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.
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…
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:
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).
