WALL-E (stylized with an interpunct as WALL·E) is a 2008 American animated science fiction romance film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton, produced by Jim Morris, and written by Stanton and Jim Reardon. It stars the voices of Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, with Sigourney Weaver and Fred Willard. The film follows a solitary robot named WALL-E on a future, uninhabitable, deserted Earth in 2805, left to clean up garbage. He is visited by a robot called EVE sent from the starship Axiom, with whom he falls in love and pursues across the galaxy.

After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt Pixar had created believable simulations of underwater physics and was willing to direct a film set largely in space. WALL-E has minimal dialogue in its early sequences; many of the characters in the film do not have voices, but instead communicate with body language and robotic sounds that were designed by Burtt. The film incorporates various topics including consumerism, corporatocracy, nostalgia, waste management, human environmental impact and concerns, obesity/sedentary lifestyles, and global catastrophic risk. It is also Pixar's first animated film with segments featuring live-action characters. Thomas Newman composed the film's musical score. The film cost $180 million to produce, a record-breaking sum for an animated film at the time. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film titled Presto for its theatrical release.

WALL-E was released in the United States on June 27, 2008. The film received critical acclaim for its animation, story, voice acting, characters, visuals, score, sound design, screenplay, use of minimal dialogue, and scenes of romance. It was also commercially successful, grossing $521.3 million worldwide and becoming the ninth-highest grossing film of 2008. It won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation, the final Nebula Award for Best Script, the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with five additional Oscar nominations. The film was widely named by critics and organizations, including the National Board of Review and American Film Institute, as one of the best films of 2008, and to be considered among the greatest animated films ever made.

In 2021, WALL-E became the second Pixar feature film (after Toy Story) to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In September 2022, at the request of Stanton, Disney licensed WALL-E to The Criterion Collection, who re-released the film as a special edition 4K Blu-Ray-standard Blu-ray combo pack on November 22, 2022, marking the first Pixar film to ever receive such an honor.

Plot

In the 29th century, Earth is a garbage-strewn wasteland due to an ecocide, caused by rampant consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental neglect.

Humanity is nowhere to be seen, having been evacuated by the megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL) to space on giant starliners, leaving trash compacting robots to clean up the planet, seven hundred years prior. The cleanup has failed and the last remaining active robot, named Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth Class (WALL·E) has developed a personality. WALL·E remains active by salvaging parts from other inactive robots and lives with his pet cockroach as his only companion in a large truck designed to carry the robots.

One day, WALL·E's routine of compressing trash and collecting interesting objects is broken by the arrival of an unmanned probe carrying an egg-shaped robot named Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) which is sent to scan the planet for signs of sustainable life. WALL·E is smitten by the sleek, otherworldly robot, and the two begin to connect, until EVE goes into standby mode when WALL·E shows her his most recent find: a living seedling. The probe ship eventually returns and collects EVE and the plant, with WALL·E clinging on. The probe ship then returns to its mothership, the starliner Axiom.

In the centuries since the Axiom left Earth, its passengers are now morbidly obese due to microgravity and the lack of physical activity (they move on hover-chairs instead of walking), with robots catering to their every whim. Even Captain B. McCrea is used to sitting back while his robotic AI autopilot helm, nicknamed AUTO, pilots the ship. McCrea is unprepared to receive the positive probe response, but discovers that placing the plant in the ship's Holo-Detector will trigger a hyperjump back to Earth so that humanity can begin recolonization. When McCrea inspects EVE's storage compartment, the plant is missing, with EVE blaming WALL·E for its disappearance.

EVE is deemed faulty and taken to diagnostics. Mistaking the process for torture, WALL·E intervenes and inadvertently releases all the other faulty bots, causing him and EVE to be designated as rogues. Frustrated, EVE tries to send WALL·E home in an escape pod, but before she can, the two witness a small robot, GO-4, stowing the plant in a pod set to self-destruct, revealing that WALL·E did not steal the plant. WALL·E tries retrieving it, but is launched into space. EVE uses an emergency exit to chase after WALL·E, and witnesses the pod explode, although both he and the plant survive unscathed. He and EVE reconcile, celebrating with a dance in space around the Axiom.

EVE brings the plant back to McCrea, who watches her recordings of Earth, concluding that they can and must save it. However, AUTO reveals that it has been programmed with the secret no-return directive A113 issued after BnL CEO Shelby Forthright inaccurately believed Earth could not be saved; GO-4 attempted to dispose of the plant on AUTO's instruction to make EVE seem faulty. When McCrea countermands the directive, AUTO and GO-4 mutiny, electrocuting WALL·E, forcefully putting EVE into standby, throwing them both down a garbage chute and locking McCrea in his quarters. EVE (having been reactivated by a mouse-like robot) and WALL·E are nearly ejected into space with the ship's refuse, but Microbe Obliterator (M-O), a cleaning robot who had been following WALL·E's dirt trail across the ship, saves the two when he gets stuck when the gate closes, prompting the Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Axiom Class (WALL·A) garbage bots to abort the ejection. As humans and robots help in securing the plant, McCrea and AUTO fight for control of the Axiom. AUTO crushes WALL·E using the Holo-Detector in a last-ditch attempt to keep the human passengers in space; McCrea eventually overpowers and deactivates AUTO by switching it to manual mode, and EVE successfully inserts the plant, initiating the hyperjump.

Arriving back on Earth, EVE quickly repairs WALL·E, but finds that his memory and personality have been erased. Heartbroken, EVE gives WALL·E a goodbye "kiss", which restores him to his normal self. WALL-E and EVE reunite as the Axiom inhabitants take their first steps on Earth. During the credits, humans and robots turn the ravaged planet into a paradise, and the plant grows into a mighty tree, which EVE and WALL·E rest beneath.

Cast

Voice cast
 Ben Burtt as WALL·E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-Class), a compactor robot who has achieved sentience, he is the only one still functioning on Earth. He is a small mobile compactor box accompanied by his cockroach friend Hal. He collects trinkets from the garbage and displays them at his home, where he watches a video cassette of 20th Century Studios' Hello, Dolly!, mimicking the dance sequences.
 Burtt also voices M-O (Microbe-Obliterator), a cleaning robot.
 Elissa Knight as EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a glossy white egg-shaped probe robot with blue LED eyes, whose directive is to verify the habitability of planets for humans. She moves using antigravity and is equipped with scanners, specimen storage, and a cannon which she is quick to use.
 Jeff Garlin as Captain B. McCrea, the captain of the Axiom.
 MacInTalk, the text-to-speech program for Apple Macintosh computers, is the voice of AUTO (pronounced Otto), the Axioms villainous AI autopilot which handles command functions of the ship. Loyal only to directive A113, it and GO-4 are the only computers not influenced by WALL-E.
 John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy as John and Mary, who live on the Axiom, so dependent on their automatic services as to be oblivious to their surroundings. They are brought out of their trances by encounters with WALL-E and fall in love with each other.
 Sigourney Weaver as the Axioms computer. Stanton joked to Weaver: "You realize you get to be 'Mother' now?" referring to the ship's computer in the film Alien, starring Weaver.

Live-action cast
 Fred Willard as Shelby Forthright, owner of the Buy n Large Corporation and President of Earth. The only major live-action character, appearing only in videos recorded around the time of the Axioms launch in the 22nd century. Forthright proposed the plan to evacuate Earth's population and then clean up the planet so they could return within five years. Discovering that Earth had become too toxic to support life, the cleanup and recolonization were abandoned. Forthright issued directive A113 preventing anyone from returning to Earth. As of , Forthright is the only live-action character with a speaking role in any Pixar film.
 Michael Crawford and Marianne McAndrew appear in an archival recording performing "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello, Dolly!.

