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The High House - Jessie Greengrass

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Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

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V for Vendetta - Alan Moore

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In Port Talbot, December 2018 - Banksy

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The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury

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Pig Song

By Margaret Atwood

This is what you changed me to:

a greypink vegetable with slug

eyes, buttock

incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,

a skin you stuff so you may feed

in your turn, a stinking wart

of flesh, a large tuber

of blood which munches

and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile

I have the sky, which is only half

caged, I have my weed corners,

I keep myself busy, singing

my song of roots and noses,

my song of dung. Madame,

this song offends you, these grunts

which you find oppressively sexual,

mistaking simple greed for lust.

I am yours. If you feed me garbage,

I will sing a song of garbage.

This is a hymn.

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Sun

By Hadara Bar-Nadav

Blistered apple,
gold that molts

the eye & boils
animals in their caves.

I touch & touch

& touch,

branding the hands
of each child.

A circle
of unmoored fury.

I see death all
around you—

your phantomed self
charred blue,

cast against
asphalt.

The body’s ash already
visible,

unglittering
in its cheap velvet.

Bow down
in the brilliance

of your borrowed light.

Let me ignite
your end.

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Gay Poems for Red States - Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.

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The Wild Iris

by Louise Gluck

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little.  And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

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Dune - Frank Herbert

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Princess Mononoke - directed by Hayao Miyazaki

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Princess Mononoke is a 1997 Japanese adult animated epic historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Dentsu. The film stars the voices of Yōji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, Yūko Tanaka, Kaoru Kobayashi, Masahiko Nishimura, Tsunehiko Kamijo, Akihiro Miwa, Mitsuko Mori, and Hisaya Morishige.

Princess Mononoke is set in the late Muromachi period of Japan (approximately 1336 to 1573 AD), but it includes fantasy elements. The story follows a young Emishi prince named Ashitaka, and his involvement in a struggle between the gods () of a forest and the humans who consume its resources. The film deals with themes of Shinto and environmentalism. The term is not a name, but a Japanese word for supernatural, shape-shifting beings that possess people and cause suffering, disease, or death.

The film was released in Japan on July 12, 1997, by Toho, and in the United States on October 29, 1999. This was the first Studio Ghibli film in the United States to be rated PG-13 by the MPA. It was a critical and commercial blockbuster, becoming the highest-grossing film in Japan of 1997, and also held Japan's box office record for domestic films until 2001's Spirited Away, another Miyazaki film. It was dubbed into English with a script by Neil Gaiman and initially distributed in North America by Miramax, where it sold well on home media despite not performing strongly at the box office. The film greatly increased Ghibli's popularity and influence outside Japan.

During the Muromachi period in Japan, an Emishi village is attacked by a hideous demon. The last Emishi prince, Ashitaka, kills it before it reaches the village, but it manages to grasp his arm and curse him before its death. The curse grants him superhuman strength, but it also causes a scar-like mark that will surround him, cause him pain, and eventually kill him. The villagers discover that the demon was a boar god (boar ), corrupted by an iron ball lodged in his body. The village's wise woman tells Ashitaka that he may find a cure in the western lands that the demon came from, and that he cannot return to his homeland.

Heading west, Ashitaka meets Jigo, an opportunistic monk who tells Ashitaka he may find help from the Great Forest Spirit, a deer-like animal god by day and a giant Night Walker by night. Nearby, men on a cliffside herd oxen to their home of Iron Town, led by Lady Eboshi, and repel an attack by a wolf pack led by the wolf goddess Moro, whom Eboshi wounds with a gun shot. Riding one of the wolves is San, a human girl. Down below, Ashitaka encounters San and the wolves, who rebuff his greeting. He then manages to rescue two of the men fallen from the cliff and transports them back through the forest, where he briefly glimpses the Great Forest Spirit.

Ashitaka and the survivors arrive at Iron Town, where he is greeted with fascination. Iron Town is a refuge for outcasts and lepers employed to process iron and create firearms, such as hand cannons and matchlock muskets. Ashitaka learns that the town was built by clearcutting forests to mine the iron, leading to conflicts with Asano, a local daimyō, and a giant boar god named Nago. Eboshi admits that she shot Nago, incidentally turning him into the demon that attacked Ashitaka's village. She also reveals that San, dubbed Princess Mononoke, was raised by the wolves and hates humankind.

San infiltrates Iron Town to kill Eboshi. Ashitaka intervenes and quickly subdues Eboshi and San while they are locked in combat. Amidst the hysteria he is shot by a villager, but the curse gives him the strength to carry San out of the village. San awakens and prepares to kill the weakened Ashitaka, but hesitates when he tells her that she is beautiful. She decides to trust him after the Forest Spirit heals his bullet wound that night. The next day, a boar clan led by the blind god Okkoto plans to attack Iron Town to save the forest. Eboshi sets out to kill the Forest Spirit with Jigo; Eboshi intends to give the god's head to the Emperor (who believes it will grant him immortality) in return for protection from Lord Asano, while Jigo desires the large reward being offered.

Ashitaka recovers and finds Iron Town besieged by Asano's samurai. The boar clan has been annihilated in battle, and Okkoto is badly wounded. Jigo's men trick Okkoto into leading them to the Forest Spirit. San tries to stop Okkoto but is swept up as his pain corrupts him into a demon. As everyone clashes at the pool of the Forest Spirit, Ashitaka and Moro save San, and then the Forest Spirit euthanizes Moro and Okkoto. As it begins to transform into the Night Walker, Eboshi shoots and decapitates it. Jigo steals the head, while the Forest Spirit's body bleeds ooze that spreads over the land and kills anything it touches. The forest and begin to die; Moro's head briefly comes alive and bites off Eboshi's right arm, but she survives. Enraged, San attempts to kill Eboshi again, but is stopped by Ashitaka, who consoles her and encourages her not to give up.

After Iron Town is evacuated, Ashitaka and San pursue Jigo and retrieve the head, returning it to the Forest Spirit. The Spirit dies, but its form washes over the land, healing it and lifting Ashitaka's curse. Ashitaka stays to help rebuild Iron Town, but promises to visit San in the forest. Grateful to Ashitaka and San, Eboshi vows to build a better town. The forest begins to regrow as a single kodama emerges from the brush.

Yōji Matsuda voices Prince Ashitaka, the last Ainu prince of the Emishi tribe whose traveling companion is Yakul, a red elk, a fictional species of elk that Miyazaki created for the film. Novelist Ali Shaw has described Yakul as being more similar to a red Lechwe than an elk. Miyazaki called Ashitaka a "melancholic boy who has a fate" and stated that Ashitaka's curse "is similar to the lives of people [at the time]". Ashitaka's English voice actor Billy Crudup stated that he liked Ashitaka as "an unexpected hero. He's not your usual wild, brave guy. He's really just a young, earnest man who's trying to lead a valuable life and protect his village."

Yuriko Ishida voices San, a young woman who was raised by the wolves and feels hatred for humans, but eventually comes to care for Ashitaka. In the English version, San is voiced by Claire Danes.

Ishida also voices Kaya, Ashitaka's bride-elect who breaks the rules of the village to gift him her dagger to remember her by. Tara Strong provides her voice in the English version, where she is referred to as his younger sister due to the translation.

Kaya is Ashitaka's fiancée. She is the fiancé decided in the village. In Japan, people call young men "aniki" or "nii-chan" or "anii-sama" even if they are not blood brothers.

Yūko Tanaka provides the voice of Lady Eboshi, the ruler of Irontown who continually clears the forest. Miyazaki stated that Eboshi was supposed to have a traumatic past, although it is not specifically mentioned in the film. Miyazaki said that Eboshi has a strong and secure personality, evident in the fact that she let Ashitaka move freely through the settlement unescorted, despite his unclear motives. He also said that Eboshi does not acknowledge the Emperor's authority in Irontown, a revolutionary view for the time, and displays an atypical attitude for a woman of that era in that she would not hesitate to sacrifice herself or those around her for her dreams. Miyazaki also said that Eboshi resembles a shirabyōshi. Eboshi's English voice actress Minnie Driver stated that she was interested in "the challenge of playing [a] woman who supports industry and represents the interests of man, in terms of achievement and greed." Driver viewed Eboshi as "a warrior, an innovator and a protector."

Kaoru Kobayashi provides the voice of Jiko-bō (, called "Jigo" in the English version), a monk and mercenary who befriends Ashitaka on his journey to the west. Miyazaki was unsure whether to make Jiko-bō a government spy, a ninja, a member of a religious group or "a very good guy." He eventually decided to give him elements of all of the above groups. In the English version, Jigo is voiced by Billy Bob Thornton.

Masahiko Nishimura voices Kohroku, an ox driver; John DeMita voices Kohroku in the English version. Miyazaki wrote Kohroku to be "an ordinary guy [who] didn't do anything heroic, right to the end", something he stated was contrary to films he had made up to that point.

Tsunehiko Kamijō provides the voice of Gonza, Eboshi's short-tempered but loyal bodyguard; he is voiced by John DiMaggio in the English version.

Akihiro Miwa voices Moro, a giant wolf god and San's adopted mother; Gillian Anderson provides her voice in the English version.

Mitsuko Mori provides the voice of Hii-sama, the wise woman of Ashitaka's village. In the English version, Hii-sama is voiced by Debi Derryberry.

Hisaya Morishige provides the voice of Okkoto-nushi (, called "Okkoto" in the English version), a blind boar god. In the English version, Okkoto is voiced by Keith David, who also voices the narrator in the film's opening sequence.

The cast also includes:

Akira Nagoya as the cattleman leader (牛飼いの長 , Ushikai no Osa);

Kimihiro Reizei as a Jibashiri (ジバシリ );

Tetsu Watanabe as a mountain wolf (山犬 , Yamainu);

Makoto Sato as Nago (ナゴの守 , Nago no Mori ) , a wild boar turned into a demon who curses Ashitaka when he attacks the Emishi village, voiced by John DiMaggio in the English version;

and Sumi Shimamoto as Toki (トキ ), Kohroku's wife, a former prostitute, and the leader of Eboshi's women, voiced by Jada Pinkett Smith in the English version.

