Wall-E DVD Thoughts, Comments

Pixar's Feature Films WALL•E
#1

Thought maybe I’d create one central place to talk about the Wall-E DVD (contents, specs, problems, thoughts, etc).

Finally had a chance to see most of the material on the 3-disc normal DVD (not the B&L shorts yet, though).

Some thoughts in no particular order:

I thought it was a fantastic transfer (picture and sound). I was really impressed with the Ben Burtt featurette (and of course the Notes on a Score one as well). Thought the “Pixar Story” was a little fluffy and too general, but still would rather have it than not I suppose. I’m still laughing at Burn-E. And Presto is good too of course. Interesting listening to the commentary during the picture… Stanton kind of takes a more accessible-to-all approach to commentaries, rather than very technical, detailed (shots, angles, etc) ones others might give. To this day I have yet to hear Ratatouille’s commentary because it’s only on the BluRay (which I bought just to “have” even though I have no plans to get into BluRay. One of these days I’ll have to bum a PS3 and view it). Easter Eggs: found two (posted in the other “Easter Egg” thread, though it might be nicer to put all Wall-E DVD-related stuff here in one unifying thread), so if anyone has since found new ones, please let us know.

A very good release. I haven’t had time to check for any reviews of the DVD release. Hope it gets good ones, I thought they did a great job this time. Haven’t bothered with the digital disc yet. Oh, and as far as my DVDs go, no reported problems at all. Often old or worn-out players will have trouble being able to read discs once they switch over to the 2nd layer. I have one old player that this happens on, especially with WB DVDs. I audibly hear the player suddenly “whirr” faster as it gets towards the end of the disc (as it is gets towards the inner circle of the inner layer) and that’s the point where my old player has problems reading them.

Hopefully Wall-E will do well on DVD.
I’ve stopped putting Box Office updates in the Box Office thread at this point, but when it comes out in Japan in December, I’ll post once those numbers are known.

For those who live in PAL countries and care about this stuff (probably not too many), I’d be curious if they tried to pitch-correct the main movie or not after the PAL conversion. Also, I wonder if the international DVD releasese also have the cardboard packaging…

#2

Thanks miafka. I was wondering when someone was going to start a thread about all the new stuff on the dvd.

I was very disappointed with the short of Burn-E. It does kind of explain why he was out there in the first place, repairing the fixture, but I barely laughed. Thank God it wasn’t in the movie. Perhaps some of you Pixar loyalists who have seen my devotion to Wall•E are shocked; it just hasn’t impressed me at all (yet).

The Pixar Story, now I appreciated that quite a bit. It seemed a bit dated, is it on Ratatouille also? Wasn’t it almost 90 minutes in length? Again, it was a treat.

Notes on a Score. Impressive too. The interaction between composer and director was nicely revealed. One statement from the young lady wearing a black(?) outfit particularly stood out, about how Andrew would be consumed over particular details within a track. This is called a perfectionist, and I suppose she was observing his insistence over a precise mood being conveyed. After 200 people (he did say at one point that several hundred people can work on a single shot) had done their thing, and since the wrong note(s) can spoil the effect, he was thankfully picky.

Deleted scenes. Well, if you haven’t gotten the dvd yet, it’s time to stop reading this. [spoil] I’ve only read a few places on this forum about the ‘aliens’, the gels, and wondered what in the world they were talking about. Hmm, inside people, maybe who work at Pixar or have a friend inside. Substituting humans for the nasty gels looks like a big improvement and catapulted the film’s relevance and connection to the 30 minute Earth sequences.

The garbage scowl scene was quite a delight for me since I had speculated that there was something missing over on the Advanced Wall-E 101 thread with the large Wall-A cubing units. This scene had nearly the quality of the released movie and has to be my favorite dvd treat!!

The scene with the kiss and the plant and Eve being confused as to what the hand holding was about… it was so vastly improved after being reworked that it became parts of some of the best scenes in the spaceship sequences.[/spoil] Hooray.

#3

Could anyone post the list of all features that come on the 2-disc (3-disc) DVD? If it will be a spoiler, could anyone pm me on that?

#4

Can anyone post screen captures of WALL-E Blu-Ray Disc Version?

#5

I’ve just finished watching WALL-E on Blu-Ray. What an experience. The film is gorgeous in itself, but the high definition really brings out the beauty to a point where it’s almost distracting.

Aside from watching BURN-E, I haven’t seen any of the extras yet. I’ll probably do so sometime this weekend. I did love BURN-E, though, and the way it tied in to WALL-E was both hilarious and inspired. I’ll comment more in the BURN-E thread.