Production

Writing

Andrew Stanton conceived WALL-E during a lunch with fellow writers John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft in 1994. Toy Story was near completion and the writers brainstormed ideas for their next projects—A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo—at this lunch. Stanton asked, "What if mankind had to leave Earth and somebody forgot to turn off the last robot?" Having struggled for many years with making the characters in Toy Story appealing, Stanton found his simple Robinson Crusoe-esque idea of a lonely robot on a deserted planet strong. Stanton made WALL·E a waste collector as the idea was instantly understandable, and because it was a low-status menial job that made him sympathetic. Stanton also liked the imagery of stacked cubes of garbage. He did not find the idea dark because having a planet covered in garbage was for him a childish imagining of disaster.

Stanton and Docter developed the film under the title of Trash Planet for two months in 1995, but they did not know how to develop the story and Docter chose to direct Monsters, Inc. instead. Stanton came up with the idea of WALL-E finding a plant, because his life as the sole inhabitant on a deserted world reminded Stanton of a plant growing among pavements. Before they turned their attention to other projects, Stanton and Lasseter thought about having WALL-E fall in love, as it was the necessary progression away from loneliness. Stanton started writing WALL-E again in 2002 while completing Finding Nemo. Stanton formatted his script in a manner reminiscent of Dan O'Bannon's Alien. O'Bannon wrote his script in a manner Stanton found reminded him of haiku, where visual descriptions were done in continuous lines of a few words. Stanton wrote his robot "dialogue" conventionally, but placed them in brackets. In late 2003, Stanton and a few others created a story reel of the first twenty minutes of the film. Lasseter and Steve Jobs were impressed and officially began development, though Jobs stated he did not like the title, originally spelled "W.A.L.-E."

While the first act of WALL-E "fell out of the sky" for Stanton, he had originally wanted aliens to plant EVE to explore Earth and the rest of the film was different. When WALL-E comes to the Axiom, he incites a Spartacus-style rebellion by the robots against the remnants of the human race, which were cruel alien Gels (completely devolved, gelatinous, boneless, legless, see-through, green creatures that resemble Jell-O). James Hicks, a physiologist, mentioned to Stanton the concept of atrophy and the effects prolonged weightlessness would have on humans living in space for an inordinately extended time period. Therefore, this was the inspiration of the humans degenerating into the alien Gels, and their ancestry would have been revealed in a Planet of the Apes-style ending. The Gels also spoke a made-up gibberish language, but Stanton scrapped this idea because he thought it would be too complicated for the audience to understand and they could easily be driven off from the storyline. The Gels had a royal family, who host a dance in a castle on a lake in the back of the ship, and the Axiom curled up into a ball when returning to Earth in this incarnation of the story. Stanton decided this was too bizarre and unengaging, and conceived humanity as "big babies". Stanton developed the metaphorical theme of the humans learning to stand again and "grow[ing] up", wanting WALL-E and EVE's relationship to inspire humanity because he felt few films explore how utopian societies come to exist. The process of depicting the descendants of humanity as the way they appear in the movie was slow. Stanton first decided to put a nose and ears on the Gels so the audience could recognize them. Eventually, fingers, legs, clothes, and other characteristics were added until they arrived at the concept of being fetus-like to allow the audience to see themselves in the characters.

In a later version of the film, AUTO comes to the docking bay to retrieve EVE's plant. The film would have its first cutaway to the captain, but Stanton moved that as he found it too early to begin moving away from WALL·E's point-of-view. As an homage to Get Smart, AUTO takes the plant and goes into the bowels of the ship into a room resembling a brain where he watches videos of Buy n Large's scheme to clean up the Earth falling apart through the years. Stanton removed this to keep some mystery as to why the plant is taken from EVE. The captain appears to be unintelligent, but Stanton wanted him to just be unchallenged; otherwise he would have not been sympathetic. One example of how unintelligent the captain was depicted initially is that he was seen to wear his hat upside-down, only to fix it before he challenges AUTO. In the finished film, he merely wears it casually atop his head, tightening it when he really takes command of the Axiom.

Stanton also moved the moment where WALL-E reveals his plant (which he had snatched from the self-destructing escape pod) from producing it from a closet to immediately after his escape, as it made EVE happier and gave them stronger motivation to dance around the ship. Originally, EVE would have been electrocuted by AUTO, and then be quickly saved from ejection at the hands of the Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Axiom-class (WALL·A) robots, by WALL-E. He would have then revived her by replacing her power unit with a cigarette lighter he brought from Earth. Stanton reversed this following a 2007 test screening, as he wanted to show EVE replacing her directive of bringing the plant to the captain with repairing WALL-E, and it made WALL-E even more heroic if he held the holo-detector open despite being badly hurt. The idea of WALL-E losing his memory and personality came after the braintrust team abandoned a scene where EVE had been shot in her heart battery and WALL-E gave her his own battery instead. Stanton felt half the audience at the screening believed the humans would be unable to cope with living on Earth and would have died out after the film's end. Jim Capobianco, director of the Ratatouille short film Your Friend the Rat, created an end credits animation that continued the story—and stylized in different artistic movements throughout history—to clarify an optimistic tone.

Design
WALL-E was the most complex Pixar production since Monsters, Inc. because of the world and the history that had to be conveyed. Whereas most Pixar films have up to 75,000 storyboards, WALL-E required 125,000. Production designer Ralph Eggleston wanted the lighting of the first act on Earth to be romantic, and that of the second act on the Axiom to be cold and sterile. During the third act, the romantic lighting is slowly introduced into the Axiom environment. Pixar studied Chernobyl and the city of Sofia to create the ruined world; art director Anthony Christov was from Bulgaria and recalled Sofia used to have problems storing its garbage. Eggleston bleached out the whites on Earth to make WALL-E feel vulnerable. The overexposed light makes the location look more vast. Because of the haziness, the cubes making up the towers of garbage had to be large, otherwise they would have lost shape (in turn, this helped save rendering time). The dull tans of Earth subtly become soft pinks and blues when EVE arrives. When WALL-E shows EVE all his collected items, all the lights he has collected light up to give an inviting atmosphere, like a Christmas tree. Eggleston tried to avoid the colors yellow and green so WALL-E—who was made yellow to emulate a tractor—would not blend into the deserted Earth, and to make the plant more prominent.

Stanton also wanted the lighting to look realistic and evoke the science fiction films of his youth. He thought that Pixar captured the physics of being underwater with Finding Nemo and so for WALL·E, he wanted to push that for air. While rewatching some of his favorite science fiction films, he realized that Pixar's other movies had lacked the look of 70 mm film and its barrel distortion, lens flare, and racking focus. Producer Jim Morris invited Roger Deakins and Dennis Muren to advise on lighting and atmosphere. Muren spent several months with Pixar, while Deakins hosted one talk and was requested to stay on for another two weeks. Stanton said Muren's experience came from integrating computer animation into live-action settings, while Deakins helped them understand not to overly complicate their camerawork and lighting. 1970s Panavision cameras were used to help the animators understand and replicate handheld imperfections like unfocused backgrounds in digital environments. The first lighting test included building a three-dimensional replica of WALL-E, filming it with a 70 mm camera, and then trying to replicate that in the computer. Stanton cited the shallow lens work of Gus Van Sant's films as an influence, as it created intimacy in each close-up. Stanton chose angles for the virtual cameras that a live-action filmmaker would choose if filming on a set.

