Disney and Pixar will see if they’ve managed to produce another animated blockbuster today as moviegoers line up to see WALL●E. Director Andrew Stanton had a tall order in topping his last feature, Finding Nemo, but strong buzz and rave reviews should add up to a big weekend for a little, mechanized hero with a lot of heart. While families flock to WALL●E, action fans are sure to be checking out Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy in Universal’s adaptation of the Top Cow graphic novel Wanted.
WALL’E takes place 700 years in the future and revolves around a young industrial robot left alone to clean up the mess that human kind left behind when the Earth became too polluted to support life. WALL’E’s life changes one day when a spacecraft arrives carrying a sleek new robot probe who captures our hero’s heart and takes him into space on a thrilling journey to an orbiting luxury liner where human beings have all of their needs met by robots and a greedy corporation.
The movie has received good grades from the nation’s critics, scoring a rare 98% fresh rating on critical compilation site RottenTomatoes.com. Check out the June/July issue of our print magazine to read all about the making of Pixar’s ninth feature film. You can also watch the WALL●E trailer and behind-the-scenes featurettes on AniMagTV.
Also garnering mostly positive reviews is Wanted, in which McAvoy plays a seemingly average guy who finds out he has remarkable, deadly abilities when he is recruited by a fraternity of assassins that presents itself as a benevolent organization. Jolie plays a tattooed femme fatal in this adaptation of the comic by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. The film is the first Hollywood pic directed by Timur Bekmambetov, the filmmaker behind the internationally successful Russian supernatural action flicks Night Watch and Day Watch. He’s currently working on Twilight Watch, the third film in the saga. Visual effects for Wanted are provided by Hatch FX, Framestore CFC, Hydraulx and Main Road Post.
