"If you take sounds from the real world, we have a subconscious association with them that gives credibility to an otherwise fantastic concept," Burtt said in a telephone interview.
The result is a film where the sound is as significant as the visual. One hears echoes of ET's throat-singing (ET is another Burtt film), and when Wall-E moves, the sound comes from a hand-cranked, World War II Army generator that Burtt saw in a John Wayne movie, then found on eBay.
"We all thought about Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton," Burtt said, "this energetic, sympathetic character who doesn't say a whole lot. Most animation is very dialogue heavy. There's dance, constant talking, punch lines. We used to wonder: How will we prepare the audience?"
Whether or not viewers give in to Wall-E is a billion-dollar question. "The box office from Pixar films hasn't been growing since Finding Nemo," Price said, speaking of the domestic box office. "Certainly Cars and Ratatouille were not as strong as the predecessor films." (Even The Incredibles, the best performer since Finding Nemo, trailed it in the US.) "If that trend were to continue with Wall-E, there would be questions raised about the soundness of the deal. Though of course there's always money to be made in merchandising." The Wall-E robots, sheets and Crocs may turn a profit, but the alpha success still has to be the film about a mute robot.
But Stanton is measuring the film's success in different terms.
"I'm not naive about what's at stake," he said. "But I almost feel like it's an obligation to not further the status quo if you become somebody with influence and exposure. I don't want to paint the same painting again. I don't want to make the same sculpture again. Why shouldn't a big movie studio be able to make those small independent kinds of pictures? Why not change it up?"
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