Stanton wanted the Axioms interior to resemble Shanghai and Dubai. Eggleston studied 1960s NASA paintings and the original concept art for Tomorrowland for the Axiom, to reflect that era's sense of optimism. Stanton remarked "We are all probably very similar in our backgrounds here [at Pixar] in that we all miss the Tomorrowland that was promised us from the heyday of Disneyland," and wanted a "jet pack" feel. Pixar also studied the Disney Cruise Line and visited Las Vegas, which was helpful in understanding artificial lighting. Eggleston based his Axiom designs on the futuristic architecture of Santiago Calatrava. Eggleston divided the inside of the ship into three sections; the rear's economy class has a basic gray concrete texture with graphics keeping to the red, blue, and white of the BnL logo. The coach class with living/shopping spaces has "S" shapes as people are always looking for "what's around the corner". Stanton intended to have many colorful signs, but he realized this would overwhelm the audience and went with Eggleston's original idea of a small number of larger signs. The premier class is a large Zen-like spa with colors limited to turquoise, cream, and tan, and leads on to the captain's warm carpeted and wooded quarters and the sleek dark bridge. In keeping with the artificial Axiom, camera movements were modeled after those of the steadicam.

The use of live action was a stepping stone for Pixar, as Stanton was planning to make John Carter of Mars his next project. Storyboarder Derek Thompson noted introducing live action meant that they would make the rest of the film look even more realistic. Eggleston added that if the historical humans had been animated and slightly caricaturized, the audience then would not have been able to recognize how serious their devolution was. Stanton cast Fred Willard as the historical Buy n Large CEO because "[h]e's the most friendly and insincere car salesman I could think of." The CEO says "stay the course", which Stanton used because he thought it was funny. Industrial Light & Magic did the visual effects for these shots.

Animation
WALL·E went undeveloped during the 1990s partly because Stanton and Pixar were not confident enough yet to have a feature-length film with a main character that behaved like Luxo Jr., the Pixar lamp or R2-D2. Stanton explained there are two types of robots in cinema: "human[s] with metal skin", like the Tin Man, or "machine[s] with function" like Luxo and R2. He found the latter idea "powerful" because it allowed the audience to project personalities onto the characters, as they do with babies and pets: "You're compelled ... you almost can't stop yourself from finishing the sentence 'Oh, I think it likes me! I think it's hungry! I think it wants to go for a walk!'" He added, "We wanted the audience to believe they were witnessing a machine that has come to life." The animators visited recycling stations to study machinery, and also met robot designers, visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to study robots, watched a recording of a Mars rover, and borrowed a bomb detecting robot from the San Francisco Police Department. Simplicity was preferred in their performances as giving them too many movements would make them feel human.

Stanton wanted WALL·E to be a box and EVE to be like an egg. WALL·E's eyes were inspired by a pair of binoculars Stanton was given when watching the Oakland Athletics play against the Boston Red Sox. He "missed the entire inning" because he was distracted by them. The director was reminded of Buster Keaton and decided the robot would not need a nose or mouth. Stanton added a zoom lens to make WALL-E more sympathetic. Ralph Eggleston noted this feature gave the animators more to work with and gave the robot a childlike quality. Pixar's studies of trash compactors during their visits to recycling stations inspired his body. His tank treads were inspired by a wheelchair someone had developed that used treads instead of wheels. The animators wanted him to have elbows, but realized this was unrealistic because he is only designed to pull garbage into his body. His arms also looked flimsy when they did a test of him waving. Animation director Angus MacLane suggested they attach his arms to a track on the sides of his body to move them around, based on the inkjet printers his father designed. This arm design contributed to creating the character's posture, so if they wanted him to be nervous, they would lower them. Stanton was unaware of the similarities between WALL-E and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit until others pointed it out to him.

Stanton wanted EVE to be at the higher end of technology, and asked iPod designer Jonathan Ive to inspect her design. He was very impressed. Her eyes are modelled on Lite-Brite toys, but Pixar chose not to make them overly expressive as it would be too easy to have her eyes turn into hearts to express love or something similar. Her limited design meant the animators had to treat her like a drawing, relying on posing her body to express emotion. They also found her similar to a manatee or a narwhal because her floating body resembled an underwater creature. Auto was a conscious homage to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the usage of Also sprach Zarathustra for the showdown between Captain McCrea and Auto furthers that. The manner in which he hangs from a wall or ceiling gives him a threatening feel, like a spider. Originally, Auto was designed entirely differently, resembling EVE, but masculine and authoritative and SECUR-T was also a more aggressive patrol steward robot. The majority of the robot cast were formed with the Build-a-bot program, where different heads, arms and treads were combined in over a hundred variations. The humans were modelled on sea lions due to their blubbery bodies, as well as babies. The filmmakers noticed baby fat is a lot tighter than adult fat and copied that texture for the film's humans.

To animate their robots, the film's story crew and animation crew watched a Keaton and a Charlie Chaplin film every day for almost a year, and occasionally a Harold Lloyd picture. Afterwards, the filmmakers knew all emotions could be conveyed silently. Stanton cited Keaton's "great stone face" as giving them perseverance in animating a character with an unchanging expression. As he rewatched these, Stanton felt that filmmakers—since the advent of sound—relied on dialogue too much to convey exposition. The filmmakers dubbed the cockroach WALL-E keeps as a pet "Hal", in reference to silent film producer Hal Roach (as well as being an additional reference to HAL 9000). They also watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf, films that had sound but were not reliant on dialogue. Stanton acknowledged Silent Running as an influence because its silent robots were a forerunner to the likes of R2-D2, and that the "hopeless romantic" Woody Allen also inspired WALL-E.

Sound
Producer Jim Morris recommended Ben Burtt as sound designer for WALL-E because Stanton kept using R2-D2 as the benchmark for the robots. Burtt had completed Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and told his wife he would no longer work on films with robots, but found WALL-E and its substitution of voices with sound "fresh and exciting". He recorded 2,500 sounds for the film, which was twice the average number for a Star Wars film, and a record in his career. Burtt began work in 2005, and experimented with filtering his voice for two years. Burtt described the robot voices as "like a toddler ... universal language of intonation. 'Oh', 'Hm?', 'Huh!', you know?"

During production Burtt had the opportunity to look at the items used by Jimmy MacDonald, Disney's in-house sound designer for many of their classic films. Burtt used many of MacDonald's items on WALL-E. Because Burtt was not simply adding sound effects in post-production, the animators were always evaluating his new creations and ideas, which Burtt found an unusual experience. He worked in sync with the animators, returning their animation after adding the sounds to give them more ideas. Burtt would choose scientifically accurate sounds for each character, but if he could not find one that worked, he would choose a dramatic and unrealistic noise. Burtt would find hundreds of sounds by looking at concept art of characters, before he and Stanton pared it down to a distinct few for each robot.

Burtt saw a hand-cranked electrical generator while watching Island in the Sky, and bought an identical, unpacked device from 1950 on eBay to use for WALL·E moving around. Burtt also used an automobile self-starter for when WALL·E goes fast, and the sound of cars being wrecked at a demolition derby provided for WALL·E's compressing trash in his body. The Macintosh computer chime was used to signify when WALL-E has fully recharged his battery. For EVE, Burtt wanted her humming to have a musical quality. Burtt was only able to provide neutral or masculine voices, so Pixar employee Elissa Knight was asked to provide her voice for Burtt to electronically modify. Stanton deemed the sound effect good enough to properly cast her in the role. Burtt recorded a flying  radio-controlled jet plane for EVE's flying, and for her plasma cannon, Burtt hit a slinky hung from a ladder with a timpani stick. He described it as a "cousin" to the blaster noise from Star Wars.

MacInTalk was used because Stanton "wanted Auto to be the epitome of a robot, cold, zeros & ones, calculating, and soulless [and] Stephen Hawking's kind of voice I thought was perfect." Additional sounds for the character were meant to give him a clockwork feel, to show he is always thinking and calculating.

Burtt had visited Niagara Falls in 1987 and used his recordings from his trip for the sounds of wind, and ran around a hall with a canvas bag up to record the sandstorm. For the scene where WALL-E flees from falling shopping carts, Burtt and his daughter went to a supermarket and placed a recorder in their cart. They crashed it around the parking lot and then let it tumble down a hill. To create Hal (WALL-E's pet cockroach)'s skittering, he recorded the clicking caused by taking apart and reassembling handcuffs.