My DVD was playing absolutely fine, no skipping or anything like that (so far, at least! Haven’t looked at the second disk yet).

Nice idea for a thread, miafka. :smiley: And in concerns to the cardboard packaging, I don’t think that we’ve got it over here (though I didn’t check properly, as I didn’t get the normal DVD version anyway).

#6

I have the 3-disc DVD and it’s great! I especially love the BnL shorts. I want to get the 2-disc Blu-ray for Christmas just to see the extra features and quality. How much of a quality difference is there between the WALL-E DVD and Blu-ray?

#7

Ok, here it is. I present it ‘menu-driven’ rather than in outline form, and also added explanatory comments to anything even remotely cryptic.

Disk1:

Play movie. This is it!
Scene Selection. 32 scenes.
Bonus Features. Menu below…
Set Up. Subtitles, options, etc…
Sneak Peeks. Up, Pinocchio, etc…

Bonus Features
Presto: Theatrical Short 5:14
BURN•E: All New Original Short 7:35
Animation Sound Design: Bldg Worlds from The Sound Up 18:43. Ben Burtt’s role in the production.
Deleted Scenes 9:30. Two scenes described below.
Sneak Peek: Wall•E’s Tour of the Universe 0:50. Preview for TV.

Deleted Scenes
Garbage Airlock 6:52. Meet the Wall•A’s.
Dumped 2:38. Critical scene is itself ‘dumped’.

Disk2: Main Menu

Humans: For Film Fans
Setup for Hearing Impaired
Robots: For Families

Humans: For Film Fans

Behind the Scenes 51:00 Creating the movie.
BnL Shorts 9:30 Ads.
The Pixar Story 1:28:30. History of Pixar.
Deleted Scenes 12:45 Two with comments.

Behind the Scenes

The Imperfect Lens 14:32. Giving the look that the movie was shot with a camera, and not animated.

Captain’s Log: The Evolution of Humans 7:57. Storyboard change in Act2+3 early in the 4 year development.

Notes on a Score 10:39. Composer and Director interactions.

Life of a shot: Deconstructing the Pixar Process 5:08. Extremely detailed construction of a shot and the hundreds of people involved.

Robo-Everything 5:46. Trying to solve the ‘tons of robots’ problem, and how they move etc…

Wall•E and Eve 7:00. Creating their image, functionality and personality.

BnL Shorts
The History of Buy N Large
Operation Cleanup
All Aboard The Axiom
Captaining The Axiom
Meet the Bnl Bots
…These are all ads on familiar themes.

Deleted Scenes
Secret Files. Auto views BnL msgs.
Docking. Wall-E meets M-O.

Robots For Families

Wall•E’s Treasures and Trinkets 4:54. Several promo teaser ads.

Bot Files. 28 bot types minimally described.

Lots of Bots storybook Read Along / Play Along. For kids.

Disc3: To make a copy of the movie via your computer to watch on various devices.

#8

I’ve been through the second disk now, and I’m mightily impressed. [spoil]The whole zooming around areas of the Axiom type thing really reminded me of the one from Monsters, Inc., and it’s brilliant to be able to really look at the surroundings and appreciate the amount of thought Pixar put into the environment. The documentary about the sounds behind WALL-E was fascinating, in particular, the footage of how sound designers working for Disney used to make their own little ‘instruments’, and Ben Burtt seems like a cool guy. The Buy N Large shorts were great too, and I liked how they actually explained the coming about of the name ‘Buy N Large’.[/spoil]

All in all, the extras are very good! It’s been a while since a Pixar film has had so much attached to it- I’d say the last time there was anything of this sort of size and quality was probably the extras that came with Monsters, Inc. (though I am a little biased. :laughing:) I love looking behind the scenes, just because you get that feeling of how Pixar-ish it all is, if that makes any sense.

#9

I’ll have to wait till Christmas to get the Wall-E 3 Discs special Edition… :frowning:

#10

I can’t wait for the arrival of the R1 Version of the movie and compare it to our local version.

One of my observations on our local version
[spoil]The cover is very different from the R1 Version but I haven’t bought it yet, maybe this weekend[/spoil]

#11

Blu-Ray comment. The song during the M-O mini game is from Gauntlet.

All I can seem to find is people playing the song, but here’s a good guitar version for comarison. youtube.com/watch?v=XnaPVFA6gzU

Haven’t been able to determine what the other game songs are though.

#12

I got my copy yesterday, No problems with my copy. =) And really enjoying the DVD and the digital copy of it.