Shiratani Unsui forest, Yakushima

In the late 1970s, Miyazaki drew sketches of a film about a princess living in the woods with a beast. Miyazaki began writing the film's plotline and drew the initial storyboards for the film in August 1994. He had difficulties adapting his early ideas and visualisations, because elements had already been used in My Neighbor Totoro and because of societal changes since the creation of the original sketches and image boards. This writer's block prompted him to accept a request for the creation of the On Your Mark promotional music video for the Chage and Aska song of the same title. According to Toshio Suzuki, the diversion allowed Miyazaki to return for a fresh start on the creation of Princess Mononoke. In April 1995, supervising animator Masashi Ando devised the character designs from Miyazaki's storyboard. In May 1995, Miyazaki drew the initial storyboards. That same month, Miyazaki and Ando went to the ancient forests of Yakushima, of Kyushu, an inspiration for the landscape of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and the mountains of Shirakami-Sanchi in northern Honshu for location scouting along with a group of art directors, background artists and digital animators for three days. Animation production commenced in July 1995. Miyazaki personally oversaw each of the 144,000 cels in the film, and is estimated to have retouched parts of 80,000 of them. The final storyboards of the film's ending were finished only months before the Japanese premiere date.

Inspired by John Ford, an Irish-American director best known for his Westerns, Miyazaki created Irontown as a "tight-knit frontier town" and populated it with "characters from outcast groups and oppressed minorities who rarely, if ever, appear in Japanese films." He made the characters "yearning, ambitious and tough." Miyazaki did not want to create an accurate history of Medieval Japan, and wanted to "portray the very beginnings of the seemingly insoluble conflict between the natural world and modern industrial civilization." The landscapes appearing in the film were inspired by Yakushima. Despite being set during the Muromachi period, the actual time period of Princess Mononoke depicts a "symbolic neverwhen clash of three proto-Japanese races (the Jomon, Yamato and Emishi)."

3D rendering was used to create writhing demon flesh and composite it onto a hand-drawn Ashitaka.

Princess Mononoke was produced with an estimated budget of ¥2.35 billion (approximately US$23.5 million). It was mostly hand-drawn, but incorporates some use of computer animation in approximately ten percent of the film. The computer-animated parts are designed to blend in and support the traditional cel animation, and are mainly used in images consisting of a mixture of computer generated graphics and traditional drawing. A further 10 minutes uses inked-and-painted, a technique used in all subsequent Studio Ghibli films. Most of the film is colored with traditional paint, based on the color schemes designed by Miyazaki and Michiyo Yasuda. However, producers agreed on the installation of computers to successfully complete the film prior to the Japanese premiere date. Telecom Animation Film Company and Oh! Production helped animate the film. Toei Animation and DR Movie helped with the painting process.

Two titles were originally considered for the film. One, ultimately chosen, has been translated into English as Princess Mononoke. The other title can be translated into English as The Legend of Ashitaka, and it contains an uncommon kanji 𦻙 that represents "a legend passed down from ear to ear without being recorded in official history", according to Miyazaki. In a Tokyo Broadcasting System program, televised on November 26, 2013, Toshio Suzuki mentioned that Miyazaki had preferred The Legend of Ashitaka as the title while Suzuki himself favoured Princess Mononoke, though the former title was eventually reused for the first song on the soundtrack. The English dub contains minor additional voice overs to explain nuances of Japanese culture to western audiences.

A central theme of Princess Mononoke is the environment. The film centers on the adventure of Ashitaka as he journeys to the west to undo a fatal curse inflicted upon him by Nago, a boar turned into a demon by Eboshi. Michelle J. Smith and Elizabeth Parsons said that the film "makes heroes of outsiders in all identity politics categories and blurs the stereotypes that usually define such characters". In the case of the deer god's destruction of the forest and Tataraba, Smith and Parsons said that the "supernatural forces of destruction are unleashed by humans greedily consuming natural resources". They also characterized Eboshi as a businesswoman who has a desire to make money at the expense of the forest, and also cite Eboshi's intention to destroy the forest to mine the mountain "embodies environmentalist evil". Deirdre M. Pike writes that Princess Mononoke is simultaneously part of nature and part of the problem. Mononoke represents the connection between the environment and humans, but also demonstrates that there is an imbalance in power between the two.

Two other themes found in the plot of Princess Mononoke are sexuality and disability. Speaking at the International Symposium on Leprosy / Hansen's Disease History in Tokyo, Miyazaki explained that he was inspired to portray people living with leprosy, "said to be an incurable disease caused by bad karma", after visiting the Tama Zenshoen Sanatorium near his home in Tokyo. Lady Eboshi is driven by her compassion for the disabled, and believes that blood from the Great Forest Spirit could allow her to "cure [her] poor lepers". Michelle Jarman, Assistant Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Wyoming, and Eunjung Kim, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the disabled and gendered sexual bodies were partially used as a transition from the feudal era to a hegemony that "embraces modern social systems, such as industrialization, gendered division of labor, institutionalization of people with diseases, and militarization of men and women." They likened Lady Eboshi to a monarch. Kim and Jarman suggested that Eboshi's disregard of ancient laws and curses towards sex workers and lepers was enlightenment reasoning and her exploitation of disabled people furthered her modernist viewpoints. Kim and Jarman conclude that Lady Eboshi's supposed benevolence in incorporating lepers and sex workers into her society leverages the social stigma attached to marginalized groups, pointing out that the hierarchical structures within Irontown still support the stigmatization of lepers and sex workers.

An additional theme is the morally ambiguous conflict between humankind's growth and development and Nature's need for preservation. According to the Chicago Sun-Times's Roger Ebert, "It is not a simplistic tale of good and evil, but the story of how humans, forest animals and nature gods all fight for their share of the new emerging order." Billy Crudup, who provided the English voice for Ashitaka, said "The movie was such an entirely different experience; it had a whole new sensibility I had never seen in animation. It also had something profound to say: that there has to be a give and take between man and nature. One of the things that really impressed me is that Miyazaki shows life in all its multi-faceted complexity, without the traditional perfect heroes and wicked villains. Even Lady Eboshi, who Ashitaka respects, is not so much evil as short-sighted." Minnie Driver, the English voice actress for Lady Eboshi, commented similarly: "It's one of the most remarkable things about the film: Miyazaki gives a complete argument for both sides of the battle between technological achievement and our spiritual roots in the forest. He shows that good and evil, violence and peace exist in us all. It's all about how you harmonize it all." Anime historian Susan Napier said there is no clear good vs. evil conflict in Princess Mononoke, unlike other films popular with children. Based on the multiple points of view the film adopts, San and Lady Eboshi can simultaneously be viewed as heroic or villainous. San defends the forest and viewers empathize with her. But she also attacks innocent people, complicating how we evaluate her. Opposed to San, Eboshi tries to destroy the forest and could be considered a villain. But everything she does is out of a desire to protect her village and see it prosper. San and Lady Eboshi survive until film's end, defying the usual convention of good triumphing over evil with the antagonist defeated. Napier concluded that the resolution of the conflict is left ambiguous, implying that Lady Eboshi and San will be able to come to some sort of compromise. The ambiguity suggests that there are no true villains or heroes.

Dan Jolin of said that a potential theme could be that of lost innocence. Miyazaki attributes this to his experience of making his previous film, Porco Rosso, and the wars in the former Yugoslavia, which he cites as an example of mankind never learning, making it difficult for him to go back to making a film such as Kiki's Delivery Service, where he has been quoted as saying "It felt like children were being born to this world without being blessed. How could we pretend to them that we're happy?"

Duality is central to Eboshi's characterization. Benjamin Thevenin, Assistant Professor of Theater and Media Arts at Brigham Young University, said Eboshi does not fully understand the harm she does to the spirits. Her focus is on creating a safe home for her people. She holds no malicious intent toward nature and its spirits until they begin attacking her people. Once nature attacks, she gathers her soldiers to protect the inhabitants of her town, a place where all are welcome. Irontown is a haven for former sex workers and lepers. She brings them to Irontown and gives them jobs, hospitality, and a kindness that they have never experienced before. The same treatment goes for all Irontown's inhabitants, not just the sickly and the scorned. Lady Eboshi treats everyone equally, no matter the race, sex, or history of the individual, creating a caring community. While Eboshi hates San and the forest spirits, she keeps a garden in her town. Her care for the garden implies that her intention is not to ravage nature to no end, but rather to help her own people. Thevenin concluded that although Eboshi can be seen as the film's villain, she is also a hero to the citizens of Irontown and to humankind in general.

At first glance Lady Eboshi and Princess Mononoke suggest a very dualistic and dichotomous view of life. Lady Eboshi works for the survival of humankind and San for the survival of nature. But Miyazaki, through the character of Ashitaka, argues that we should accept a non-dualistic view of living, accepting that nature and humans coexist. Ashitaka acts as a healer, mediating between humanity and nature. Ashitaka's curse, obtained while defending his people from a demonized boar god, ultimately symbolizes the destructive force of life, forcing him to recognize the commonalities present in the conflict between industrialized society and nature. Ashitaka's quest for a cure by the Great Forest Spirit symbolizes humanity's quest to find a way to live on earth that accepts the interbeing of all of earth's creatures. Ashitaka takes responsibility for the preservation and restoration of nature when he returns the Great Forest Spirit's head, transferring the guardianship of nature from the now dead Great Forest Spirit to humanity. With guardianship of nature delegated to humanity, the dichotomy between humanity and nature is dismantled and the two forces are tasked with recognizing their coexistence.

Another theme in this film is between individualism and societal conformity. According to University of Bristol professors Christos Ellinas, Neil Allan and Anders Johansson, this struggle can be seen between San, a strong individualistic force, and Eboshi, the leader of a great society. San has fully committed to living with the wolves in the forest and to renouncing her association with the human race. Eboshi has vowed to sustain her society of Irontown by any means including destroying the environment. The people of Irontown have a cohesive ideology and agree with Eboshi to protect Irontown at the cost of the environment's destruction. This conformity can be found within their society, because "even though there is an envisioned culture at which an organization abides to [sic], achieving coherence at lower aggregation levels (e.g. individuals) is increasingly challenging due to its emergent nature".

Princess Mononoke was released theatrically in Japan on July 12, 1997. The film was extremely successful in Japan and with both anime fans and arthouse moviegoers in English-speaking countries.

Since Walt Disney Studios had made a distribution deal with Tokuma Shoten for Studio Ghibli's films in 1996, it was the first film from Studio Ghibli along with Kiki's Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky to have been dubbed into English by Disney; in this case, subsidiary Miramax Films was assigned to release the movie in the US on October 29, 1999. In response to demands from Miramax chairman Harvey Weinstein to edit the film, one of Miyazaki's producers sent Weinstein a samurai sword with the message: "No cuts." Promotion manager, Steve Alpert, revealed that Weinstein had wanted to trim the film down from 135 minutes to 90 minutes "despite having promised not to do so." When Alpert informed him that Miyazaki would not agree to these demands, Weinstein flew into one of his infamous rages and threatened Alpert that he would "never work in this...industry again".