Music

Thomas Newman recollaborated with Stanton on WALL-E since the two got along well on Finding Nemo, which gave Newman the Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Feature. He began writing the score in 2005, in the hope that starting this task early would make him more involved with the finished film. But, Newman remarked that animation is so dependent on scheduling he should have begun work earlier on when Stanton and Reardon were writing the script. EVE's theme was arranged for the first time in October 2007. Her theme when played as she first flies around Earth originally used more orchestral elements, and Newman was encouraged to make it sound more feminine. Newman said Stanton had thought up many ideas for how he wanted the music to sound, and he generally followed them as he found scoring a partially silent film difficult. Stanton wanted the whole score to be orchestral, but Newman felt limited by this idea especially in scenes aboard the Axiom, and used electronics too.

Stanton originally wanted to juxtapose the opening shots of space with 1930s French swing music, but changed his mind after seeing The Triplets of Belleville (2003), not wanting to appear as if he were copying it. Stanton then thought about the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello, Dolly!, since he had portrayed the sidekick Barnaby Tucker in a 1980 high school production. Stanton found that the song was about two naive young men looking for love, which was similar to WALL-E's own hope for companionship. Jim Reardon, storyboard supervisor for the film, suggested WALL-E find the film on video, and Stanton included "It Only Takes a Moment" and the clip of the actors holding hands, because he wanted a visual way to show how WALL-E understands love and conveys it to EVE. Hello, Dolly! composer Jerry Herman allowed the songs to be used without knowing what for; when he saw the film, he found its incorporation into the story "genius". Coincidentally, Newman's uncle Lionel worked on Hello, Dolly!

Newman travelled to London to compose the end credits song "Down to Earth" with Peter Gabriel, who was one of Stanton's favorite musicians. Afterwards, Newman rescored some of the film to include the song's composition, so it would not sound intrusive when played. Louis Armstrong's rendition of "La Vie en rose" was used for a montage where WALL-E attempts to impress EVE on Earth. The script also specified using Bing Crosby's "Stardust" for when the two robots dance around the Axiom, but Newman asked if he could score the scene himself. A similar switch occurred for the sequence in which WALL-E attempts to wake EVE up through various means; originally, the montage would play with the instrumental version of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", but Newman wanted to challenge himself and scored an original piece for the sequence.

Themes
The film is recognized as a social criticism. Katherine Ellison asserts that "Americans produce nearly 400 million tons of solid waste per year but recycle less than a third of it, according to a recent Columbia University study." Landfills were filling up very rapidly worldwide, and predictions were made that the UK could run out of landfill space by 2017.

Environment, waste, and nostalgia

In the DVD commentary, Stanton said that he has been asked if it was his intention to make a movie about consumerism. His answer was it was not; it was a way to answer the question of how would the Earth get to the state where one robot would be left to continue the cleanup by itself. Nevertheless, some critics have noted an incongruity between the perceived pro-environmental and anti-consumerist messaging of the film, and the environmental impacts in the production and merchandising of the film.

In "WALL-E: from environmental adaption to sentimental nostalgia," Robin Murray and Joseph Heumann explain the important theme of nostalgia in this film. Nostalgia is clearly represented by human artifacts, left behind, that WALL-E collects and cherishes, for example Zippo lighters, hubcaps, and plastic sporks. These modern items that are used out of necessity are made sentimental through the lens of the bleak future of Earth. Nostalgia is also expressed through the musical score, as the film opens with a camera shot of outer space that slowly zooms into a waste filled Earth while playing "Put on Your Sunday Clothes", reflecting on simpler and happier times in human history. This film also expresses nostalgia through the longing of nature and the natural world, as it is the sight and feeling of soil, and the plant brought back to the space ship by EVE, that make the captain decide it is time for humans to move back to Earth. WALL-E expresses nostalgia also, by reflecting on romantic themes of older Disney and silent films.

Stanton describes the theme of the film as "irrational love defeats life's programming":
I realized the point I was trying to push with these two programmed robots was the desire for them to try and figure out what the point of living was ... It took these really irrational acts of love to sort of discover them against how they were built ... I realized that that's a perfect metaphor for real life. We all fall into our habits, our routines and our ruts, consciously or unconsciously to avoid living. To avoid having to do the messy part. To avoid having relationships with other people or dealing with the person next to us. That's why we can all get on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another. I thought, 'That's a perfect amplification of the whole point of the movie.' I wanted to run with science in a way that would sort of logically project that.

Technology
Stanton noted many commentators placed emphasis on the environmental aspect of humanity's complacency in the film, because "that disconnection is going to be the cause, indirectly, of anything that happens in life that's bad for humanity or the planet". Stanton said that by taking away effort to work, the robots also take away humanity's need to put effort into relationships. Christian journalist Rod Dreher saw technology as the complicated villain of the film. The humans' artificial lifestyle on the Axiom has separated them from nature, making them "slaves of both technology and their own base appetites, and have lost what makes them human". Dreher contrasted the hardworking, dirt covered WALL-E with the sleek clean robots on the ship. However, it is the humans and not the robots who make themselves redundant. Humans on the ship and on Earth have overused robots and the ultra-modern technology. During the end credits, humans and robots are shown working alongside each other to renew the Earth. "WALL·E is not a Luddite film," he said. "It doesn't demonize technology. It only argues that technology is properly used to help humans cultivate their true nature—that it must be subordinate to human flourishing, and help move that along."

Religion

Stanton, who is a Christian, named EVE after the Biblical figure because WALL-E's loneliness reminded him of Adam, before God created his wife. Dreher noted EVE's biblical namesake and saw her directive as an inversion of that story; EVE uses the plant to tell humanity to return to Earth and move away from the "false god" of BnL and the lazy lifestyle it offers. In cohesion with the classical Christian viewpoint, WALL-E shows that work is what makes humans human. Whereas other sources would say that laziness and pleasure is paradise, WALL-E tries to show that that is not true. Dreher emphasized the false god parallels to BnL in a scene where a robot teaches infants "B is for Buy n Large, your very best friend", which he compared to modern corporations such as McDonald's creating brand loyalty in children. Megan Basham of World magazine felt the film criticizes the pursuit of leisure, whereas WALL-E in his stewardship learns to truly appreciate God's creation.

During writing, a Pixar employee noted to Jim Reardon that EVE was reminiscent of the dove with the olive branch from the story of Noah's Ark, and the story was reworked with EVE finding a plant to return humanity from its voyage. WALL-E himself has been compared to Prometheus, Sisyphus, and Butades: in an essay discussing WALL-E as representative of the artistic strive of Pixar itself, Hrag Vartanian compared WALL-E to Butades in a scene where the robot expresses his love for EVE by making a sculpture of her from spare parts. "The Ancient Greek tradition associates the birth of art with a Corinthian maiden who longing to preserve her lover's shadow traces it on the wall before he departed for war. The myth reminds us that art was born out of longing and often means more for the creator than the muse. In the same way Stanton and his Pixar team have told us a deeply personal story about their love of cinema and their vision for animation through the prism of all types of relationships."

Release
WALL-E premiered at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on June 23, 2008. Continuing a Pixar tradition, the film was paired with a short film for its theatrical release, Presto. The film is dedicated to Justin Wright (1981–2008), a Pixar animator who had worked on Ratatouille and died of a heart attack before WALL-Es release.

Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) built animatronic WALL-Es to promote the picture, which made appearances at Disneyland Resort, the Franklin Institute, the Miami Science Museum, the Seattle Center, and the Tokyo International Film Festival. Due to safety concerns, the 318 kg robots were always strictly controlled and WDI always needed to know exactly what they were required to interact with. For this reason, they generally refused to have their puppets meet and greet children at the theme parks in case a WALL-E trod on a child's foot. Those who wanted to take a photograph with the character had to make do with a cardboard cutout.

