8/15/2023 0 Comments Chris meledandri chris wedgeJay Leno contributes a vocal cameo as a fire hydrant who shoos away a dog bot. He jam-packs his screen-time with visual invention and jokes. It's possible that Wedge's fecund imaginative process inevitably leads to overload. Yet Wedge is quick to credit 20th Century Fox's casting department for some of his vocal performance coups, including Jim Broadbent's rip-roaring turn as the film's ultimate villain, Madame Gasket, Ratchet's mother and the chief of an underground Chop Shop. Wedge may prepare an extended version of Robots for DVD, including many of the 20 minutes or so that were left on the cutting-room floor. You don't learn from this cut that the svelte Cappy was brought up working-class, like Rodney her dad was a vacuum cleaner, her mom the attachments. Wedge also wonders whether he should have fought for "a few more contemplative moments" and some pauses in the action for now-deleted character points. Wedge admits that his distributor, 20th Century Fox, occasionally balked at his and Joyce's desire to model Robots on that full-blast Technicolor Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz - executives thought some shots might come off as "too nostalgic." Nevertheless, Robots, while more contemporary, has much of the spectrum and size of Oz, and several characters straight out of it. ![]() "They're about haves and have-nots, about what it is to grow old and physically frail, and about how others look at us when we do." "The movie is filled with metaphors," says Wedge, and they're not just about planned obsolescence. ![]() They threw the upgrade-makeover theme into the mix before real-life and fictional soap operas about plastic surgery took over chunks of TV's prime time. But Wedge and company started sketching their robots seven years ago. "Why be you when you can be new?" applies as much to human "extreme makeovers" as it does to computer upgrades. ![]() The rest of the movie pits the uncaring corporation against Rodney and his growing, unlikely rebel army, including a beautiful executive bot, Cappy (Halle Berry), and a clan of fringe-dwelling "outmodes," the Rusties, led by Fender (Robin Williams) and Fender's tomboy sister, Piper (Amanda Bynes). Figuring out that manufacturing spare parts isn't as profitable as producing "upgrades," Ratchet has changed the company motto to, "Why be you when you can be new?" Unfortunately, by the time Rodney reaches Bigweld Industries, a sleek corporate climber named Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) has ousted the company chief. Bigweld says, "You can shine no matter what you're made of," and urges potential inventors, "See a need, fill a need." The man who galvanizes Rodney is a Disney-like TV personality named Bigweld (Mel Brooks), the founder of Bigweld Industries. Rodney's father (Stanley Tucci) aspired to make music but instead washes dishes - his torso contains the dishwasher. And it's still about the father sending his son off to do something greater than he'd ever done." Even now, Rodney going to Robot City to become an inventor is a bit like D'Artagnan journeying to Paris to join the King's Guards. ![]() "We thought of calling it Roboteers," Wedge recalls, "and basing it on The Three Musketeers. The fun for the audience comes from Wedge's catholic tastes, his urge to spin a yarn, and his appetite for silliness, too.
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