Weinstein hired Neil Gaiman to write the English script, and he chose to simplify some of the Japanese terminology for this dub, with words like Jibarashi becoming "Mercenary" and Shishigami becoming "Forest Spirit". According to him at one of the American screenings of the dub, the release was somewhat delayed because the original recordings deviated from the English script as written. Despite Gaiman's independent fame as an author, his role as scriptwriter for the dub was not heavily promoted: Studio Ghibli requested that Miramax remove some executives' names from the poster for the film, but the executives (Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, and Scott Martin) decided that Gaiman's name was contractually expendable.

On April 29, 2000, the English-dub version of Princess Mononoke was released theatrically in Japan along with the documentary Mononoke hime in U.S.A. The documentary was directed by Toshikazu Sato and featured Miyazaki visiting the Walt Disney Studios and various film festivals. The film had a limited theatrical re-release in the United States during July 2018, and again during April 2022 for the 25th anniversary of its original Japanese release.

Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing Japanese film of 1997, earning ¥11.3 billion in distribution rental earnings. It became the highest-grossing film in Japan, beating the record set by in 1982, but was surpassed several months later by . The film earned total domestic gross receipts of ¥20.18 billion.

It was the top-grossing anime film in the United States in January 2001, but because its US release was only in select theaters, the film did not fare as well financially in the country when released in October 1999. It grossed $2,298,191 for the first eight weeks. It showed more strength internationally, where it earned a total of $11 million outside Japan, bringing its worldwide total to $159,375,308 at the time. On December 6, 2016, GKIDS announced that it would screen the film in US cinemas on January 5 and January 9, 2017, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, bundled with the On Your Mark short. The film's limited US re-release in 2018 grossed $1,423,877 over five days, bringing its US total to $3,799,185 and worldwide total to $160,799,185. As of 2020, the film has grossed $194.3 million.

For its 25th anniversary, Princess Mononoke was screened in 35mm at New York City's Japan Society on July 22, 2022.

In Japan, the film was released on VHS by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on June 26, 1998. A LaserDisc edition was also released by Tokuma Japan Communications on the same day. The film was released on DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on November 21, 2001, with bonus extras added, including the international versions of the film as well as the storyboards. By 2007, Princess Mononoke sold 4.4million DVD units in Japan. At an average retail price of ¥4,700, this is equivalent to approximately ¥20,680 million ($259.18 million) in Japanese sales revenue as of 2007.

In July 2000, Buena Vista Home Entertainment via Miramax Home Entertainment announced plans to release the film on VHS and DVD in North America on August 29. Initially, the DVD version of Princess Mononoke wasn't going to include the Japanese-language track at the request of Buena Vista's Japan division. Because the film hadn't been released on DVD in Japan yet, there were concerns that "a foreign-released DVD containing the Japanese language track will allow for the importation of such a DVD to Japan, which could seriously hurt the local sales of a future release of the [film]". The fansite Nausicaa.net organized an email campaign for fans to include the Japanese language track, while DVD Talk began an online petition to retain the Japanese language track. The DVD release of Princess Mononoke was delayed as a result. Miramax Home Entertainment released the DVD on December 19, 2000 with the original Japanese audio, the English dubbed audio and extras including a trailer and a documentary with interviews from the English dub voice actors. The film was released on Blu-ray disc in Japan on December 4, 2013.

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Princess Mononoke on Blu-ray Disc on November 18, 2014. In its first week, it sold 21,860 units; by November 23, 2014, it had grossed $502,332. It was later included in Disney's "The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki" Blu-ray set, released on November 17, 2015. GKIDS re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on October 17, 2017. As of October 2020, the film has grossed $9,232,906 from Blu-ray sales in the United States. In total, Mononoke's video releases in Japan and the United States grossed an estimated $268 million in physical sales.

In the United Kingdom, the film's Studio Ghibli anniversary release appeared several times on the annual lists of best-selling foreign language film on home video, ranking number six in 2015 (below five other Studio Ghibli anime films), number ten in 2016, number five in 2018 (below four other Japanese films), and number three in 2019 (below Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro).

The film was aired on Nippon TV (NTV) in Japan, on 22 January 1999. It became NTV's most-watched film up until then with a 35.1% audience rating, surpassing the 28.4% record previously set by Tsuribaka Nisshi 4 in 1994. In turn, Princess Mononoke was later surpassed by Spirited Away, when it aired in 2003.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 115 critic reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's consensus reads, "With its epic story and breathtaking visuals, Princess Mononoke is a landmark in the world of animation." On Metacritic, it has an average score of 76 out of 100 based on 29 reviews, indictating "generally favorable reviews".

The Daily Yomiuri's Aaron Gerow called the film a "powerful compilation of Miyazaki's world, a cumulative statement of his moral and filmic concerns." Leonard Klady of said that Princess Mononoke "is not only more sharply drawn, it has an extremely complex and adult script" and the film "has the soul of a romantic epic, and its lush tones, elegant score by Joe Hisaishi and full-blooded characterizations give it the sweep of cinema's most grand canvases". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called Princess Mononoke "a great achievement and a wonderful experience, and one of the best films of the year. [...] You won't find many Hollywood love stories (animated or otherwise) so philosophical." Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly called the film "a windswept pinnacle of its art" and that it "has the effect of making the average Disney film look like just another toy story". Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said that the film "brings a very different sensibility to animation, a medium [Miyazaki] views as completely suitable for straight dramatic narrative and serious themes." In his review, Dave Smith from Gamers' Republic called it "one of the greatest animated films ever created, and easily one of the best films of 1999."

Roger Ebert placed Princess Mononoke sixth on his top ten movies of 1999. In 2001, the Japanese magazine ranked Princess Mononoke 47th in their list of 100 Best Anime Productions of All Time. It ranked 488th on 's list of the 500 greatest films. Time Out ranked the film 26th on 50 greatest animated films. It also ranked 26 on s list of 50 greatest animated films.

James Cameron cited Princess Mononoke as an influence on his 2009 film . He acknowledged that it shares themes with Princess Mononoke, including its clash between cultures and civilizations, and cited Princess Mononoke as an influence on the ecosystem of Pandora.

Princess Mononoke is the first animated feature film to win the Japan Academy Prize for Best Picture. For the 70th Academy Awards ceremony, Princess Mononoke was the Japanese submission to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not successfully nominated. Hayao Miyazaki was also nominated for an Annie Award for his work on the film.

The film score of Princess Mononoke was composed and performed by Joe Hisaishi, the soundtrack composer for nearly all of Miyazaki's productions, and Miyazaki wrote the lyrics of the two vocal tracks, "The Tatara Women Work Song" and its title song. The music was performed by Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Hiroshi Kumagai. The soundtrack was released in Japan by Tokuma Japan Communications on July 2, 1997, and the North American version was released by Milan Records on October 12, 1999.

The titular theme song was performed by counter-tenor Yoshikazu Mera. For the English adaptation, Sasha Lazard sang the song. During the movie Hisaishi makes use of a few known classical pieces and quotes them, such as Dmitri Shostakovich's 5th symphony. As with other Studio Ghibli films, additional albums featuring soundtrack themes in alternative versions have been released. The image album features early versions of the themes, recorded at the beginning of the film production process, and used as source of inspiration for the various artists involved. The symphonic suite features longer compositions, each encompassing several of the movie themes, performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mario Klemens.

In 2012, it was announced that Studio Ghibli and British theatre company Whole Hog Theatre would be bringing Princess Mononoke to the stage. It is the first stage adaptation of a Studio Ghibli work. The contact between Whole Hog Theatre and Studio Ghibli was facilitated by Nick Park of Aardman Animations after he sent footage of Whole Hog performances to Studio Ghibli's Toshio Suzuki. The play features large puppets made out of recycled and reclaimed materials.

The first performances were scheduled for London's New Diorama Theatre and sold out in 72 hours, a year in advance. In March 2013, it was announced that the show would transfer to Japan after its first run of shows in London. A second series of performances followed in London after the return from Tokyo. The second run of London performances sold out in four and half hours. The play received positive reviews and was one of Lyn Gardner's theatre picks in The Guardian. On April 27, 2013, the play was presented at Nico Nico Douga's Cho Party and was streamed online in Japan.

1. ^ "5 reasons to celebrate Princess Mononoke: Hayao Miyazaki's animated masterpiece turns 20". BFI.

2. ^ Miyazaki, H. (Director). (1997). Princess Mononoke [Film]. Studio Ghibli.

3. ^ "Interview: Miyazaki on Mononoke-hime". Nausicaa.net. Translated by Ryoko Toyama. Tokuma Shoten. July 1997. Archived from the original on April 10, 2009. Q: Kaya, who saw Ashitaka off, loved Ashitaka, didn't she?
M: Yes of course. She calls him "Anisama (older brother)", but it just means that he is an older boy in her clan.
Q: So they are not real brother and sister.
M: If they were, that wouldn't be interesting at all. There used to be a lot of marriage among blood relations in Japan. I thought of Kaya as a girl who is determined to do so (marry Ashitaka). But Ashitaka chose San. It's not strange at all to live with San, who lives with such a brutal fate. That's life.

4. ^ Leavey, John (2010). "Possessed by and of: Up against Seeing: Princess Mononoke". ImageTexT. University of Florida. 5 (2). Archived from the original on December 15, 2012.

5. ^ Fuster, Jeremy (January 6, 2017). "'Princess Mononoke' Turns 20: 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Animated Classic". . Archived from the original on July 30, 2021.

6. ^ "Hayao Miyazaki Chat Transcript - Movie: Princess Mononoke". princess-mononoke.com. Miramax Films. November 4, 1999. Archived from the original on June 29, 2007. Q: The report is that you retouched by hand over 80,000 cels of animation in Mononoke Hime. Is this true?
M: I certainly never counted how many cels one by one. But I look at and sign off on every cel. It's not like every cel needs correcting or touching up. Many are perfect the way they are. That that makes me very gratified. My job is to maintain overall, in every cel, a standard that I have set for the film. So as long as each cel reaches that standard, the less work for me.

7. Toshio Uratani (2004). Princess Mononoke: Making of a Masterpiece (Documentary). Japan: Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

8. ^ "Wettbewerb/In Competition". Moving Pictures, Berlinale Extra. Berlin: 32. February 11-22, 1998.