The film was denied a theatrical release in China.

In 2016, Jim Morris noted that the studio has no plans for a sequel, as they consider WALL-E a finished story with no need for continuation.

To promote the film, a website was created for Buy n Large, the featuring megacorporation. This website had fake press releases beginning in 2057, including "Wisconsin Mall Granted City Status," "BnL Announces Police Select." These fictional reports also quotes "analyst Richard Greenberg," which Multichannel News pointed said sounds like Richard Greenfield who has analysed Disney. Greenfield said that "I would be sincerely flattered if there is a connection between anything Pixar creates and our research work."

Merchandise
Small quantities of merchandise were sold for WALL-E, as Cars items were still popular, and many manufacturers were more interested in Speed Racer, which was a successful product line despite the film's failure at the box office. Thinkway, which created the WALL·E toys, had previously made Toy Story dolls when other toy producers had not shown an interest. Among Thinkway's items were a WALL-E that danced when connected to a music player, a toy that could be taken apart and reassembled, and a groundbreaking remote control toy of him and EVE that had motion sensors that allowed them to interact with players. There were even plushies. The "Ultimate WALL-E" figures were not in stores until the film's home release in November 2008, at a retail price of almost $200, leading The Patriot-News to deem it an item for "hard-core fans and collectors only". On February 4, 2015, Lego announced that a WALL-E custom built by lead animator Angus MacLane was the latest design approved for mass production and release as part of Lego Ideas.

Home media
The film was released on Blu-ray Disc and DVD by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on November 18, 2008. Various editions include the short film Presto, another short film BURN-E, the Leslie Iwerks documentary film The Pixar Story, shorts about the history of Buy n Large, behind-the-scenes special features, and a digital copy of the film that can be played through iTunes or Windows Media Player-compatible devices. This release sold 9,042,054 DVD units ($142,633,974) in total becoming the second-best-selling animated DVD among those released in 2008 in units sold (behind Kung Fu Panda), the best-selling animated feature in sales revenue, and the third-best-selling among all 2008 DVDs.

WALL-E was released in Japan in a limited edition Blu-ray box set, which included a book featuring artwork from the film, a framed print, and a remote control version of Wall-E. This edition is now discontinued.

WALL-E was released by Disney on 4K Blu-ray on March 3, 2020.

At the request of Stanton, Disney licensed WALL-E to The Criterion Collection in September 2022, who created a special 4K Blu-ray-Blu-ray combo edition of the film that was released on November 22, 2022, featuring the same 4K digital master used for Disney's original 4K Blu-ray release, but now presented in Dolby Vision and HDR10+ as approved by Stanton, along with additional special features. This makes it both the first Pixar feature film and the eighth Walt Disney Pictures film to be released under the Criterion label. In its description for the release, Criterion viewed the film as an important work of both the animation medium and of cinema itself, saying that while "Transporting us simultaneously back to cinema's silent origins and light-years into the future, WALL-E is a soaring ode to the power of love and art to heal a dying world."

Reception

Box office
WALL-E grossed $223.8 million in the United States and Canada and $308.7 million overseas, for a worldwide total of $532.5 million, making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2008.

In the US and Canada, WALL-E opened in 3,992 theaters on June 27, 2008. The film grossed $23.1 million on its opening day, the highest of all nine Pixar titles to date. During its opening weekend, it topped the box office with $63,087,526. This was the third-best opening weekend for a Pixar film after Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, and the second-best opening weekend among films released in June, behind Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The film grossed $38 million the following weekend, losing its first place to Hancock. WALL-E crossed the $200 million mark by August 3, during its sixth weekend.

WALL-E grossed over $10 million in Japan ($44,005,222), UK, Ireland and Malta ($41,215,600), France and the Maghreb region ($27,984,103), Germany ($24,130,400), Mexico ($17,679,805), Spain ($14,973,097), Australia ($14,165,390), Italy ($12,210,993), and Russia and the CIS ($11,694,482).

Critical response

The American Film Institute named WALL-E as one of the best films of 2008; the jury rationale states:

WALL•E proves to this generation and beyond that the film medium's only true boundaries are the human imagination. Writer/director Andrew Stanton and his team have created a classic screen character from a metal trash compactor who rides to the rescue of a planet buried in the debris that embodies the broken promise of American life. Not since Chaplin's "Little Tramp" has so much story—so much emotion—been conveyed without words. When hope arrives in the form of a seedling, the film blossoms into one of the great screen romances as two robots remind audiences of the beating heart in all of us that yearns for humanity—and love—in the darkest of landscapes.

 At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has an average score of 95 out of 100 based on 39 reviews, indicating  "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average rating of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

IndieWire named WALL-E the third-best film of the year based on their annual survey of 100 film critics, while Movie City News shows that WALL-E appeared in 162 different top 10 lists, out of 286 different critics lists surveyed, the most mentions on a top 10 list of any film released in 2008.

Richard Corliss of Time named WALL-E his favorite film of 2008 (and later of the decade), noting the film succeeded in "connect[ing] with a huge audience" despite the main characters' lack of speech and "emotional signifiers like a mouth, eyebrows, shoulders, [and] elbows". It "evoke[d] the splendor of the movie past" and he also compared WALL-E and EVE's relationship to the chemistry of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Other critics who named WALL-E their favorite film of 2008 included Tom Charity of CNN, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, A. O. Scott of The New York Times, Christopher Orr of The New Republic, Ty Burr and Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe, Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal, and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker.

Todd McCarthy of Variety called the film "Pixar's ninth consecutive wonder", saying it was imaginative yet straightforward. He said it pushed the boundaries of animation by balancing esoteric ideas with more immediately accessible ones, and that the main difference between the film and other science fiction projects rooted in an apocalypse was its optimism. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter declared that WALL-E surpassed the achievements of Pixar's previous eight features and probably their most original film to date. He said it had the "heart, soul, spirit and romance" of the best silent films. Honeycutt said the film's definitive stroke of brilliance was in using a mix of archive film footage and computer graphics to trigger WALL·E's romantic leanings. He praised Burtt's sound design, saying "If there is such a thing as an aural sleight of hand, this is it."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times named WALL-E "an enthralling animated film, a visual wonderment, and a decent science-fiction story" and said the scarcity of dialogue would allow it to "cross language barriers" in a manner appropriate to the global theme, and noted it would appeal to adults and children. He praised the animation, describing the color palette as "bright and cheerful ... and a little bit realistic", and that Pixar managed to generate a "curious" regard for the WALL·E, comparing his "rusty and hard-working and plucky" design favorably to more obvious attempts at creating "lovable" lead characters. He said WALL-E was concerned with ideas rather than spectacle, saying it would trigger stimulating "little thoughts for the younger viewers." He named it as one of his twenty favorite films of 2008 and argued it was "the best science-fiction movie in years".

The film was interpreted as tackling a topical, ecologically-minded agenda, though McCarthy said it did so with a lightness of touch that granted the viewer the ability to accept or ignore the message. Kyle Smith of the New York Post, wrote that by depicting future humans as "a flabby mass of peabrained idiots who are literally too fat to walk", WALL-E was darker and more cynical than any major Disney feature film he could recall. He compared the humans to the patrons of Disney's theme parks and resorts, adding, "I'm also not sure I've ever seen a major corporation spend so much money to issue an insult to its customers." Maura Judkis of U.S. News & World Report questioned whether this depiction of "frighteningly obese humans" would resonate with children and make them prefer to "play outside rather than in front of the computer, to avoid a similar fate".

A few notable critics have argued that the film is vastly overrated, claiming it failed to "live up to such blinding, high-wattage enthusiasm", and that there were "chasms of boredom watching it", in particular "the second and third acts spiraled into the expected". Other labels included "preachy" and "too long". Child reviews sent into CBBC were mixed, some citing boredom and an inadequate storyline.

