Pixar and Disney’s animated robot romp Wall-E explores a future in which the world’s population has relocated to live on luxury cruise liners in space, and robots are left to clean an over-polluted Earth.
But below the surface of this G-rated galactic adventure about cute bleeping bots lies an homage to vintage sci-fi flicks — and not just the Disneyfied variety, either.
In a round-table interview at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California, earlier this week, director Andrew Stanton revealed his desire to create a science fiction movie in the spirit of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, Ridley Scott’s neo-noir Blade Runner and space-western Outland.
"My formative movie going years were ’68 to 82, and that’s really where I saw everything that’s ever really influenced me in a sci-fi genre," said Stanton, who last helmed Finding Nemo for Pixar. "[Those movies] transported me, each in their own way. I just wanted Wall-E to hearken back to that."
Stanton said he wanted the entire "tone and feel" of Wall-E to remind viewers of the golden age of science fiction. "I told my director of photography and production designers early on that I wanted it to feel like we found Wall-E in a film can," said Stanton. "Like it was from the ’70s, and we just restored it."
Wall-E lands in theaters June 27. Follow the jump for a rundown of classic films Stanton said inspired him as he made the movie.
Alien: Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror movie featured Sigourney Weaver battling a vicious creature in space. As a nod to her performance, Weaver lends her vocals to Axiom, the human-populated luxury spaceship in Wall-E.
Blade Runner: Scott’s 1982 dystopian drama features cyberpunk cityscapes that hold up, even today.
Silent Running: Plants are extinct in this ecologically themed film from 1972, and what specimens remain are housed in space-bound greenhouse domes.
2001: A Space Odyssey: Kubrick’s creepy outer-space opera from 1968 used innovative special effects to create vistas of distant galaxies.
Outland: Sean Connery rules the moon with a shotgun in thi space-age Western from 1981.
Planet of the Apes: Charlton Heston’s 1968 crash into this alternate universe exposed a future run by simians, leading to an unlikely friendship and a fantastic musical parody on The Simpsons.
Star Trek, The Movie: Pop culture cosmos collided when this 1979 spinoff from the television series soared into theaters.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Spielberg’s iconic UFO movie wowed audiences in 1977 with its direct shots of spaceships and alien life forms.
Tron: Disney’s 1982 digitized computer world is still a cult classic, thanks in part to Tron Guy’s obsession with Jeff Bridges’ electroluminescent suit.
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