9. ^ Miyazaki, Hayao (July 31, 1996). "「もののけ姫」 企画書" [Princess Mononoke Planning Memo]. 出発点 [Starting Point]. San Francisco: Viz Media. pp. 272-274. ISBN 978-1-4215-0594-7. Archived from the original on August 28, 2014.

10. ^ Gwendolyn Morgan (2015). "Creatures in Crisis: Apocalyptic Environmental Visions in Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke". Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities. 2 (3): 172-183. doi:10.5250/resilience.2.3.0172. JSTOR 10.5250/resilience.2.3.0172. S2CID 156400474.

11. Pike, Deidre M. (2014). Enviro-Toons: Green Themes in Animated Cinema and Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-7864-9002-8.

12. ^ Wendi, Sierra; Alysah, Berwald; Melissa, Guck; Erica, Maeder (January 1, 2015). "Nature, Technology, and Ruined Women: Ecofeminism and Princess Mononoke". The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal. 1 (1). Archived from the original on February 13, 2019.

13. ^ McCarter, Charles (October 20, 1999). "The Remaking of a Myth: Princess Mononoke in America". Ex.org - EX: The Online World of Anime & Manga. Archived from the original on August 6, 2010.

14. ^ Thevenin, Benjamin (October 1, 2013). "Princess Mononoke and beyond: New nature narratives for children". Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture. 4 (2): 147-170. doi:10.1386/iscc.4.2.147_1.

15. ^ Cheng, Catherine (June 2019). "Nature and the Smiths in Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke". Tamkang Review. 49.2: 27-48. doi:10.6184/TKR.201906_49(2).0002. Archived from the original on April 28, 2023.

16. ^ Ellinas, Christos; Allan, Neil; Johansson, Anders (June 30, 2017). "Dynamics of organizational culture: Individual beliefs vs. social conformity". PLOS ONE. 12 (6): e0180193. arXiv:. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1280193E. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0180193. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC . PMID 28665960.

17. ^ "'Princess Mononoke: 20th Anniversary' Comes to U.S. Cinemas on January 5 and 9 Only". Anime News Network. December 6, 2016. Archived from the original on October 28, 2020.

18. (in Japanese). Walt Disney Japan. Archived from the original on October 15, 2011.

19. ^ Statistical Yearbook 2017 (PDF). United Kingdom: British Film Institute (BFI). 2017. pp. 140-1. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 20, 2022.

20. ^ Statistical Yearbook 2019 (PDF). United Kingdom: British Film Institute (BFI). 2019. pp. 103-4. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 26, 2022.

21. ^ Hamano, Keiji; Kitae, Hiroyuki; Udagawa, Shoji; Watanabe, Yasuko; Uchiyama, Takashi (November 2007). The Japanese Market for UK Films. Cinema Alliance Limited, UK Film Council, British Film Institute. pp. 58-9. Archived from the original on September 23, 2022 - via Yumpu.

22. ^ Turan, Kenneth (October 29, 1999). "'Mononoke' a Haunting, Magical World of Fantasy". Los Angeles Times. p. 1. Archived from the original on October 16, 2012.

23. ^ Ito, Norihiro (December 25, 2009). "新作「アバター」宮崎アニメにオマージュ Ｊ・キャメロン監督 (New Film Avatar Homage to Miyazaki's Animated Film: J. Cameron)". Sankei Shimbun (in Japanese). Archived from the original on December 28, 2009.

Clements, Jonathan; McCarthy, Helen (2006). "Princess Mononoke". The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation since 1917. California: Stone Bridge Press. pp. 505-506. ISBN 1-933330-10-4.

Galbraith IV, Stuart (2008). The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-1461673743.

Kim, Eunjung; Jarman, Michelle (April 2008). "Modernity's Rescue Mission: Postcolonial Transactions of Disability and Sexuality" (PDF). Canadian Journal of Film Studies. 17 (1): 52-68. doi:10.3138/cjfs.17.1.52. ISSN 0847-5911. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 30, 2013.

McCarthy, Helen (1999). "Princess Mononoke: The Nature of Love". Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press. pp. 181-204. ISBN 978-1880656419.

Smith, Michelle J.; Parsons, Elizabeth (February 2012). "Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli's Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox's Fern Gully (1992)". Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. Routledge. 26 (1): 25-37. doi:10.1080/10304312.2012.630138. S2CID 144411247.

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Princess Mononoke is a 1997 Japanese adult animated epic historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Dentsu. The film stars the voices of Yōji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, Yūko Tanaka, Kaoru Kobayashi, Masahiko Nishimura, Tsunehiko Kamijo, Akihiro Miwa, Mitsuko Mori, and Hisaya Morishige.

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WALL-E - directed by Andrew Stanton

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WALL-E (stylized with an interpunct as WALL·E) is a 2008 American animated science fiction romance film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton, produced by Jim Morris, and written by Stanton and Jim Reardon. It stars the voices of Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, with Sigourney Weaver and Fred Willard. The film follows a solitary robot named WALL-E on a future, uninhabitable, deserted Earth in 2805, left to clean up garbage. He is visited by a robot called EVE sent from the starship Axiom, with whom he falls in love and pursues across the galaxy.

After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt Pixar had created believable simulations of underwater physics and was willing to direct a film set largely in space. WALL-E has minimal dialogue in its early sequences; many of the characters in the film do not have voices, but instead communicate with body language and robotic sounds that were designed by Burtt. The film incorporates various topics including consumerism, corporatocracy, nostalgia, waste management, human environmental impact and concerns, obesity/ sedentary lifestyles, and global catastrophic risk. It is also Pixar's first animated film with segments featuring live-action characters. Thomas Newman composed the film's musical score. The film cost $180 million to produce, a record-breaking sum for an animated film at the time. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film titled for its theatrical release.

WALL-E was released in the United States on June 27, 2008. The film received critical acclaim for its animation, story, voice acting, characters, visuals, score, sound design, screenplay, use of minimal dialogue, and scenes of romance. It was also commercially successful, grossing $521.3 million worldwide and becoming the ninth-highest grossing film of 2008. It won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation, the final Nebula Award for Best Script, the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with five additional Oscar nominations. The film was widely named by critics and organizations, including the National Board of Review and American Film Institute, as one of the best films of 2008, and to be considered among the greatest animated films ever made.

In 2021, WALL-E became the second Pixar feature film (after ) to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In September 2022, at the request of Stanton, Disney licensed WALL-E to The Criterion Collection, who re-released the film as a special edition 4K Blu-Ray-standard Blu-ray combo pack on November 22, 2022, marking the first Pixar film to ever receive such an honor.

In the 29th century, Earth is a garbage-strewn wasteland due to an ecocide, caused by rampant consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental neglect.

Humanity is nowhere to be seen, having been evacuated by the megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL) to space on giant starliners, leaving trash compacting robots to clean up the planet, seven hundred years prior. The cleanup has failed and the last remaining active robot, named Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth Class (WALL·E) has developed a personality. WALL·E remains active by salvaging parts from other inactive robots and lives with his pet cockroach as his only companion in a large truck designed to carry the robots.

One day, WALL·E's routine of compressing trash and collecting interesting objects is broken by the arrival of an unmanned probe carrying an egg-shaped robot named Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) which is sent to scan the planet for signs of sustainable life. WALL·E is smitten by the sleek, otherworldly robot, and the two begin to connect, until EVE goes into standby mode when WALL·E shows her his most recent find: a living seedling. The probe ship eventually returns and collects EVE and the plant, with WALL·E clinging on. The probe ship then returns to its mothership, the starliner Axiom.

In the centuries since the Axiom left Earth, its passengers are now morbidly obese due to microgravity and the lack of physical activity (they move on hover-chairs instead of walking), with robots catering to their every whim. Even Captain B. McCrea is used to sitting back while his robotic AI autopilot helm, nicknamed AUTO, pilots the ship. McCrea is unprepared to receive the positive probe response, but discovers that placing the plant in the ship's Holo-Detector will trigger a hyperjump back to Earth so that humanity can begin recolonization. When McCrea inspects EVE's storage compartment, the plant is missing, with EVE blaming WALL·E for its disappearance.

EVE is deemed faulty and taken to diagnostics. Mistaking the process for torture, WALL·E intervenes and inadvertently releases all the other faulty bots, causing him and EVE to be designated as rogues. Frustrated, EVE tries to send WALL·E home in an escape pod, but before she can, the two witness a small robot, GO-4, stowing the plant in a pod set to self-destruct, revealing that WALL·E did not steal the plant. WALL·E tries retrieving it, but is launched into space. EVE uses an emergency exit to chase after WALL·E, and witnesses the pod explode, although both he and the plant survive unscathed. He and EVE reconcile, celebrating with a dance in space around the Axiom.

EVE brings the plant back to McCrea, who watches her recordings of Earth, concluding that they can and must save it. However, AUTO reveals that it has been programmed with the secret no-return directive A113 issued after BnL CEO Shelby Forthright inaccurately believed Earth could not be saved; GO-4 attempted to dispose of the plant on AUTO's instruction to make EVE seem faulty. When McCrea countermands the directive, AUTO and GO-4 mutiny, electrocuting WALL·E, forcefully putting EVE into standby, throwing them both down a garbage chute and locking McCrea in his quarters. EVE (having been reactivated by a mouse-like robot) and WALL·E are nearly ejected into space with the ship's refuse, but Microbe Obliterator (M-O), a cleaning robot who had been following WALL·E's dirt trail across the ship, saves the two when he gets stuck when the gate closes, prompting the Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Axiom Class (WALL·A) garbage bots to abort the ejection. As humans and robots help in securing the plant, McCrea and AUTO fight for control of the Axiom. AUTO crushes WALL·E using the Holo-Detector in a last-ditch attempt to keep the human passengers in space; McCrea eventually overpowers and deactivates AUTO by switching it to manual mode, and EVE successfully inserts the plant, initiating the hyperjump.

Arriving back on Earth, EVE quickly repairs WALL·E, but finds that his memory and personality have been erased. Heartbroken, EVE gives WALL·E a goodbye "kiss", which restores him to his normal self. WALL-E and EVE reunite as the Axiom inhabitants take their first steps on Earth. During the credits, humans and robots turn the ravaged planet into a paradise, and the plant grows into a mighty tree, which EVE and WALL·E rest beneath.

