There’s something to be said for
an idea that won’t go away, especially when it’s conceived by a man whose
creative track record remains gloriously unblemished.
For Andrew Stanton, the acclaimed
director, screenwriter and graphic artist who became just the ninth employee at
Pixar Animation Studios back in 1990, the idea he couldn’t shake was the one,
born almost as long ago, that would eventually inspire Wall*E: What if mankind evacuated
earth and forgot to turn off
the last robot?
Even as the 42-year-old
Massachusetts native worked on the movies that would turn Pixar into the pride
of the Walt Disney empire – Toy Story, The
Incredibles and Ratatouille among them –
his thoughts kept returning to that
melancholy robot, dutifully performing his chores in a desolate,
post-apocalyptic world.
“The idea came from a lunch we had
in the summer of ’94,” says Stanton, referring to the now-famous meal with
early Pixar architects John Lasseter, Pete Docter and Joe Ranft that produced
the concepts behind Finding Nemo, which
Stanton directed, as well as A Bug’s Life
and Monsters Inc. “We couldn’t stop
talking about this little R2-D2-like robot, but the idea immediately got
shelved because we didn’t think anyone would let us do it. Toy Story was unproven,
and we hadn’t really proven ourselves,
either.”
The studio turned its attention to
Bug’s Life, and Stanton admits he was
“balls-to-the-wall” busy until 2002, when he was finishing Nemo. It was
then that he began obsessing about Wall*E, the
trash-compacting robot who inhabits a mostly barren world abandoned by man. No
longer a neophyte and blessed with a history of unprecedented success – Pixar’s
eight feature films have grossed $4.3 billion worldwide – Stanton decided it
was time.
“Why would he be the last robot on
earth? Where could this go? I started thinking it should be a love story
because he’s such a lonely character,” he says. “Then I couldn’t stop thinking
about it, and usually when that happens you know something is there. The time
was right because the technology had improved so much, and we’d grown so much
as filmmakers.”
Stanton acknowledges that Wall*E, a
film with abundant beeps, bleeps and metallic crashes
but very little dialogue, is a departure from the straightforward narrative
style of, say, Ratatouille, but he’s
hoping that audiences now trust enough in the Pixar brand to try, as he puts
it, “something a little out there.” He also hopes they can embrace his passion
for old-fashioned sci-fi.
Stanton’s enthusiasm as he names
some of his favorite films – 2001, Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and Alien – is
contagious, and it’s no surprise when he admits that Wall*E, whose elaborate
universe recalls Ridley Scott’s 1982
classic Blade Runner, was a deliberate
attempt to rediscover the majesty of the genre.
“After the late ’80s, I was never
as enthralled by what I was seeing, so Wall*E was a very conscious effort to get back
to the feelings
those movies inspired,” he says. “I wanted to be transported into another
universe, and to share that sense of wonder with the audience.”
While Stanton is loath to get
ahead of himself, he admits he's had another inspiration for his next movie –
one of those haunting ideas that slowly becomes an obsession. It's an
adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ lost-in-space saga John Carter of Mars,
which might incorporate live action into Pixar’s
traditionally animated format. A gamble? Perhaps. But by now, Stanton is used
to them.