WALL-E flavored with a dash of Apple
Those who go see the new Pixar/Disney film “WALL-E” will notice several subtle references to Apple Inc. products old, new and imagined.
While the primary connection between Pixar and Apple is well known – Steve Jobs was CEO of both companies simultaneously until he sold Pixar to the Walt Disney Company in 2006 – the studio’s films had never made much of it.
Some things to watch for if you go see the movie:
The WALL-E robot recharges himself every morning using solar power. As soon as he’s fully charged, he emits the Mac’s familiar startup chime.
WALL-E runs his old VHS tape player through a video iPod, which he views through a large, flat flexible magnifying lens like those used to help people read small type.
WALL-E’s love interest, EVE, looks like the sort of robot Apple would build if Apple built robots, and with good reason. When the film’s director, Andrew Stanton, knew he wanted EVE to look as sleek and beautiful as possible, he called Steve Jobs. Jobs sent Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive over to Pixar for a day of consultation.
Ive, of course, is the design mastermind behind most of Apple’s products from the first iMac in 1998 to the iPod in 2001 to the iPhone last year. According to an article in May’s Fortune magazine, Ive said little but nodded his approval when presented with ideas he liked.
EVE exudes Apple sensibilities. Her skin is the same shiny white plastic of a MacBook. Her egg-shaped body is smooth and curvy. She has no visible buttons; indicator lights glow on her chest under her skin. Her arms lock seamlessly into the indentations on the side of her body – so seamlessly that in one scene poor WALL-E has trouble locating EVE’s hand.
Then there is the voice of Auto, the computer autopilot that flies the ship full of the descendants of those Earth-dwellers that left the planet 700 years earlier. Credited as “MacinTalk,” the voice derives from the Mac’s built-in speech generation software.
I don’t believe Auto’s voice is included in the current Mac OS, Leopard; Apple hasn’t used the term “MacinTalk” to describe its speech recognition software in years. I suspect the voice was generated on an old PowerPC Mac running Mac OS 9 or earlier. I’m not even sure which voice it is (anybody know?).
One more thing: Though not directly related to Apple, the acclaimed songwriter Peter Gabriel collaborated with WALL-E’s creators on the concluding song, “Down to Earth.” Gabriel developed to multimedia CDs back in the 1990s, Xplora 1 and, coincidentally enough, “Eve” – both Mac compatible, which was unusual for that era. In fact, Xplora 1 was created for the Mac first and ported to Windows. More recently Gabriel backed something called The Filter, software for helping people discover music using their iTunes collection.
(Read Mike Sragow’s review of WALL-E here.)
Comments
Well, speaking of the future; I have found a webpage called www.treehoo.com that invests most of its profit to plant trees, fighting thus global warming and climate change. Imagine what it would mean for our poor planet if everyone used this page as their default homepage, (it has Google search and more so it works fine), maybe it could mean a bright future in which we can enjoy our Apple robots without worrying about solar caused skin deceases.
Posted by: Global warming | June 30, 2008 10:24 AM
In regards to the previous comment, I never thought I would consider a worthy non-profit or cause to be culpable of spamming the comments section of a news article or blog posting and only loosely tie it into the content. Yet, that comment by "Global Warming" makes me want to reply with an urge to mark said person/entity as a spammer.
Posted by: Johnny Pneumatic | June 30, 2008 12:50 PM
Well, speaking of spam, your post reeks of it. Maybe it could mean a bright future in which we can enjoy commentary without worrying about unsolicited ad-caused nausea.
Posted by: Michae1 | June 30, 2008 1:05 PM
"MacinTalk" is a speech synthesizer which predates OS 9 and PowerPC processors! It dates back to System 7 (maybe even System 6) and Motorola 680x0 processors!
Posted by: Jim Dickison | June 30, 2008 4:04 PM
Actually, the Apple references are more in the recent movie. The other movies tend to have Steve Jobs references (such as the hand movements in "A Bug's Life.")
My personal favorite: In Cars, in the first race (during the montage when McQueen is about a lap ahead of the other cars and they're trying to catch up--before he blows a tire), you'll see The King pass a black-and-white car with an Apple logo and the number 84.
Posted by: Peter | June 30, 2008 4:21 PM
I believe the voice of Auto is Zarvox, or a slight variant. Check it out under Voices in System Preferences. Also you may want to check out the program Automator in Applications...looks kind of familiar. Start it up and then check your Dock.
Posted by: mjkrash | June 30, 2008 6:36 PM
YOU MISSED the most obvious Mac reference, outside of the startup chime - the Mac startup/shutdown wheel that runs on the inside of Eve's neck.
Posted by: James Saldaña | June 30, 2008 11:22 PM
It was a great movie but a sad vision of the future considering that this week all the major networks have reported it's likely the entire polar ice cap will melt this summer.
It's good to know that a Mac (Wall-E) will save us.
Posted by: James Saldaña | July 1, 2008 12:07 AM
Based on the "Meet The Characters" clip with Auto introducing himself, it sounds like his voice is that of "Ralph," who is still included in the Speech System Prefs of my Leopard-running MacBook.
Posted by: M. | July 6, 2008 1:55 AM
Yeah the dead ringer (no pun intended) was the OS X startup chime (music to my ears) when WALL*E repowered in the morning.
Posted by: Aaron Brazell | July 8, 2008 2:38 AM
Wall-E totally looks like the robot from "Short Circuit"... minus the cheesy 80's style of course
Posted by: patrick | July 11, 2008 1:53 AM