Ben Burtt as WALL·E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-Class), a compactor robot who has achieved sentience, he is the only one still functioning on Earth. He is a small mobile compactor box accompanied by his cockroach friend Hal. He collects trinkets from the garbage and displays them at his home, where he watches a video cassette of 20th Century Studios' Hello, Dolly!, mimicking the dance sequences.
Burtt also voices M-O (Microbe-Obliterator), a cleaning robot.

Elissa Knight as EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a glossy white egg-shaped probe robot with blue LED eyes, whose directive is to verify the habitability of planets for humans. She moves using antigravity and is equipped with scanners, specimen storage, and a cannon which she is quick to use.

Jeff Garlin as Captain B. McCrea, the captain of the Axiom.

MacInTalk, the text-to-speech program for Apple Macintosh computers, is the voice of AUTO (pronounced Otto), the Axiom's villainous AI autopilot which handles command functions of the ship. Loyal only to directive A113, it and GO-4 are the only computers not influenced by WALL-E.

John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy as John and Mary, who live on the Axiom, so dependent on their automatic services as to be oblivious to their surroundings. They are brought out of their trances by encounters with WALL-E and fall in love with each other.

Sigourney Weaver as the Axiom's computer. Stanton joked to Weaver: "You realize you get to be 'Mother' now?" referring to the ship's computer in the film , starring Weaver.

Fred Willard as Shelby Forthright, owner of the Buy n Large Corporation and President of Earth. The only major live-action character, appearing only in videos recorded around the time of the Axiom's launch in the 22nd century. Forthright proposed the plan to evacuate Earth's population and then clean up the planet so they could return within five years. Discovering that Earth had become too toxic to support life, the cleanup and recolonization were abandoned. Forthright issued directive A113 preventing anyone from returning to Earth. As of 2023, Forthright is the only live-action character with a speaking role in any Pixar film.

Michael Crawford and Marianne McAndrew appear in an archival recording performing "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello, Dolly!.

BACK ON M-O AND WALLY []

M-O just finishes cleaning the floor.
Wally is fascinated.
Impishly makes another mark.
M-O compulsively cleans it. Can't resist.

M-O (bleeps):
[Look, it stays clean. You got that?]

Wally wipes the bottom of his tread on M-O's face.
M-O loses it.
Scrubs his own face.

-Stanton wrote the screenplay to focus on the visuals
and as a guide to what the sound effects needed to convey

Andrew Stanton conceived WALL-E during a lunch with fellow writers John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft in 1994. was near completion and the writers brainstormed ideas for their next projects-, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo-at this lunch. Stanton asked, "What if mankind had to leave Earth and somebody forgot to turn off the last robot?" Having struggled for many years with making the characters in Toy Story appealing, Stanton found his simple Robinson Crusoe-esque idea of a lonely robot on a deserted planet strong. Stanton made WALL·E a waste collector as the idea was instantly understandable, and because it was a low-status menial job that made him sympathetic. Stanton also liked the imagery of stacked cubes of garbage. He did not find the idea dark because having a planet covered in garbage was for him a childish imagining of disaster.

Stanton and Docter developed the film under the title of Trash Planet for two months in 1995, but they did not know how to develop the story and Docter chose to direct Monsters, Inc. instead. Stanton came up with the idea of WALL-E finding a plant, because his life as the sole inhabitant on a deserted world reminded Stanton of a plant growing among pavements. Before they turned their attention to other projects, Stanton and Lasseter thought about having WALL-E fall in love, as it was the necessary progression away from loneliness. Stanton started writing WALL-E again in 2002 while completing Finding Nemo. Stanton formatted his script in a manner reminiscent of Dan O'Bannon's . O'Bannon wrote his script in a manner Stanton found reminded him of , where visual descriptions were done in continuous lines of a few words. Stanton wrote his robot "dialogue" conventionally, but placed them in brackets. In late 2003, Stanton and a few others created a story reel of the first twenty minutes of the film. Lasseter and Steve Jobs were impressed and officially began development, though Jobs stated he did not like the title, originally spelled " W.A.L.-E."

While the first act of WALL-E "fell out of the sky" for Stanton, he had originally wanted aliens to plant EVE to explore Earth and the rest of the film was different. When WALL-E comes to the Axiom, he incites a -style rebellion by the robots against the remnants of the human race, which were cruel alien Gels (completely devolved, gelatinous, boneless, legless, see-through, green creatures that resemble Jell-O). James Hicks, a physiologist, mentioned to Stanton the concept of atrophy and the effects prolonged weightlessness would have on humans living in space for an inordinately extended time period. Therefore, this was the inspiration of the humans degenerating into the alien Gels, and their ancestry would have been revealed in a Planet of the Apes-style ending. The Gels also spoke a made-up gibberish language, but Stanton scrapped this idea because he thought it would be too complicated for the audience to understand and they could easily be driven off from the storyline. The Gels had a royal family, who host a dance in a castle on a lake in the back of the ship, and the Axiom curled up into a ball when returning to Earth in this incarnation of the story. Stanton decided this was too bizarre and unengaging, and conceived humanity as "big babies". Stanton developed the metaphorical theme of the humans learning to stand again and "grow[ing] up", wanting WALL-E and EVE's relationship to inspire humanity because he felt few films explore how utopian societies come to exist. The process of depicting the descendants of humanity as the way they appear in the movie was slow. Stanton first decided to put a nose and ears on the Gels so the audience could recognize them. Eventually, fingers, legs, clothes, and other characteristics were added until they arrived at the concept of being fetus-like to allow the audience to see themselves in the characters.

In a later version of the film, AUTO comes to the docking bay to retrieve EVE's plant. The film would have its first cutaway to the captain, but Stanton moved that as he found it too early to begin moving away from WALL·E's point-of-view. As an homage to , AUTO takes the plant and goes into the bowels of the ship into a room resembling a brain where he watches videos of Buy n Large's scheme to clean up the Earth falling apart through the years. Stanton removed this to keep some mystery as to why the plant is taken from EVE. The captain appears to be unintelligent, but Stanton wanted him to just be unchallenged; otherwise he would have not been sympathetic. One example of how unintelligent the captain was depicted initially is that he was seen to wear his hat upside-down, only to fix it before he challenges AUTO. In the finished film, he merely wears it casually atop his head, tightening it when he really takes command of the Axiom.

Stanton also moved the moment where WALL-E reveals his plant (which he had snatched from the self-destructing escape pod) from producing it from a closet to immediately after his escape, as it made EVE happier and gave them stronger motivation to dance around the ship. Originally, EVE would have been electrocuted by AUTO, and then be quickly saved from ejection at the hands of the Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Axiom-class (WALL·A) robots, by WALL-E. He would have then revived her by replacing her power unit with a cigarette lighter he brought from Earth. Stanton reversed this following a 2007 test screening, as he wanted to show EVE replacing her directive of bringing the plant to the captain with repairing WALL-E, and it made WALL-E even more heroic if he held the holo-detector open despite being badly hurt. The idea of WALL-E losing his memory and personality came after the braintrust team abandoned a scene where EVE had been shot in her heart battery and WALL-E gave her his own battery instead. Stanton felt half the audience at the screening believed the humans would be unable to cope with living on Earth and would have died out after the film's end. Jim Capobianco, director of the Ratatouille short film Your Friend the Rat, created an end credits animation that continued the story-and stylized in different artistic movements throughout history-to clarify an optimistic tone.

WALL-E was the most complex Pixar production since Monsters, Inc. because of the world and the history that had to be conveyed. Whereas most Pixar films have up to 75,000 storyboards, WALL-E required 125,000. Production designer Ralph Eggleston wanted the lighting of the first act on Earth to be romantic, and that of the second act on the Axiom to be cold and sterile. During the third act, the romantic lighting is slowly introduced into the Axiom environment. Pixar studied Chernobyl and the city of Sofia to create the ruined world; art director Anthony Christov was from Bulgaria and recalled Sofia used to have problems storing its garbage. Eggleston bleached out the whites on Earth to make WALL-E feel vulnerable. The overexposed light makes the location look more vast. Because of the haziness, the cubes making up the towers of garbage had to be large, otherwise they would have lost shape (in turn, this helped save rendering time). The dull tans of Earth subtly become soft pinks and blues when EVE arrives. When WALL-E shows EVE all his collected items, all the lights he has collected light up to give an inviting atmosphere, like a Christmas tree. Eggleston tried to avoid the colors yellow and green so WALL-E-who was made yellow to emulate a tractor-would not blend into the deserted Earth, and to make the plant more prominent.

WALL·E finds a bra. Roger Deakins and Dennis Muren were consulted on realistic lighting including backgrounds that are less focused than foregrounds.

Stanton also wanted the lighting to look realistic and evoke the science fiction films of his youth. He thought that Pixar captured the physics of being underwater with Finding Nemo and so for WALL·E, he wanted to push that for air. While rewatching some of his favorite science fiction films, he realized that Pixar's other movies had lacked the look of 70 mm film and its barrel distortion, lens flare, and racking focus. Producer Jim Morris invited Roger Deakins and Dennis Muren to advise on lighting and atmosphere. Muren spent several months with Pixar, while Deakins hosted one talk and was requested to stay on for another two weeks. Stanton said Muren's experience came from integrating computer animation into live-action settings, while Deakins helped them understand not to overly complicate their camerawork and lighting. 1970s Panavision cameras were used to help the animators understand and replicate handheld imperfections like unfocused backgrounds in digital environments. The first lighting test included building a three-dimensional replica of WALL-E, filming it with a 70 mm camera, and then trying to replicate that in the computer. Stanton cited the shallow lens work of Gus Van Sant's films as an influence, as it created intimacy in each close-up. Stanton chose angles for the virtual cameras that a live-action filmmaker would choose if filming on a set.

Stanton wanted the Axiom's interior to resemble Shanghai and Dubai. Eggleston studied 1960s NASA paintings and the original concept art for Tomorrowland for the Axiom, to reflect that era's sense of optimism. Stanton remarked "We are all probably very similar in our backgrounds here [at Pixar] in that we all miss the Tomorrowland that was promised us from the heyday of Disneyland," and wanted a " jet pack" feel. Pixar also studied the Disney Cruise Line and visited Las Vegas, which was helpful in understanding artificial lighting. Eggleston based his Axiom designs on the futuristic architecture of Santiago Calatrava. Eggleston divided the inside of the ship into three sections; the rear's economy class has a basic gray concrete texture with graphics keeping to the red, blue, and white of the BnL logo. The coach class with living/shopping spaces has "S" shapes as people are always looking for "what's around the corner". Stanton intended to have many colorful signs, but he realized this would overwhelm the audience and went with Eggleston's original idea of a small number of larger signs. The premier class is a large Zen-like spa with colors limited to turquoise, cream, and tan, and leads on to the captain's warm carpeted and wooded quarters and the sleek dark bridge. In keeping with the artificial Axiom, camera movements were modeled after those of the steadicam.

