film grain, three strip animated films were sometimes successive exposure, meaning, one negative strip, three exposures in a row of the same frame, successively set to the different color filters. Then the successive exposure would be step printed to the three separation masters (which could create the gelatin matrices for the famous dye inimbition prints), or in the 70s/80s to create a duplicate color negative--either is another optical generation; and that duplicate negative could then be used to create your duplicate inter-positive, which is yet another optical generation.

So an inter-positive is probably four generations away from "the original film grain."

and given that laserdiscs only have 240 lines of resolution, how do you visually disentangle the video noise in the laserdisc image from actual film grain in the laser disc image. How much of what is on the laserdisc is noise masquerading as grain and how much is actually film grain?

As to colors, those image harvests were ran through video filtration and compression to yield a color range that was legal to broadcast on standard def tvs, which was the same profoundly limited color space from the introduction of color tv to the introduction of rec709 in the 90s. And even within that colorspace, the colors changed over time. When they ran an animated classic on Disneyland TV show in the 60s, it had a different color as tele-cined and broadcast than when they released that animated classic on video in the 80s (a new and different telecine).

What is on the laserdiscs is the best (subjective) approximation that color space could represent of the color preferred by the eyes of technician overseeing the video grading and/or telecine. It doesn't necessarily reflect the original color, but rather the color preferences at the time the video master was approved. the original colors are a whole separate animal and are rarely to never seen on home video because the color preferences and expectations of society have changed over the decades. The preference for 1980s home video color is subjectively not different from a preference for 1960s TV broadcast color. Neither is going to be 1930s/1940s theatrical color.

The film elements you are listing are still closer to the original source than what Disney uses these days. For the most part the “restorations” of their hand drawn animation is just digitally rebuilt from the ground up. It’s the equivalent of using photoshop with paint bucket auto fill between the solid lines and complete with the detail degradation that causes. There is no evidence of the original film source anymore and it is doubtful that Disney use any. So while what you’re talking about is relevant to film restoration in general it doesn’t apply here.

[colinr0380]

I wonder how much of this surprise release could be as much down to Andrew Stanton being a major figure at Pixar and having the ability to lobby for a Criterion release (on UHD), Michael Bay style. At the very least that would mean rights would be easier to negotiate. Maybe if John Carter turns up, we will know for sure! (If we are speculating for the future, I wouldn't mind seeing the Seven Samurai-influenced A Bug's Life join the collection some time!)

I'm not too into heavy handed political/environmental allegories myself, but this was a quite major one at the time. Whilst I generally agree on preferring the 'silent film style' approach to the first third (of the pride one takes in doing one's job to the best of your ability even if it is a messy and thankless one) in defence of the final third I quite liked the way that after spending so much time with robots we finally see the people in whose image and for whose service they were made and that the film is rather scathing in its approach to its plumply amiable characters. Who are not particularly evil or deluded, just bumbling and complacent with no sense of their history or the devastation they (or rather their previous generations) have left behind them. As long as needs are being met and distractions provided in the form of food and entertainment keep flowing there is no real desire to rise up and take control of your own destiny again (as shown in the rather blunt, yet appropriate, metaphor of the fight to take hold of the Captain's wheel), and part of the importance of the film is the warning that if you don't take control of your destiny others will do so for you (for your own good, and I think there is some sympathy there towards the controlling ship's A.I. just trying to protect these people from destroying themselves, and everything else, all over again, even if they inevitably have to become the Disney trademarked bad guy of the piece who somewhat greedily overstep their bounds and need to be slapped down), and even be incensed if you step even a millimetre outside of your bounds to show any sense of free will.

You (or rather previous generations on your behalf) might even be responsible for the creation of those who believe they know better as a way of controlling and passifying your more dangerous urges into safely circumscribed limits in order to limit the damage that the species inevitably causes if left unchecked.

However stepping outside of your safe confines takes courage and a certain amount of self confidence that you have the ability to deal with the scary unknown. Maybe love is the motivator that breaks through all fears (or the fear of loss of that love is greater than maintaining the status quo), and provides support even in the toughest seeming times that makes any feeling being do things they ordinarily would never have dreamed of. And taking control of your destiny involves a certain amount of pain there too in facing up to your past, the legacy of previous generations, owning those mistakes and trying to rectify them as much as one can - i.e. returning back to the long abandoned 'ruined' Earth to try to begin again (in that beautifully abstract end credit sequence to the Peter Gabriel song, which kind of works as the only sequel that this film ever needs)

But I do agree that this message all seemed a bit easier to blithely support and get behind the message of in the late 2000s rather than in the current moment when activists of all shapes and sizes from international governments causing energy crises to people gluing themselves to various objects appear to have collectively decided that direct action against the general populace gets results, whether the populace wants it or not. When you come away from the film slightly worried that you are just one of the baby-like fat people being slid around hither and dither across the deck in the struggle for control, hoping for some benevolent hero to put their arms out to save you from going over the edge, and not one of the front of stage actors with actual agency in the situation (embodied both by WALL•E who is doing the 'blue collar to hero' arc but also the Captain too, who needs the working class robot to gently remind him of his lineage as leader. The role that he either abdicated or was - purposefully - never made aware of. Maybe a bit of both and it takes being 'woke' to his responsibilities by a simple, humble worker to give him the kick up the backside he needs to get back to work himself), who are making the decision to wreck the status quo for the 'good of all', it is a bit less comforting! That does make WALL•E a great snapshot of the late 2000s mindset though.

[Maltic]

Does Wall*E already have a 4K release?

Yes

This could be a significant improvement from the studio 4K (now out two years) as it will get a Dolby Vision and HDR10+ boost. The original was HDR10 only.

One could argue it's a strange priority for Criterion, though, to help a film with massive exposure and an already decent UHD release get instead a first rate UHD release.

Of course, there are the caveats others mentioned: Maybe this will indeed help Criterion gain access to Fox films and what not.

And who cares anyway, there are plenty of other boutique labels out there nowadays.