WonderCon: Wall-E and Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Panel Impressions
Disney shows off two of its biggest 2008 features in San Francisco.
Disney delivered previews of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and WALL-E to the WonderCon lot on Saturday. Creature Supervisor Howard Berger was on-hand to talk shop about the next cinematic adaptation of the C.S. Lewis fantasy world, which he described as "darker and a lot more savage."
Berger explained that the film's dark turn was due in part to a number of Narnia inhabitants having disappeared to live in exile at the hands of the evil King Miraz (Sergio Castellitto). Essentially, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian finds the Pevensie siblings pulled back to the magical land to combat the Miraz so the rightful Prince can take leadership of the land.
"What was fun for us was that we got to revisit that world again," said Berger, who also worked on the set of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
With a second opportunity to return to Narnia, Berger discussed his efforts to expand upon the age group of the inhabitants to create a fuller, more dynamic cast of characters that would include a variety of dwarves, child centaurs and old minotaurs.
"One of the things we got to do was really come up with some great dwarf characters," he said.
The two stand-out dwarves, recalled Berger, are Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage) and Nikabrik (Warwick Davis). Berger went on to say that his team was able to have fun with the characters and use makeup and prosthetics to bring the actors to a place that they'd never been before.
As Berger's introduction came to a close, he mentioned that director Andrew Adamson was unable to attend WonderCon because he was in London at work on the film. The director, however, was able to piece together a five-minute rough cut of Prince Caspian for attendees. The preview was indeed uneven with certain special effects missing. Let's just say some creatures were still rocking unfinished green-screen legs and others were especially cartoonish. Despite the incomplete presentation, fans of the Narnia series didn't appear to be too concerned as requisite swords-play and mythical beasts still were in full effect.
The second half of the Disney panel went from talking animals to chirping robots with a sneak peek at Pixar's WALL-E. Writer/director Andrew Stanton shared details about the creation of the last robot on Earth and admitted that WALL-E's likeness to the beloved Johnny Five was pure coincidence, explaining that the inspiration for the futuristic trash compactor came from a pair of binoculars he fiddled with at an Oakland A's game. When a WonderCon attendee posed the Short Circuit similarity to Stanton, he replied that he'd honestly only seen the movie once in his lifetime. Right...
So, what exactly is the gist of Pixar's animated sci-fi romp? Stanton summed up WALL-E -- short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class -- as purely a love story. When mankind bids adieu to Earth, WALL-E is left as the last robot standing and goes about business as usual by systematically cleaning up the planet, one garbage cube at a time. Over the course of hundreds of years, the wide-eyed machine develops a personality of his own and builds a snazzy home that he shares with an indestructible cockroach. Things don't actually get steamy (we're using the term loosely; this is a Disney picture) until a flashy modern robot named EVE makes her way to Earth to do some investigating. WALL-E immediately falls head-over-heals for the green-eyed probe droid and the foibles of first love ensue.
Stanton set up four preview clips that each captures the brilliant work of the award-winning team at Pixar. The first clip was pretty similar to the WALL-E teaser that's currently available online, which looks at a typical day for Earth's lone robot. In the second clip, WALL-E does his best to impress EVE at his pimped-out digs by introducing her to a Rubik's cube, light bulb and a VHS of a musical, which results in the two robots momentarily cutting a rug. It isn't until the third clip, however, that the audience is able to truly grasp the beauty of the animated feature. For fear of losing the only friend he's ever had, WALL-E leaves Earth behind and travels through space, hanging onto the ship carrying EVE. The scenes of the squat robot flying through space are absolutely stunning and evoke comparisons to Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the final clip, EVE makes it clear that WALL-E must head back to Earth, but the adorable little guy can't fathom leaving his newfound friend. Intrigued by a boot with a small plant sprouting from it, WALL-E suddenly finds himself locked in an escape pod designed to self-destruct. EVE sets out to rescue WALL-E and the two find themselves floating through space together.
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Elixor on 02-26-2008 07:45 AM
Not a big deal that Wall-E's eyes resemble Number 5's. If you think about it, it's a completely reasonable simple design. It's like when people bring up that starships with four wings take from X-Wings or that large trianglular or pyramid shaped ships rip-off from Star Destroyers. People can be too quick to point out similarities and claim unoriginality or non-creativeness on basic things. We shouldn't give movies a monopoly on ideas which in all probability weren't original for those movies either.