The use of live action was a stepping stone for Pixar, as Stanton was planning to make John Carter of Mars his next project. Storyboarder Derek Thompson noted introducing live action meant that they would make the rest of the film look even more realistic. Eggleston added that if the historical humans had been animated and slightly caricaturized, the audience then would not have been able to recognize how serious their devolution was. Stanton cast Fred Willard as the historical Buy n Large CEO because "[h]e's the most friendly and insincere car salesman I could think of." The CEO says " stay the course", which Stanton used because he thought it was funny. Industrial Light & Magic did the visual effects for these shots.

WALL·E went undeveloped during the 1990s partly because Stanton and Pixar were not confident enough yet to have a feature-length film with a main character that behaved like Luxo Jr., the Pixar lamp or R2-D2. Stanton explained there are two types of robots in cinema: "human[s] with metal skin", like the Tin Man, or "machine[s] with function" like Luxo and R2. He found the latter idea "powerful" because it allowed the audience to project personalities onto the characters, as they do with babies and pets: "You're compelled ... you almost can't stop yourself from finishing the sentence 'Oh, I think it likes me! I think it's hungry! I think it wants to go for a walk!'" He added, "We wanted the audience to believe they were witnessing a machine that has come to life." The animators visited recycling stations to study machinery, and also met robot designers, visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to study robots, watched a recording of a Mars rover, and borrowed a bomb detecting robot from the San Francisco Police Department. Simplicity was preferred in their performances as giving them too many movements would make them feel human.

Stanton wanted WALL·E to be a box and EVE to be like an egg. WALL·E's eyes were inspired by a pair of binoculars Stanton was given when watching the Oakland Athletics play against the Boston Red Sox. He "missed the entire inning" because he was distracted by them. The director was reminded of Buster Keaton and decided the robot would not need a nose or mouth. Stanton added a zoom lens to make WALL-E more sympathetic. Ralph Eggleston noted this feature gave the animators more to work with and gave the robot a childlike quality. Pixar's studies of trash compactors during their visits to recycling stations inspired his body. His tank treads were inspired by a wheelchair someone had developed that used treads instead of wheels. The animators wanted him to have elbows, but realized this was unrealistic because he is only designed to pull garbage into his body. His arms also looked flimsy when they did a test of him waving. Animation director Angus MacLane suggested they attach his arms to a track on the sides of his body to move them around, based on the inkjet printers his father designed. This arm design contributed to creating the character's posture, so if they wanted him to be nervous, they would lower them. Stanton was unaware of the similarities between WALL-E and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit until others pointed it out to him.

Stanton wanted EVE to be at the higher end of technology, and asked iPod designer Jonathan Ive to inspect her design. He was very impressed. Her eyes are modelled on Lite-Brite toys, but Pixar chose not to make them overly expressive as it would be too easy to have her eyes turn into hearts to express love or something similar. Her limited design meant the animators had to treat her like a drawing, relying on posing her body to express emotion. They also found her similar to a manatee or a narwhal because her floating body resembled an underwater creature. Auto was a conscious homage to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the usage of Also sprach Zarathustra for the showdown between Captain McCrea and Auto furthers that. The manner in which he hangs from a wall or ceiling gives him a threatening feel, like a spider. Originally, Auto was designed entirely differently, resembling EVE, but masculine and authoritative and SECUR-T was also a more aggressive patrol steward robot. The majority of the robot cast were formed with the Build-a-bot program, where different heads, arms and treads were combined in over a hundred variations. The humans were modelled on sea lions due to their blubbery bodies, as well as babies. The filmmakers noticed baby fat is a lot tighter than adult fat and copied that texture for the film's humans.

To animate their robots, the film's story crew and animation crew watched a Keaton and a Charlie Chaplin film every day for almost a year, and occasionally a Harold Lloyd picture. Afterwards, the filmmakers knew all emotions could be conveyed silently. Stanton cited Keaton's "great stone face" as giving them perseverance in animating a character with an unchanging expression. As he rewatched these, Stanton felt that filmmakers-since the advent of sound-relied on dialogue too much to convey exposition. The filmmakers dubbed the cockroach WALL-E keeps as a pet "Hal", in reference to silent film producer Hal Roach (as well as being an additional reference to HAL 9000). They also watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf, films that had sound but were not reliant on dialogue. Stanton acknowledged Silent Running as an influence because its silent robots were a forerunner to the likes of R2-D2, and that the "hopeless romantic" Woody Allen also inspired WALL-E.

Producer Jim Morris recommended Ben Burtt as sound designer for WALL-E because Stanton kept using R2-D2 as the benchmark for the robots. Burtt had completed Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith and told his wife he would no longer work on films with robots, but found WALL-E and its substitution of voices with sound "fresh and exciting". He recorded 2,500 sounds for the film, which was twice the average number for a film, and a record in his career. Burtt began work in 2005, and experimented with filtering his voice for two years. Burtt described the robot voices as "like a toddler ... universal language of intonation. 'Oh', 'Hm?', 'Huh!', you know?"

During production Burtt had the opportunity to look at the items used by Jimmy MacDonald, Disney's in-house sound designer for many of their classic films. Burtt used many of MacDonald's items on WALL-E. Because Burtt was not simply adding sound effects in post-production, the animators were always evaluating his new creations and ideas, which Burtt found an unusual experience. He worked in sync with the animators, returning their animation after adding the sounds to give them more ideas. Burtt would choose scientifically accurate sounds for each character, but if he could not find one that worked, he would choose a dramatic and unrealistic noise. Burtt would find hundreds of sounds by looking at concept art of characters, before he and Stanton pared it down to a distinct few for each robot.

Burtt saw a hand-cranked electrical generator while watching Island in the Sky, and bought an identical, unpacked device from 1950 on eBay to use for WALL·E moving around. Burtt also used an automobile self-starter for when WALL·E goes fast, and the sound of cars being wrecked at a demolition derby provided for WALL·E's compressing trash in his body. The Macintosh computer chime was used to signify when WALL-E has fully recharged his battery. For EVE, Burtt wanted her humming to have a musical quality. Burtt was only able to provide neutral or masculine voices, so Pixar employee Elissa Knight was asked to provide her voice for Burtt to electronically modify. Stanton deemed the sound effect good enough to properly cast her in the role. Burtt recorded a flying 10-foot-long (3.0 m) radio-controlled jet plane for EVE's flying, and for her plasma cannon, Burtt hit a slinky hung from a ladder with a timpani stick. He described it as a "cousin" to the blaster noise from Star Wars.

MacInTalk was used because Stanton "wanted Auto to be the epitome of a robot, cold, zeros & ones, calculating, and soulless [and] Stephen Hawking's kind of voice I thought was perfect." Additional sounds for the character were meant to give him a clockwork feel, to show he is always thinking and calculating.

Burtt had visited Niagara Falls in 1987 and used his recordings from his trip for the sounds of wind, and ran around a hall with a canvas bag up to record the sandstorm. For the scene where WALL-E flees from falling shopping carts, Burtt and his daughter went to a supermarket and placed a recorder in their cart. They crashed it around the parking lot and then let it tumble down a hill. To create Hal (WALL-E's pet cockroach)'s skittering, he recorded the clicking caused by taking apart and reassembling handcuffs.

Thomas Newman recollaborated with Stanton on WALL-E since the two got along well on Finding Nemo, which gave Newman the Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Feature. He began writing the score in 2005, in the hope that starting this task early would make him more involved with the finished film. But, Newman remarked that animation is so dependent on scheduling he should have begun work earlier on when Stanton and Reardon were writing the script. EVE's theme was arranged for the first time in October 2007. Her theme when played as she first flies around Earth originally used more orchestral elements, and Newman was encouraged to make it sound more feminine. Newman said Stanton had thought up many ideas for how he wanted the music to sound, and he generally followed them as he found scoring a partially silent film difficult. Stanton wanted the whole score to be orchestral, but Newman felt limited by this idea especially in scenes aboard the Axiom, and used electronics too.

A live-action clip of the song "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello, Dolly!, which inspires WALL-E to hold hands with EVE

Stanton originally wanted to juxtapose the opening shots of space with 1930s French swing music, but changed his mind after seeing The Triplets of Belleville (2003), not wanting to appear as if he were copying it. Stanton then thought about the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello, Dolly!, since he had portrayed the sidekick Barnaby Tucker in a 1980 high school production. Stanton found that the song was about two naive young men looking for love, which was similar to WALL-E's own hope for companionship. Jim Reardon, storyboard supervisor for the film, suggested WALL-E find the film on video, and Stanton included "It Only Takes a Moment" and the clip of the actors holding hands, because he wanted a visual way to show how WALL-E understands love and conveys it to EVE. Hello, Dolly! composer Jerry Herman allowed the songs to be used without knowing what for; when he saw the film, he found its incorporation into the story "genius". Coincidentally, Newman's uncle Lionel worked on Hello, Dolly!

Newman travelled to London to compose the end credits song " Down to Earth" with Peter Gabriel, who was one of Stanton's favorite musicians. Afterwards, Newman rescored some of the film to include the song's composition, so it would not sound intrusive when played. Louis Armstrong's rendition of " La Vie en rose" was used for a montage where WALL-E attempts to impress EVE on Earth. The script also specified using Bing Crosby's " Stardust" for when the two robots dance around the Axiom, but Newman asked if he could score the scene himself. A similar switch occurred for the sequence in which WALL-E attempts to wake EVE up through various means; originally, the montage would play with the instrumental version of " Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", but Newman wanted to challenge himself and scored an original piece for the sequence.

The film is recognized as a social criticism. Katherine Ellison asserts that "Americans produce nearly 400 million tons of solid waste per year but recycle less than a third of it, according to a recent Columbia University study." Landfills were filling up very rapidly worldwide, and predictions were made that the UK could run out of landfill space by 2017.

Environment, waste, and nostalgia

In the DVD commentary, Stanton said that he has been asked if it was his intention to make a movie about consumerism. His answer was it was not; it was a way to answer the question of how would the Earth get to the state where one robot would be left to continue the cleanup by itself. Nevertheless, some critics have noted an incongruity between the perceived pro-environmental and anti-consumerist messaging of the film, and the environmental impacts in the production and merchandising of the film.

