I too noticed that EVE changed her ‘pronunciation’ of her words a few times throughout the film, but I think it is that way to accentuate certain things. ie when she’s happy she says WALL-E differently than when she says his name when she is angry with him. It is just how we slur our words sometimes for different usage. It was done to make the robots more personal- they all do it. WALL-E says things differently many times too.
As for the specific difference in the way she says ‘directive’- I don’t know the precise reason for each difference but I also think a small factor in changing it up was to make sure we were hearing it differently instead of the same dialogue over and over and over because this movie involves a lot of "WALL-E!"s and "EVAHHHH!"s. A lot of the same word usage repetitively.
I actually posted the answer to your question about what she says before “Directive?” a while back as the first post in the “Wall-E Observations” thread area:
She says “Directive?” in three different languages before asking it in English. I don’t know what the other two were (does anyone else know?) but one of them was “meirei?” – which is Japanese for “Directive?”
That’s interesting, joehisa. I didn’t realise that when she was trying different languages, one of them was Japanese!
The first time she says ‘directive’, she extends the ‘v’ because, to me, it sounds as if she’s asking a question, so it helps convey her meaning. That’s the thing with EVE- her body language can only go so far because of her shape, so the tone in which she says things is important.
So that’s German, Japanese, Swahili and English. Couldn’t figure out the rest of the Swahili word… Like lizardgirl said, the last time she says “directivvvvvvve?” because she is asking a question. Maybe the reason why she didn’t start with the English version of ‘directive’ is because she didn’t know where she was going to go on a mission. Not the planet, nor the country… but that brings up an interesting point. Maybe EVE was programmed with all the langauges in the world, in the universe, all languages over time (even alien languages), but it just so happened that one of the 4 she said was the language that WALL•E understood.[/spoil] How very convenient for us, ey?
What was the first thing she said, though… [spoil]the word that made WALL•E topple over out of fright?[/spoil]
That’s a good point, Rachel. By that logic, [spoil]the EVEs would, at some point, perhaps have travelled to other planets? Or perhaps it was thought that the Earth might be taken over by some other life forms, or aliens? This seems more plausible, as the whole purpose of the EVEs was to search for plant life on Earth. Therefore, why would they need to know any other languages, and why would EVE assume that she was somewhere else? Didn’t the letters ‘WALL-E’ on the front of WALL-E himself give her a clue that she was on Earth, and that he therefore spoke English?
Or maybe it’s just the simple case that different robots spoke different languages depending on their location on Earth, and EVE wasn’t sure exactly where on Earth they were? Since all of the languages she said were Earth-languages. After all that, what a boring conclusion. [/spoil]
Drifted a bit there… Not sure about what that word was though, Rachel. I know the one you mean, but I can’t recall what the subtitles said.
The special features show Elissa Knight recording “Directivo?” which is Spanish, so I guess some languages didn’t make the cut.
But yeah, I think the reason she used different languages was just to see which one WALL-E understood.
I found that Eve pronounces Wall-e for the first time normally (not robotic-like), and in the last scene (when she turnes him back to life) she almost whispers his name
Because [spoil]his information was being rebooted after it was either transferred from EVE back to WALL•E, or the information had to be transferred from somewhere on his system to somewhere else (there are a few theories on this), in addition to his system booting up for the first time since his memory was brought back again, so that’s why it took a few moments.[/spoil] Plus it builds up the suspense of the movie.
Also, the thing I like about that part was that [spoil]WALL•E’s first instinct was to keep on holding EVE’s hand and to not let go, even before he was fully aware of his surroundings and what had happened, kind of like a primary instinct to stay with EVE. [/spoil]<3
Thanks rachelcakes 1985! Sorry I haven’t been able to post here, I just realized there was an answer.
That would make sense, and I think it was foreshadowed when [spoil] Wall-E broke his eye in the begining and when he fixed it, it took a second to adjust itself[/spoil]
A lot of the same word usage repetitively.
[/spoil]