Several conservative commentators criticized the film. Shannen W. Coffin of National Review said that WALL-E is "leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind". Greg Pollowitz of National Review called the film "a 90-minute lecture on the dangers of over consumption, big corporations, and the destruction of the environment". Jonah Goldberg said that while the film was "fascinating and at-times brilliant", he added that it is also "Malthusian fear mongering". Glenn Beck said that "I can't wait to teach my kids how we've destroyed the Earth ... Pixar is teaching. I can't wait. You know if your kid has ever come home and said, 'Dad, how come we use so much styrofoam,' oh, this is the movie for you."

Patrick J. Ford of The American Conservative said WALL-Es conservative critics missed lessons in the film that he felt appealed to traditional conservatism. He argued that the mass consumerism in the film was not shown to be a product of big business, but of too close a tie between big business and big government: "The government unilaterally provided its citizens with everything they needed, and this lack of variety led to Earth's downfall." Responding to Coffin's claim that the film points out the evils of mankind, Ford argued the only evils depicted were those that resulted from losing touch with our own humanity and that fundamental conservative representations such as the farm, the nuclear family unit, and "wholesome entertainment" were seen as "beautiful and desirable." by the human characters. He concluded, "By steering conservative families away from WALL-E, these commentators are doing their readers a great disservice."

Director Terry Gilliam praised the film as "A stunning bit of work. The scenes on what was left of planet Earth are just so beautiful: one of the great silent movies. And the most stunning artwork! It says more about ecology and society than any live-action film—all the people on their loungers floating around, brilliant stuff. Their social comment was so smart and right on the button."

Archaeologists have commented on the themes of human evolution that the film explores. Ben Marwick has written how the character of WALL-E resembles an archaeologist with his methodical collection and classification of quotidian human artefacts. He is shown facing a typological dilemma of classifying a spork as either a fork or spoon, and his nostalgic interest in the human past further demonstrated by his attachment to repeated viewings of the 1969 film Hello, Dolly!. Marwick notes that the film features major human evolutionary transitions such as obligate bipedalism (captain of the spaceship struggles with the autopilot to gain control of the vessel) and the invention of agriculture, as part of watershed moments in the story of the film. According to Marwick, one prominent message of the film "appears to be that the envelopment by technology that the humans in Wall-E experience paradoxically results in physical and cultural devolution." Scholars such as Ian Tattersall and Steve Jones have similarly discussed scenarios where elements of modern technology (such as medicine) may have caused human evolution to slow or stop.

In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Accolades

WALL-E won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing at the 81st Academy Awards. Walt Disney Pictures also pushed for an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination, but it was not nominated, sparking controversy over whether the Academy deliberately restricted WALL-E to the Best Animated Feature category. Film critic Peter Travers remarked, "If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for best picture it's Wall-E." Only three animated films, 1991's Beauty and the Beast and Pixar's next two films, 2009's Up and 2010's Toy Story 3, have ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. A reflective Stanton stated he was not disappointed the film was restricted to the Best Animated Film nomination because he was overwhelmed by the film's positive reception, and eventually "The line [between live-action and animation] is just getting so blurry that I think with each proceeding year, it's going to be tougher and tougher to say what's an animated movie and what's not an animated movie."

WALL-E made a healthy appearance at the various 2008 end-of-the-year awards circles, particularly in the Best Picture category, where animated films are often overlooked. It has won the award, or the equivalent of it, from the Boston Society of Film Critics (tied with Slumdog Millionaire), the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Central Ohio Film Critics awards, the Online Film Critics Society, and most notably the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, where it became the first animated feature to win the prestigious award. It was named as one of 2008's ten best films by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

It won Best Animated Feature Film at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, 81st Academy Awards, and the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008. It was nominated for several awards at the 2009 Annie Awards, including Best Feature Film, Animated Effects, Character Animation, Direction, Production design, Storyboarding and Voice acting (for Ben Burtt); but was beaten out by Kung Fu Panda in every category. It won Best Animated Feature at the 62nd British Academy Film Awards and was also nominated there for Best Music and Sound. Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel won two Grammy Awards for "Down to Earth" and "Define Dancing". It won all three awards it was nominated for by the Visual Effects Society: Best Animation, Best Character Animation (for WALL-E and EVE in the truck) and Best Effects in the Animated Motion Picture categories. It became the first animated film to win Best Editing for a Comedy or Musical from the American Cinema Editors. In 2009, Stanton, Reardon, and Docter won the Nebula Award, beating The Dark Knight and the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Shrine". It won Best Animated Film and was nominated for Best Director at the Saturn Awards.

At the British National Movie Awards, which is voted for by the public, it won Best Family Film. It was also voted Best Feature Film at the British Academy Children's Awards. WALL-E was listed at No. 63 on Empires online poll of the 100 greatest movie characters, conducted in 2008. In early 2010, Time ranked WALL-E No. 1 in "Best Movies of the Decade". In Sight & Sound magazine's 2012 poll of the greatest films of all time, WALL-E is the second-highest-ranking animated film behind My Neighbor Totoro (1988), while tying with the film Spirited Away (2001) at 202nd overall. In a 2016 BBC poll of international critics, it was voted the 29th-greatest film since 2000.

Robotic recreations
In 2012, Mike McMaster, an American robotics hobbyist, began working on his own model of WALL·E. The final product was built with more moving parts than the WALL·E which roams around Disneyland. McMaster's four-foot robot made an appearance at the Walt Disney Family Museum and was featured during the opening week of Tested.com a project headed up by Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of MythBusters. Since WALL-E's creation, Mike and the popular robot have made dozens of appearances at various events.

In the same year, Mike Senna completed his own WALL·E build. He also created an EVE. They were present at a photo op at Disney's D23 Expo 2015.

See also
 Robots (2005 film)
 Mars Cube One, consisting of two nanospacecraft, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, which are nicknamed WALL-E and EVE

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

2008 films
2008 computer-animated films
2000s science fiction adventure films
2000s American animated films
2008 science fiction films
2000s romance films
2000s science fiction comedy films
2000s satirical films
American animated science fiction films
American films with live action and animation
American science fiction comedy films
American robot films
American satirical films
American animated feature films
Animated films set in the future
Films about archaeology
Best Animated Feature Academy Award winners
Best Animated Feature BAFTA winners
Best Animated Feature Broadcast Film Critics Association Award winners
Best Animated Feature Film Golden Globe winners
American dystopian films
Environmental films
Films about evolution
Fictional robots
Films about consumerism
2000s children's animated films
Films scored by Thomas Newman
Films directed by Andrew Stanton
Films produced by Jim Morris
Films set in the 29th century
Generation ships in fiction
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form winning works
Nebula Award for Best Script-winning works
Pixar animated films
Animated post-apocalyptic films
Animated films about robots
Animated films set in outer space
Films set on spacecraft
Films with screenplays by Pete Docter
Films with screenplays by Andrew Stanton
Films with screenplays by Jim Reardon
American post-apocalyptic films
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United States National Film Registry films
Walt Disney Pictures animated films
American children's animated science fiction films
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American children's animated comic science fiction films
Animated films set in the 22nd century

WALL-E


Windermere (sometimes tautologically called Lake Windermere  to distinguish it from the nearby town of Windermere) is a ribbon lake in Cumbria, England, and part of the Lake District. It is the largest lake in England by length, area, and volume, but considerably smaller than the largest Scottish lochs and Northern Irish loughs.

The lake is about  in length and  at its widest, has a maximum depth of , and has an elevation of  above sea level. Its outflow is the River Leven, which drains into Morecambe Bay. The lake is in the administrative council area of Westmorland and Furness and the historic county of Westmorland, with the lake forming part of the boundary between the historic counties of Westmorland and Lancashire. It has been one of the country's most popular places for holidays and summer homes since the arrival of the Kendal and Windermere Railway's branch line in 1847. The Freshwater Biological Association was established on the shore of Windermere in 1929 and much of the early work on lake ecology, freshwater biology and limnology was conducted here.