In "WALL-E: from environmental adaption to sentimental nostalgia," Robin Murray and Joseph Heumann explain the important theme of nostalgia in this film. Nostalgia is clearly represented by human artifacts, left behind, that WALL-E collects and cherishes, for example Zippo lighters, hubcaps, and plastic sporks. These modern items that are used out of necessity are made sentimental through the lens of the bleak future of Earth. Nostalgia is also expressed through the musical score, as the film opens with a camera shot of outer space that slowly zooms into a waste filled Earth while playing "Put on Your Sunday Clothes", reflecting on simpler and happier times in human history. This film also expresses nostalgia through the longing of nature and the natural world, as it is the sight and feeling of soil, and the plant brought back to the space ship by EVE, that make the captain decide it is time for humans to move back to Earth. WALL-E expresses nostalgia also, by reflecting on romantic themes of older Disney and silent films.

Stanton describes the theme of the film as "irrational love defeats life's programming":

I realized the point I was trying to push with these two programmed robots was the desire for them to try and figure out what the point of living was ... It took these really irrational acts of love to sort of discover them against how they were built ... I realized that that's a perfect metaphor for real life. We all fall into our habits, our routines and our ruts, consciously or unconsciously to avoid living. To avoid having to do the messy part. To avoid having relationships with other people or dealing with the person next to us. That's why we can all get on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another. I thought, 'That's a perfect amplification of the whole point of the movie.' I wanted to run with science in a way that would sort of logically project that.

Stanton noted many commentators placed emphasis on the environmental aspect of humanity's complacency in the film, because "that disconnection is going to be the cause, indirectly, of anything that happens in life that's bad for humanity or the planet". Stanton said that by taking away effort to work, the robots also take away humanity's need to put effort into relationships. Christian journalist Rod Dreher saw technology as the complicated villain of the film. The humans' artificial lifestyle on the Axiom has separated them from nature, making them "slaves of both technology and their own base appetites, and have lost what makes them human". Dreher contrasted the hardworking, dirt covered WALL-E with the sleek clean robots on the ship. However, it is the humans and not the robots who make themselves redundant. Humans on the ship and on Earth have overused robots and the ultra-modern technology. During the end credits, humans and robots are shown working alongside each other to renew the Earth. " WALL·E is not a Luddite film," he said. "It doesn't demonize technology. It only argues that technology is properly used to help humans cultivate their true nature-that it must be subordinate to human flourishing, and help move that along."

The Axiom and EVE have been compared to the legend of Noah's Ark and the dove that Noah sets forth from the Ark.

Stanton, who is a Christian, named EVE after the Biblical figure because WALL-E's loneliness reminded him of Adam, before God created his wife. Dreher noted EVE's biblical namesake and saw her directive as an inversion of that story; EVE uses the plant to tell humanity to return to Earth and move away from the " false god" of BnL and the lazy lifestyle it offers. In cohesion with the classical Christian viewpoint, WALL-E shows that work is what makes humans human. Whereas other sources would say that laziness and pleasure is paradise, WALL-E tries to show that that is not true. Dreher emphasized the false god parallels to BnL in a scene where a robot teaches infants "B is for Buy n Large, your very best friend", which he compared to modern corporations such as McDonald's creating brand loyalty in children. Megan Basham of magazine felt the film criticizes the pursuit of leisure, whereas WALL-E in his stewardship learns to truly appreciate God's creation.

During writing, a Pixar employee noted to Jim Reardon that EVE was reminiscent of the dove with the olive branch from the story of Noah's Ark, and the story was reworked with EVE finding a plant to return humanity from its voyage. WALL-E himself has been compared to Prometheus, Sisyphus, and Butades: in an essay discussing WALL-E as representative of the artistic strive of Pixar itself, Hrag Vartanian compared WALL-E to Butades in a scene where the robot expresses his love for EVE by making a sculpture of her from spare parts. "The Ancient Greek tradition associates the birth of art with a Corinthian maiden who longing to preserve her lover's shadow traces it on the wall before he departed for war. The myth reminds us that art was born out of longing and often means more for the creator than the muse. In the same way Stanton and his Pixar team have told us a deeply personal story about their love of cinema and their vision for animation through the prism of all types of relationships."

WALL-E premiered at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on June 23, 2008. Continuing a Pixar tradition, the film was paired with a short film for its theatrical release, . The film is dedicated to Justin Wright (1981-2008), a Pixar animator who had worked on Ratatouille and died of a heart attack before WALL-E's release.

Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) built animatronic WALL-Es to promote the picture, which made appearances at Disneyland Resort, the Franklin Institute, the Miami Science Museum, the Seattle Center, and the Tokyo International Film Festival. Due to safety concerns, the 318 kg robots were always strictly controlled and WDI always needed to know exactly what they were required to interact with. For this reason, they generally refused to have their puppets meet and greet children at the theme parks in case a WALL-E trod on a child's foot. Those who wanted to take a photograph with the character had to make do with a cardboard cutout.

The film was denied a theatrical release in China.

In 2016, Jim Morris noted that the studio has no plans for a sequel, as they consider WALL-E a finished story with no need for continuation.

To promote the film, a website was created for Buy n Large, the featuring megacorporation. This website had fake press releases beginning in 2057, including "Wisconsin Mall Granted City Status," "BnL Announces Police Select." These fictional reports also quotes "analyst Richard Greenberg," which Multichannel News pointed said sounds like Richard Greenfield who has analysed Disney. Greenfield said that "I would be sincerely flattered if there is a connection between anything Pixar creates and our research work."

Small quantities of merchandise were sold for WALL-E, as items were still popular, and many manufacturers were more interested in Speed Racer, which was a successful product line despite the film's failure at the box office. Thinkway, which created the WALL·E toys, had previously made dolls when other toy producers had not shown an interest. Among Thinkway's items were a WALL-E that danced when connected to a music player, a toy that could be taken apart and reassembled, and a groundbreaking remote control toy of him and EVE that had motion sensors that allowed them to interact with players. There were even plushies. The "Ultimate WALL-E" figures were not in stores until the film's home release in November 2008, at a retail price of almost $200, leading The Patriot-News to deem it an item for "hard-core fans and collectors only". On February 4, 2015, Lego announced that a WALL-E custom built by lead animator Angus MacLane was the latest design approved for mass production and release as part of Lego Ideas.

The film was released on Blu-ray Disc and DVD by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on November 18, 2008. Various editions include the short film , another short film , the Leslie Iwerks documentary film The Pixar Story, shorts about the history of Buy n Large, behind-the-scenes special features, and a digital copy of the film that can be played through iTunes or Windows Media Player-compatible devices. This release sold 9,042,054 DVD units ($142,633,974) in total becoming the second-best-selling animated DVD among those released in 2008 in units sold (behind Kung Fu Panda), the best-selling animated feature in sales revenue, and the third-best-selling among all 2008 DVDs.

WALL-E was released in Japan in a limited edition Blu-ray box set, which included a book featuring artwork from the film, a framed print, and a remote control version of Wall-E. This edition is now discontinued.

WALL-E was released by Disney on 4K Blu-ray on March 3, 2020.

At the request of Stanton, Disney licensed WALL-E to The Criterion Collection in September 2022, who created a special 4K Blu-ray-Blu-ray combo edition of the film that was released on November 22, 2022, featuring the same 4K digital master used for Disney's original 4K Blu-ray release, but now presented in Dolby Vision and HDR10+ as approved by Stanton, along with additional special features. This makes it both the first Pixar feature film and the eighth Walt Disney Pictures film to be released under the Criterion label. In its description for the release, Criterion viewed the film as an important work of both the animation medium and of cinema itself, saying that while "Transporting us simultaneously back to cinema's silent origins and light-years into the future, WALL-E is a soaring ode to the power of love and art to heal a dying world."

WALL-E grossed $223.8 million in the United States and Canada and $308.7 million overseas, for a worldwide total of $532.5 million, making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2008.

In the US and Canada, WALL-E opened in 3,992 theaters on June 27, 2008. The film grossed $23.1 million on its opening day, the highest of all nine Pixar titles to date. During its opening weekend, it topped the box office with $63,087,526. This was the third-best opening weekend for a Pixar film after Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, and the second-best opening weekend among films released in June, behind Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The film grossed $38 million the following weekend, losing its first place to . WALL-E crossed the $200 million mark by August 3, during its sixth weekend.

WALL-E grossed over $10 million in Japan ($44,005,222), UK, Ireland and Malta ($41,215,600), France and the Maghreb region ($27,984,103), Germany ($24,130,400), Mexico ($17,679,805), Spain ($14,973,097), Australia ($14,165,390), Italy ($12,210,993), and Russia and the CIS ($11,694,482).

The American Film Institute named WALL-E as one of the best films of 2008; the jury rationale states:

WALL*E proves to this generation and beyond that the film medium's only true boundaries are the human imagination. Writer/director Andrew Stanton and his team have created a classic screen character from a metal trash compactor who rides to the rescue of a planet buried in the debris that embodies the broken promise of American life. Not since Chaplin's " Little Tramp" has so much story-so much emotion-been conveyed without words. When hope arrives in the form of a seedling, the film blossoms into one of the great screen romances as two robots remind audiences of the beating heart in all of us that yearns for humanity-and love-in the darkest of landscapes.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 262 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website's consensus reads: " Wall-E's stellar visuals testify once again to Pixar's ingenuity, while its charming star will captivate younger viewers-and its timely story offers thought-provoking subtext." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has an average score of 95 out of 100 based on 39 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average rating of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

named WALL-E the third-best film of the year based on their annual survey of 100 film critics, while Movie City News shows that WALL-E appeared in 162 different top 10 lists, out of 286 different critics lists surveyed, the most mentions on a top 10 list of any film released in 2008.

Richard Corliss of named WALL-E his favorite film of 2008 (and later of the decade), noting the film succeeded in "connect[ing] with a huge audience" despite the main characters' lack of speech and "emotional signifiers like a mouth, eyebrows, shoulders, [and] elbows". It "evoke[d] the splendor of the movie past" and he also compared WALL-E and EVE's relationship to the chemistry of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Other critics who named WALL-E their favorite film of 2008 included Tom Charity of CNN, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, A. O. Scott of The New York Times, Christopher Orr of The New Republic, Ty Burr and Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe, Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal, and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker.

