4K UHD Review: Andrew Stanton’s WALL·E on the Criterion Collection

WALL·E goes beyond inviting comparisons to E.T., Number 5, R2D2, even the Little Tramp. The Waste Allocation Load Lifter relies on them, for Pixar understands this robot janitor as a study in memory and inheritance.

The last surviving bot of a failed program meant to clean up after our bad habits, WALL·E learns about desire from a movie musical we left behind and bides his time creating buildings from our compacted trash—totems that give expression to his hunger for purpose in the same way that the pyramids attest to the ancient Egyptian race’s human possibility.

The robot’s loneliness is palpable not only in those soulful eyes, one of which he has to replace at one point after it’s injured, but in his dogged need to clean and assemble, no doubt hoping that one day someone might notice that WALL·E Was Here. And it’s with that same level of urgency that WALL·E scrawls on some relic of human existence that he loves EVE, a trigger-happy Extra-Terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator that, rather poignantly, has yet to grasp the scope of her robot capabilities.

EVE comes to Earth looking for “a specimen of ongoing photosynthesis” (a sign that the effects of what we did to the planet are starting to wear off), and through WALL·E’s devotion to her, and a cockroach’s own fidelity to him, she learns to evolve beyond her adherence to the “directive” programmed into her system. Their love affair is understandably formulaic—WALL·E’s style comes from the movies, after all—but poetic nonetheless.

Director Andrew Stanton has expressed surprise at environmental readings of WALL·E—an evasiveness that’s reflected in the marketing of the film, whose ads have stressed WALL·E’s cuteness above all else. Downplaying the film’s pro-green message makes sense from a business angle—Disney doesn’t want to lose that James Dobson demographic—but pretending it doesn’t exist is troubling. As if Pixar never sketched that lone sapling that WALL·E finds among a vast sea of human garbage. As if the camera never lingered on that Buy n Large gas station that evokes the gluttony of a primitive, oil-guzzling civilization. As if the BnL CEO played by Fred Willard in a series of live-action snippets wasn’t meant as a swipe against Bush (not only are his strings being pulled from off screen, he even drops the phrase “stay the course”).

This Pixar production finds cute ways of tipping its hat to Christian creation and human record, most cannily in the way Captain (Jeff Garlin) ponders his people’s return to a planet that he’s never known, bumping a toy version of the Axiom starship into the continent of Africa on his globe. But WALL·E becomes less interesting whenever the focus shifts from WALL·E and EVE to the humans who live in subservience to technology and corporate branding aboard the Axiom, ostensibly waiting for Earth to become hospitable again to human life.

Fat and slovenly, these people are essentially recognized as mass-produced goods—do-nothings who’ve relinquished their human will to the machines that feed them, entertain them, pick them up when they’ve fallen off their floating couches. Stanton and co-screenwriter Jim Reardon’s vision of life inside the Axiom feels cribbed from Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. and George Lucas’s Star Wars, and the critique of consumer culture and how it thrives on our need for instant gratification comes through loud and clear—perhaps too clear.

Cutting but broad and tsk-tsking all the same, this element of the film isn’t so much dodo-headed as it is easily digestible, at least in contrast to the more nuanced ways in which the filmmakers take jabs at our follies and priorities while never losing sight of our remarkable flair for invention and possibility, as in WALL·E and EVE going gaga for bubble wrap or WALL·E expressing confusion over those funny fork-spoon hybrids that we bring to picnics, as well as discarding a diamond ring but keeping the blue case that housed it. But maybe it’s necessary for WALL·E to speak broadly at times or it would lose its most important demographic: the children to whom it wants to bequeath its humanitarian vision—that is, his depth of feeling.

And what feeling this is. As in WALL·E using a garbage can to groove to scenes from Hello Dolly!, the film understands dance, like movies themselves, as communal experience, something this humane robot feels to the core of his metallic gut. Presenting itself as a rite, which is to say something to pass down and instruct (like the cave drawings featured throughout the end credits), WALL·E uses our nostalgia for our youth to reconnect us with our essential goodwill—an appeal that’s impossible to resist whenever you stare into WALL·E’s peepers. Messenger and messiah, he asks the viewer to look into eyes that see much wear but can only be replaced so many times, reflecting back a future that is ours to either make or destroy. He’ll clean up whatever we leave behind—just don’t ask him to take any of the blame.

Image/Sound

The Criterion Collection has sourced a 4K digital master of WALL·E with HDR10+, which adds a nice boost to the wide range of colors on display throughout the film, but especially during the brighter, spaceship-set second half. The image is remarkably crisp and vivid, revealing all the tender loving care that went into the making of what may be Pixar’s most meticulously crafted creation to date. The level of detail visible in numerous scenes is mind-boggling, such as the early moment where Eve visits WALL·E’s truck and rummages through his vast collection of knick-knacks and you can see every bit of dirt, rust, and wear and tear on each object. On the audio front, the Dolby Atmos audio is equally robust, with a mix that maximizes the presence of even the minutest of sounds throughout various tracks.

Extras

WALL·E has already been given some stacked home video editions, not to mention a previous 4K release in 2020, but Criterion has assembled a bounteous slate of extras that will be hard to ever top. In the first of two commentaries recorded in 2008, Andrew Stanton guides the viewer through the whole four year process of getting a film made at Pixar, getting into everything from the genesis of the film to the lengthy pre-production and research phrase. The other track, featuring character supervisor Bill Wise, co-producer Lindsey Collins, story artist Derek Thompson, and lead animator Angus MacLane, is livelier and focuses more on the film’s visuals.

Criterion has also included several newly recorded features, including The Origins of WALL·E, in which Stanton discusses the films that inspired him and his efforts to create a silent film without subtitles during the first half of WALL·E. Stanton returns in an extra where he breaks down the editing of the scene where Eve visits WALL·E’s home and in another where he visits Pixar’s “Living Archive” to look through early drawings and notebooks from the film’s pre-production. The last of the new programs takes a look at production designer Ralph Eggleston’s color scripts, which were used to chart the changing of color schemes throughout the film.

The longest of all the extras, the feature-length The Pixar Story, from 2007, has some great archival footage from the late ’90s and early 2000s and focuses on the company’s artistic and financial growth over the course of its first six films. There are also tons of odds and ends, including a collection of Buy n Large PSAs, behind-the-scenes footage from several Pixar creative meetings, various featurettes on the film’s sound and visual design, a 2008 program about cinematographer Roger Deakins consulting efforts with the filmmakers, short films, deleted scenes, and a fascinating look into the many processes involved in creating a final animated shot. This sturdy, handsome package is rounded out with a 40-page booklet with excerpts from Stanton’s scrapbook and an essay by author Sam Wasson, who, among other things, lauds WALL·E’s deft fusion of existential philosophy and slapstick comedy.

Overall

Pixar’s first entry in the Criterion Collection is a stellar release, featuring a flawless 4K presentation and a plethora of captivating extras.