Etymology

The word 'Windermere' is thought to translate as "'Winand or Vinand's lake'... The specific has usually been identified with an Old Swedish personal name 'Vinandr', genitive singular 'Vinandar'"... although "the personal noun is of very restricted distribution even in Sweden." Another possibility is that it refers to a "Continental Germanic personal noun, 'Wīnand'...Since this name could not have been current until the 12th century, the fact that the Old Norse genitive singular '-ar-' has been added to it, it would suggest that Old Norse was still a living language in the area at that time."
Alternative spellings may be 'Wynhendermere' and 'Wynenderme'
The second element is Old English 'mere', meaning 'lake' or 'pool'. It was known as "Winander Mere" or "Winandermere" until at least the 19th century.

Its name suggests it is a mere, a lake that is broad in relation to its depth, but despite the name this is not the case for Windermere, which in particular has a noticeable thermocline, distinguishing it from typical meres. Until the 19th century, the term "lake" was, indeed, not much used by or known to the native inhabitants of the area, who referred to it as Windermere/Winandermere Water, or (in their dialect) Windermer Watter. The name Windermere or Windermer was used of the parish that had clearly taken its name from the water. The poet Norman Nicholson comments on the use of the phrase 'Lake Windermere': "a certain excuse for the tautology can be made in the case of Windermere, since we need to differentiate between the lake and the town, though it would be better to speak of 'Windermere Lake' and Windermere Town', but no one can excuse such ridiculous clumsiness as 'Lake Derwentwater' and 'Lake Ullswater."

The extensive parish included most of Undermilbeck (that is, excepting Winster and the part of Crook chapelry that lay west of the Gilpin, which were part of Kirkby Kendal parish), Applethwaite, Troutbeck and Ambleside-below-Stock, that is, the part of Ambleside that lay south of Stock Beck. The parish church was at Bowness in Undermilbeck.

Geography

Windermere is long and narrow, like many other ribbon lakes, and lies in a steep-sided pre-glacial river valley that has become deepened by successive glaciations. The current lake was formed after the Last Glacial Maximum during the retreat of the British and Irish Ice Sheet some time between 17,000 and 14,700 years ago, just before the start of the Windermere Interstadial. The lake water was sourced from the meltwater of retreating ice in the catchment, which receded up the Troutbeck valley and up the valleys that now contain the rivers Rothay and Brathay. There were at least nine ice retreat phases, indicated by buried recessional moraines. The lake has two separate basins – north and south – with different characteristics influenced by the geology. This consists of hard volcanic rocks in the north basin and softer shales in the south.

The lake is drained from its southernmost point by the River Leven. It is replenished by the rivers Brathay, Rothay, Trout Beck, Cunsey Beck and several other lesser streams. The lake is largely surrounded by foothills of the Lake District which provide pleasant low-level walks; to the north and northeast are the higher fells of central Lakeland.

There is debate as to whether the stretch of water between Newby Bridge and Lakeside at the southern end of the lake should be considered part of Windermere, or a navigable stretch of the River Leven. This affects the stated length of the lake, which is  long if measured from the bridge at Newby Bridge, or  if measured from Lakeside. The lake varies in width up to a maximum of , and covers an area of . With a maximum depth of  and an elevation above sea level of , the lowest point of the lake bed is well below sea level.

There is only one town or village directly on the lakeshore, Bowness-on-Windermere, as the village of Windermere does not directly touch the lake and the centre of Ambleside is  to the north of Waterhead. The village of Windermere is about 20 minutes' walk from Millerground, the nearest point on the lakeshore. It did not exist before the arrival of the railway in 1847. The station was built in an area of open fell and farmland in the township of Applethwaite. The nearest farm was Birthwaite, which gave its name to the station and the village that began to grow up near it. In about 1859, the residents began to call their new village by the name of Windermere, much to the chagrin of the people of Bowness, which had been the centre of the parish of Windermere for many centuries. Since 1907 the two places have been under one council and, although there are still two separate centres, the area between is largely built up, albeit bordering on woodland and open fields. Windermere railway station is a hub for train and bus connections to the surrounding areas and is  from the Waterbus jetty. There is a regular train service to Oxenholme on the West Coast Main Line, where there are fast trains to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester Airport, Birmingham and London.

Islands

The lake contains eighteen islands. By far the largest is the privately owned Belle Isle () opposite Bowness and around a kilometre in length. Its older name was Lang Holme, and 800 years ago it was the centre of the manor of Windermere and later, in effect, of a moiety of the barony of Kendal.

The other islands or "holmes" are considerably smaller. The word "holme" or "holm" means small island or islet and comes from Old Norse holmr. The island of Lady Holme is named after the chantry that formerly stood there and in former centuries was sometimes called St Mary Holme or just Mary Holme. The remaining islands are Bee Holme (the insular status of which depends on the water level), Blake Holme, Crow Holme, Birk or Birch Holme (called Fir Holme on Ordnance Survey maps), Grass Holme, Lilies of the Valley (East, and West), Ling Holme (a rocky hump with a few trees and a growth of ling), Hawes Holme, Hen Holme (also rocky and sometimes known as chair and Table Island from some old flags or slabs of stone that were formerly found there), Maiden Holme (the smallest island, with just one tree), Ramp Holme (variously called Roger Holme and Berkshire Island at different times in its history), Rough Holme, Snake Holme, Thompson Holme (the second largest), Silver Holme.

Local government

Before 1974, the lake lay wholly within the county of Westmorland; however, the historic county boundary between Lancashire and Westmorland runs down the western shore of the lake and also along about  of the southern section of the eastern shore. Anyone crossing the lake from east to west on the Windermere Ferry thus travels from the historic county of Westmorland to that of Lancashire.

Local government reorganisation in 1974 placed Windermere and its shores within the district of South Lakeland in the non-metropolitan county of Cumbria. Since April 2023, Cumbria no longer exists for administrative purposes and the lake falls entirely within Westmorland and Furness administrative area. Most planning matters concerned with the lake are, however, the responsibility of the Lake District National Park Authority.

Boating

Steamer and launches

Passenger services operate along the whole length of the lake, from Lakeside railway station, on the Lakeside and Haverthwaite heritage steam railway at the southern end of the lake, to Waterhead Bay near Ambleside in the north. Intermediate stops are made at Bowness and, by smaller launches only, at Brockhole. Some boats only operate part of the route, or operate out and back cruises, whilst others run the whole distance.

These services date back to the former Furness Railway, who built the Lakeside branch, and were at one time operated by British Rail, the former state-owned rail operator. Since privatisation, three of the original large railway boats are operated by Windermere Lake Cruises Ltd, along with a fleet of smaller and more modern launches. Three of the original four boats survive: the MV Tern of 1891, the MV Teal of 1936, and the MV Swan of 1938. The fourth, MV Swift of 1900, was broken up at Lakeside in 1998. Her rudder and only one propeller are displayed at Bowness. Although often described as steamers, all are now diesel motor vessels. Tern and Swift were built with steam engines, but converted to diesel power in the 1950s.

Ferries
The Windermere Ferry, a vehicle-carrying cable ferry, runs across the lake from Ferry Nab on the eastern side of the lake to Far Sawrey on the western side of the lake. This service forms part of the B5285. There are also two summer only passenger ferries that cross the lake. One crosses from Lakeside station to Fell Foot Park at the southern end of the lake, whilst the other links Bowness with Far Sawrey.

