I guess I can see the similarities, but there are general preconceptions of what a robot ‘should’ look like, and if you ask a whole bunch of people to each draw a robot design, there’d always be similarities. So, I think whatever similarities there are between Wall-E and this Johnny 5 character are probably just coincidences.
My first thought upon seeing WALL-E was that he reminded me of Johnny 5.
Apparently I had forgotten what the rest of Johnny 5 looked like…
The head and tread are the only shared features that WALL*E and Johnny 5 have. I’ll admit that both me and my dad noticed the similarity at first but you go on to notice that the body and arms a completely different.
I’ve seen the Short Circuit movies, and while they make Johnny 5 a powerful weapon, he always looked as delicate a a marionette. While WALL*E looks Ford tough and very cute.
Also, you mentioned that he was built to resemble E.T. Well if you look at him, he really does look like he could be an E.T. puppet/animatronic without the skin on.
Overall, head and tread is not enough to say he was copied.
E.T. was more of a blob than a robot. Johnny 5 was more of a weapon than a robot.
And no, WALL•E is not a mix of the two. WALL•E is WALL•E.
Aah, Johnny 5 may have started life as a weapon, but then he got struck by lightning and became a combination English major/couch potato and a veritable repository of pop culture references. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve picked up a book and started thinking of Johnny 5 in the bookstore. “Need input. More input!” Maybe we’d finally achieve world peace if all weapons were like Johnny 5 - they’d be so funny that we’d want to hang out with them and they’d never get sent to war.
Pixar Planet already works like that anyway, right? XD
I always thought he had a little bit of Lenny in him in the face
Uh…no. WALL•E is not LENN•E or anything. WALL•E is WALL•E, designed for the film WALL•E.
A113- I think Obie means that Lenny resembles WALL-E, not that he was inspired by Lenny. Anyways, WALL-E was inspired by binoculars, not Lenny, but they where binoculars, so Lenny’s influence is somewhat there.
Exactly. WALL-E has big, expressive eyes. Lenny is nothing but a big pair of eyes with feet.
You beat me to the punch, martini.
I was simply stating that the Lenny and Wall-E shared some similar characteristics. The big expressive eyes, and a little bit of the bent binocular shape.
Yes there are simularities between Johnny 5 and WALL-E but there are also simlularities with the Drones from the 1972 film Silent Running.
Box like and beat up. 
Ok…Maybe nothing too simular but he still looks cool.
A Short Circuit remake is in the works by Dimension Films. Anyone else get the feeling that WALL*E influenced the decision to put this into production now.
They’ll probably market it like: “Before WALL*E there was another lonely robot that wanted to do more in life than what he was built for. Meet, Johnny 5. Now experience the original robot as he’s back and better that ever.”
When one film does good, they just predict Pixar’s success before it even happens now, they always inspire a whole bunch of knockoff and such in that genre.
Hopefully it’ll be better than the original.
I definitely see a lot of ROB in WALL-E, particularly with the arms and eyes.
Stanton has stated, in a recent interview, that he has seen Silent Running and the robots (Huey Dewey Louie) have inspired him in the fact that inantimate objects can have character, but thats all. In no way did they inspire design or story elements.
Eyes definitely look similar but it’s been noted that binoculars were Stanton’s inspiration.ROB has just recently resurfaced as retro is becoming popular. Smash Bros. and Mario Kart are the only games you’ll find him in outside the actual figure you could get for the Nintendo.
EVE may have taken inspiration from BOB in Disney’s The Black Hole but in no way do they physically resemble each other. iPod was the major inspiration.
Everyone inspires each other and Wall-E is most likely built on many inspirations (but isn’t everything). Stanton has stated Wall-E was inspired by many different things put together (maybe things that were subconscious and he didn’t remember were from a movie or real-life) and I expect the movie to be the same.
I don’t care where the idea came from just as long as its a good one!
ROB’s actually cameo’d in a lot of other Nintendo stuff, including Kirby’s Dreamland 3, F-Zero GX, a name homage in the Star Fox series, and the WarioWare games among others…
I saw this movie when I was little. I remember it because there was a skunk in it. 
I don’t think they look similar except for the treads.
Haha!! I thought of Short Circuit when I saw Wall*E for the first time…and my mom agreed with me. Yes, facially they look pretty identical.
Hmm, altho not facially, I thought Rover from Planet51 is awfully alot like our yellow janitorial friend. What do you think? Go to about 40 seconds left of the preview to see the robot:
io9.com/5401882/meet-the-animate … ute-wall+e
Looks-wise, no, not like Wall-E if you compare it to obvious robots roving around on Mars right now. But behavior-wise, they had alot in common in that scene, and it wasn’t the only scene. I liked the functional aspects of Rover, which are virtually absent in a silly movie like Robots. And the movie, Planet51 including storyline, wasn’t that bad either.
Finally, the Dancing in the Rain tune reminds me that Stanton originally wanted B.J. Thomas’ Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, but T. Newman had other ideas, and came up with some superb elevator music for First Date.
As for Johnny 5, no, there are some similarities between the treads, and a superfluous similarity with the head. I actually haven’t seen that movie, so can’t compare the behavior.
They obviously look similar, but the movies have scenes that are extremelly alike as well:
Johnny fixes himself with spare parts.
Johnny is introduced to a plant.
Johnny enjoys music and learns how to dance.
In the sequel, Johnny is attacked and brought to near death.
One more act of heroism puts the already dying Johnny into a “death coma”.
Johnny is brought back to light with a light zap of flowing blue electricity. (Now that one is really similar to Wall-E).