Todd McCarthy of called the film "Pixar's ninth consecutive wonder", saying it was imaginative yet straightforward. He said it pushed the boundaries of animation by balancing esoteric ideas with more immediately accessible ones, and that the main difference between the film and other science fiction projects rooted in an apocalypse was its optimism. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter declared that WALL-E surpassed the achievements of Pixar's previous eight features and probably their most original film to date. He said it had the "heart, soul, spirit and romance" of the best silent films. Honeycutt said the film's definitive stroke of brilliance was in using a mix of archive film footage and computer graphics to trigger WALL·E's romantic leanings. He praised Burtt's sound design, saying "If there is such a thing as an aural sleight of hand, this is it."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times named WALL-E "an enthralling animated film, a visual wonderment, and a decent science-fiction story" and said the scarcity of dialogue would allow it to "cross language barriers" in a manner appropriate to the global theme, and noted it would appeal to adults and children. He praised the animation, describing the color palette as "bright and cheerful ... and a little bit realistic", and that Pixar managed to generate a "curious" regard for the WALL·E, comparing his "rusty and hard-working and plucky" design favorably to more obvious attempts at creating "lovable" lead characters. He said WALL-E was concerned with ideas rather than spectacle, saying it would trigger stimulating "little thoughts for the younger viewers." He named it as one of his twenty favorite films of 2008 and argued it was "the best science-fiction movie in years".

The film was interpreted as tackling a topical, ecologically-minded agenda, though McCarthy said it did so with a lightness of touch that granted the viewer the ability to accept or ignore the message. Kyle Smith of the New York Post, wrote that by depicting future humans as "a flabby mass of peabrained idiots who are literally too fat to walk", WALL-E was darker and more cynical than any major Disney feature film he could recall. He compared the humans to the patrons of Disney's theme parks and resorts, adding, "I'm also not sure I've ever seen a major corporation spend so much money to issue an insult to its customers." Maura Judkis of U.S. News & World Report questioned whether this depiction of "frighteningly obese humans" would resonate with children and make them prefer to "play outside rather than in front of the computer, to avoid a similar fate".

A few notable critics have argued that the film is vastly overrated, claiming it failed to "live up to such blinding, high-wattage enthusiasm", and that there were "chasms of boredom watching it", in particular "the second and third acts spiraled into the expected". Other labels included "preachy" and "too long". Child reviews sent into CBBC were mixed, some citing boredom and an inadequate storyline.

Several conservative commentators criticized the film. Shannen W. Coffin of National Review said that WALL-E is "leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind". Greg Pollowitz of National Review called the film "a 90-minute lecture on the dangers of over consumption, big corporations, and the destruction of the environment". Jonah Goldberg said that while the film was "fascinating and at-times brilliant", he added that it is also " Malthusian fear mongering". Glenn Beck said that "I can't wait to teach my kids how we've destroyed the Earth ... Pixar is teaching. I can't wait. You know if your kid has ever come home and said, 'Dad, how come we use so much styrofoam,' oh, this is the movie for you."

Patrick J. Ford of The American Conservative said WALL-E's conservative critics missed lessons in the film that he felt appealed to traditional conservatism. He argued that the mass consumerism in the film was not shown to be a product of big business, but of too close a tie between big business and big government: "The government unilaterally provided its citizens with everything they needed, and this lack of variety led to Earth's downfall." Responding to Coffin's claim that the film points out the evils of mankind, Ford argued the only evils depicted were those that resulted from losing touch with our own humanity and that fundamental conservative representations such as the farm, the nuclear family unit, and "wholesome entertainment" were seen as "beautiful and desirable." by the human characters. He concluded, "By steering conservative families away from WALL-E, these commentators are doing their readers a great disservice."

Director Terry Gilliam praised the film as "A stunning bit of work. The scenes on what was left of planet Earth are just so beautiful: one of the great silent movies. And the most stunning artwork! It says more about ecology and society than any live-action film-all the people on their loungers floating around, brilliant stuff. Their social comment was so smart and right on the button."

Archaeologists have commented on the themes of human evolution that the film explores. Ben Marwick has written how the character of WALL-E resembles an archaeologist with his methodical collection and classification of quotidian human artefacts. He is shown facing a typological dilemma of classifying a spork as either a fork or spoon, and his nostalgic interest in the human past further demonstrated by his attachment to repeated viewings of the 1969 film Hello, Dolly!. Marwick notes that the film features major human evolutionary transitions such as obligate bipedalism (captain of the spaceship struggles with the autopilot to gain control of the vessel) and the invention of agriculture, as part of watershed moments in the story of the film. According to Marwick, one prominent message of the film "appears to be that the envelopment by technology that the humans in Wall-E experience paradoxically results in physical and cultural devolution." Scholars such as Ian Tattersall and Steve Jones have similarly discussed scenarios where elements of modern technology (such as medicine) may have caused human evolution to slow or stop.

In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

WALL-E won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing at the 81st Academy Awards. Walt Disney Pictures also pushed for an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination, but it was not nominated, sparking controversy over whether the Academy deliberately restricted WALL-E to the Best Animated Feature category. Film critic Peter Travers remarked, "If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for best picture it's Wall-E." Only three animated films, 1991's Beauty and the Beast and Pixar's next two films, 2009's and 2010's , have ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. A reflective Stanton stated he was not disappointed the film was restricted to the Best Animated Film nomination because he was overwhelmed by the film's positive reception, and eventually "The line [between live-action and animation] is just getting so blurry that I think with each proceeding year, it's going to be tougher and tougher to say what's an animated movie and what's not an animated movie."

WALL-E made a healthy appearance at the various 2008 end-of-the-year awards circles, particularly in the Best Picture category, where animated films are often overlooked. It has won the award, or the equivalent of it, from the Boston Society of Film Critics (tied with Slumdog Millionaire), the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Central Ohio Film Critics awards, the Online Film Critics Society, and most notably the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, where it became the first animated feature to win the prestigious award. It was named as one of 2008's ten best films by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

It won Best Animated Feature Film at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, 81st Academy Awards, and the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008. It was nominated for several awards at the 2009 Annie Awards, including Best Feature Film, Animated Effects, Character Animation, Direction, Production design, Storyboarding and Voice acting (for Ben Burtt);[citation needed ] but was beaten out by Kung Fu Panda in every category. It won Best Animated Feature at the 62nd British Academy Film Awards and was also nominated there for Best Music and Sound. Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel won two Grammy Awards for " Down to Earth" and "Define Dancing". It won all three awards it was nominated for by the Visual Effects Society: Best Animation, Best Character Animation (for WALL-E and EVE in the truck) and Best Effects in the Animated Motion Picture categories. It became the first animated film to win Best Editing for a Comedy or Musical from the American Cinema Editors. In 2009, Stanton, Reardon, and Docter won the Nebula Award, beating The Dark Knight and the Stargate Atlantis episode " The Shrine". It won Best Animated Film and was nominated for Best Director at the Saturn Awards.

At the British National Movie Awards, which is voted for by the public, it won Best Family Film. It was also voted Best Feature Film at the British Academy Children's Awards. WALL-E was listed at No. 63 on Empire's online poll of the 100 greatest movie characters, conducted in 2008. In early 2010, Time ranked WALL-E No. 1 in "Best Movies of the Decade". In Sight & Sound magazine's 2012 poll of the greatest films of all time, WALL-E is the second-highest-ranking animated film behind My Neighbor Totoro (1988), while tying with the film Spirited Away (2001) at 202nd overall. In a 2016 BBC poll of international critics, it was voted the 29th-greatest film since 2000.

In 2012, Mike McMaster, an American robotics hobbyist, began working on his own model of WALL·E. The final product was built with more moving parts than the WALL·E which roams around Disneyland. McMaster's four-foot robot made an appearance at the Walt Disney Family Museum and was featured during the opening week of Tested.com a project headed up by Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of MythBusters. Since WALL-E's creation, Mike and the popular robot have made dozens of appearances at various events.

In the same year, Mike Senna completed his own WALL·E build. He also created an EVE. They were present at a photo op at Disney's D23 Expo 2015.

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WALL-E (stylized with an interpunct as WALL·E ) is a 2008 American animated science fiction romance film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton, produced by Jim Morris, and written by Stanton and Jim Reardon.

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Read 7,758 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to...

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Feels Like Summer - Childish Gambino

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By Karyna McGlynn

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Whole families with matching hobo stipple roam tragicomically through the sprawling candy deserts: polka-dot bandanas on sticks, flapping Chaplinesque shoes. Two drunk men in tiger masks loll from the window of a passing truck to tell some Handmaid she’s “thicc as shit.” Anyway, Witches are back!…

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An ancient pond

A frog jumps in

The splash of water.

-- Matsuo Basho

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Basho’s Haiku Pond. Let us go back in time, a few centuries back, to meet Matsuo Basho & embark on a journey to the interiors of Japan. Read Basho’s Haikus!

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By Craig Santos Perez

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Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.

The moon reflects bleached coral. Tonight, let us

praise the sacrificed. Praise the souls of  black

boys, enslaved by supply chains, who carry

bags of cacao under West African heat. "Trick

or treat, smell my feet, give me something good

to eat," sings a girl dressed as a Disney princess.

Let us praise the souls of   brown girls who sew

our clothes as fire unthreads sweatshops into

smoke and ash. "Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me

something good," whisper kids disguised as ninjas.

Tonight, let us praise the souls of Asian children

who manufacture toys and tech until gravity sharpens

their bodies enough to cut through suicide nets.

"Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me," shout boys

camouflaged as soldiers. Let us praise the souls

of  veterans who salute with their guns because

only triggers will pull God into their ruined

temples. "Trick or treat, smell my feet," chant kids

masquerading as cowboys and Indians. Tonight,

let us praise the souls of native youth, whose eyes

are open-pit uranium mines, veins are poisoned

rivers, hearts are tar sands tailings ponds. "Trick

or treat," says a boy dressed as the sun. Let us

praise El Niño, his growing pains, praise his mother,

Ocean, who is dying in a warming bath among dead

fish and refugee children. Let us praise our mothers

of  asthma, mothers of  cancer clusters, mothers of

miscarriage -  pray for us  - because our costumes

won't hide the true cost of our greed. Praise our

mothers of  lost habitats, mothers of  fallout, mothers

of extinction -  pray for us  - because even tomorrow

will be haunted -  leave them, leave us, leave  -

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Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015 by Craig Santos... | Poetry Magazine

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Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.