#13

I haven’t read this anywhere else here, but in the past couple of weeks several outstanding articles have appeared about the quality of the Wall•E dvd, in particular the blu-ray:

dvdtown.com/news/dvdblu-ray- … -imdb/6122

highdefforum.com/high-defini … ision.html

videobusiness.com/article/CA6612426.html

imdb.com/news/ni0605940/ This is a full review

ropeofsilicon.com/article/bl … -s-edition

When I bought a new dvd player last week, they were playing Nemo on the machine I bought. Now when you see a Blu-ray, they might be playing Wall•E. It appears to be the industry standard right now.

#14

Well, most appliance stores in our country use Pixar movies to advertise a particular product.

#15

Yeah, ditto- Cars seems to be one of the favourites, and Finding Nemo too.

DarkHandOfSigourneyWeaver- I have to say, I agree with those articles. Watching WALL-E on Blu-Ray was spectacular, but as it was only the second Blu-Ray film I’ve seen, I didn’t really have much to compare it by. Good to know that WALL-E is, as you put it, the industry standard.

#16

Interesting, an hour ago I was in such a store at the other end of this building complex. They were playing Kung Fu Panda on all tv’s, which is probably more colorful than Wall•E, and it didn’t matter much since it was rentals and most of their 15 different demo screens had either been rented or been running nonstop as a demo for over a year.

#17

My first impression of the DVD 3-disc packaging was: how slick! WALL•E’s eyes are so entrancing. The whole recycling theme of the packaging ties in well with the movie, and I guess it would kind of be hypocritical of Disney to release a non-biodegradable packaging for this movie with its whole ‘protect the environment’ message. Are the DVDs themselves bio-degradable, though? Probably not, or at least not for a while. :stuck_out_tongue:

But… my movie disc is a little bit scratched. :frowning: It skips a bit at the beginning, and even though it’s a bit irritating, it could have been worse. I mean, points for Disney-Pixar for trying something different, but it wrecks the discs. But nevermind, I’ll just have to rip the movie to my computer and make another (non-skipping) copy.

I really like the menus, because each one is different from the last and they never repeat themselves. They fit in well with the BnL theme of bright colours and clean lines. Anyone know what music was used for the main menu in disc 1? I really like that music and don’t recall it being from the movie.

I was going to write more but my DVDs hardly work in my computer, so I’ve had to write from memory. Durn it.

Because I’m not a US/Canadian citizen, I can’t use that Disney Rewards coupon: anyone want it? PM me.

#18

The Pixar Story is all I needed to make the DVD worth the extra price, since I missed both screenings that came in my hometown! What an excellent film. The film closely follows To Infinity and Beyond: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios, and ends on a positive note with Cars and the future of Pixar. I guess it is a lot of fluff, but there’s also a lot of historic Pixar footage that I’ve never seen before, and it’s really well edited. I like the beginning stories much better, toward the end they begin to get corporate; I think I enjoy learning about the creative and technical processes of Pixar better.

The special features are just what I’d expect in a Pixar DVD. I’d say the features are on par with the Monsters, Inc, DVD, one of the best. It’s actually been a while since I’ve seen it, so I don’t recall the each features that much. I wish though there was more on the development of the story, which I feel is lacking. I guess we can see that with the commentary and the deleted scenes, which are split up between the first and second disks.

I’ve only listened to half of the commentary, yet from what I’ve heard, Andrew Stanton will remain as a pure genius.

I also love the digital download; I’ve seen WALL-E a few times on my laptop without the DVD, but why must they advertise it as “the third disk”? Once you download it, the disk is irrelevant, since they only let you download it once to only one computer, couldn’t they have saved plastic by giving you a download code for iTunes instead?

Oh yeah, even though this isn’t directly WALL-E related, I finally got my mail-in tree from the Target WALL-E DVD. It looks like a just branch of a Douglas Fir, but it’s a tree that you can plant, so I’m going to plant it soon!

#19

Just finished watching WALL-E with the Andrew Stanton commentary. He’s such a likeable guy! My favourite part had to be when [spoil]he was trying to fill up time, as he had about half a minute where he had nothing to say. His time wasting skills are poor.[/spoil] :laughing:

#20

One of things I liked about the 2nd disc in my 3 disc set was the B&L shorts, which shed some light on a few things, such as [spoil]every robot on board having a “Central Axiom Command Intelligence Key” in the Captain’s briefing[/spoil], which would explain why [spoil]when that panel on AUTO was flipped open, Captain McCrea seemed to instantly recognize said key[/spoil].