Boat clubs

There are five large boating clubs based around the lake: the South Windermere Sailing Club, Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club, the Lake District Boat Club, the Royal Windermere Yacht Club, and the Windermere Cruising Association. The Royal Windermere Yacht Club maintains a set of turning marks on the lake, which are also used by the Windermere Cruising Association. The Lake District Boat Club is a family orientated club open to all (owning a boat is not essential), with premises located in Bowness the club house has views of the lake and surrounding fells. The LDBC also run a full programme of both social and racing events. The Windermere Cruising Association organises the popular Winter Series. This event benefits from not being hindered by the large waves, caused by gales, that often lead to sea racing being cancelled. The WCA also have a full calendar of summer races which are open to all abilities.

At the south end of the lake is South Windermere Sailing Club, based at Fell Foot park on the east shore. It was started in 1961 as a family sailing club and has been the starting point for many successful British dinghy racing competitors including British, European and world champions. The notoriously fluky wind on the lake has proved a successful training ground in learning to read the fast-changing wind. SWSC celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011 and has developed a strong junior section under the coaching of Julie Tomkinson who in 2011 was honoured with an RYA Community Award for Outstanding Contribution.

In 2015 Lakeland Rowing club set up a base at Fell Foot Park. The club grew quickly and has now separated from the Northern section of the club (based at Derwent water) and has taken the name Windermere Rowing Club. The club is small in comparison to the more established clubs in the country but is continually growing with the number of both members and boats constantly increasing.

The Ferry House Regatta was the subject of a painting by Thomas Allom and in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1837 this was illustrated in the poem  by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

Speed records
On Friday 13 June 1930, Sir Henry Segrave broke the world water speed record on Windermere in his boat, Miss England II at an average speed of . On the third run over the course, off Belle Grange, the boat capsized. Segrave's mechanic, Victor Helliwell drowned, but Segrave was rescued by support boats. He died a short time later of his injuries. Segrave was one of the few people in history who have held the world land speed record and water speed record simultaneously.

Racer Norman Buckley set several world water speed records on Windermere in the 1950s.

Speed limits
For many years, powerboating and water-skiing have been popular activities on the lake. In March 2000, the Lake District National Park Authority controversially introduced a bylaw setting a  speed limit for all powered craft on the lake, in addition to three existing  speed limits for all craft on the upper, lower, and middle sections of the lake. The bylaw came into force in 2000, but there was a five-year transition period and the new speed limits were only enforced from 29 March 2005. The bylaws on the lake were reviewed and renewed in 2008. Despite the speed limits people continue to use powerboats on the lake, both legally and illegally.

Windermere Steamboat Museum
Windermere Steamboat Museum is located on Rayrigg Road in Bowness, and included a collection of vintage steam boats dating back to 1850, five sailing boats (the oldest built in 1780), two dugout canoes, as well as information about Swallows and Amazons and the history of racing boats. The museum was closed in 2006 for refurbishment and re-opened, considerably enlarged, in March, 2019 as the Windermere Jetty: Museum of Boats, Steam and Stories.

The long popularity of steam launches on Windermere has even given its name to the Windermere kettle, a steam-powered tea urn.

Windermere water bus
In 2005, the Windermere Management Strategy identified the potential for water bus services on the lake. In 2009, the Lake District National Park Authority commissioned a detailed study into the demand for such services. In July 2009, it was announced that Windermere Lake Cruises would be operating additional stops around the lake. In January 2012, the Park Authority launched a consultation on further expansion of the water bus service.

Swimming

Great North Swim
On Saturday 13 September 2008, Windermere hosted the inaugural Great North Swim, a  open water swim involving 2,200 swimmers. The second annual swim took place on 12 and 13 September 2009, with 6,000 swimmers, making this the largest open water swim in the UK.

Three Lakes Challenge
The  Three Lakes Challenge (or Loch, Lake, Llyn) is a challenge first completed by a 5-person relay with Sam Plum, Jason Betley, Helen Gibbs, Helen Liddle, and Debbie Taylor on 3–4 July 2015 under English Channel rules. The course involves swimming the length of Loch Awe in Scotland (), then driving to the Lake District and swimming the length of Windermere (), and finally driving to Wales and swimming the length of Bala Lake (). This challenge is intended as the swimming equivalent of the National Three Peaks Challenge.

Sewage release
In 2021, it was reported that in 2020 the sewage-treatment plant in Ambleside discharged raw sewage into Windermere for 1,719 hours during that year (equivalent to 71 out of 365 days), and that private and outdated septic tanks from residential dwellings, holiday homes and caravan sites also released sewage into the lake. It was suggested that the lake could become "ecologically dead", with the growth of blue-green algae and numerous dead fish and invertebrates being recorded.

In July 2022, the Love Windermere partnership was created to tackle challenges in the lake. Nutrients, climate change, more extreme weather patterns and the seasonal variations of the tourist population are all predicted to put the lake and its water quality under increasing pressure in the coming years.

In 2023, it was reported that data from the Environment Agency showed that United Utilities released sewage from storm overflows into the lake for 246 days in 2022.

Popular culture
William Wordsworth, one of the Lake Poets, described the view of Windermere from the crest of a hill in The Prelude, Book IV:

Standing alone, as from a rampart's edge,I overlooked the bed of Windermere,Like a vast river, stretching in the sun.With exultation, at my feet I sawLake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays,A universe of Nature's fairest formsProudly revealed with instantaneous burst,Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay.

Oscar Wilde began working on his first hit play, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), during a summer visit to the Lake District in 1891. A series of children's books by Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons and its sequels Swallowdale, Winter Holiday, Pigeon Post and The Picts and the Martyrs, involve school holiday adventures in the 1930s around a fictional lake derived from a combination of Windermere and Coniston Water. The fictional lake resembles Windermere, but the surrounding hills and fells resemble those of Coniston Water. The BBC made a television series Swallows and Amazons in 1962; parts of this were filmed at the boathouse of Huyton Hill Preparatory School (now Pullwood House) on the northwestern shore.

The lake gave its name to a group of 300 Jewish boys, the "Windermere Boys", who survived Auschwitz and settled at Troutbeck Bridge near Windermere in 1945, thanks to the help of Leonard G. Montefiore. This refugee rescue was dramatised as The Windermere Children broadcast on the BBC in 2020 for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Legends of female centaurs in Windermere served as the basis for Archie Fisher's 1976 song The Witch of the West-Mer-Lands, which was later covered by Stan Rogers. Fisher cites "tales of antlered women with bodies of deer seen wading in the shallows of the lakes in the moonlight" as the inspiration for his song. "Apparently deer used to swim across the shallow end of Lake Windermere and weeds got caught in their antlers and observers, probably wandering home from a local hostelry, took them to be these mythical creatures."

Windermere is a location used in the 1994 fighting game Tekken. Belle Isle features in The Wardstone Chronicles: The Spooks Mistake (2008). Rather than the large house, though, Belle Isle plays host to a folly which is used by the Water Witches in the area. In November 2009, several scenes were shot on Windermere for the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, featuring the newlyweds Gail and Joe on their honeymoon.
Windermere and the surrounding countryside is the setting for mystery novelist Elizabeth George's 2012 book Believing the Lie, the 17th in the Inspector Lynley series.

Some people believe that there may be a lake monster, similar to the one alleged to live in Loch Ness, and in 2011 anomalous photos were taken of the supposed creature; it has been affectionately nicknamed "Bownessie".

In 2017, some scenes from the 2018 live action film Peter Rabbit were filmed in Windermere and Ambleside, with the Peter Rabbit heritage being strongly linked to the area. Taylor Swift mentions "Windermere peaks" and Wordsworth in her song, "The Lakes," included as a bonus track on her 2020 album, Folklore.

Bibliography

Notes

References

External links

Windermere on Lake District National Park Authority website
Windermere on Visitcumbria.com
The Three Lakes Challenge
Lake Windermere Depth Map

Lakes of the Lake District
Westmorland
LWindermere
South Lakeland District

Windermere