Script To Screen: “Wall-E”

One of the best scenes from the 2008 movie Wall-E, screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon, original story by Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter.

Plot Summary: In the distant future, a small waste collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.

Here is an excerpt from the script:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

Because this is animation, what you see on the screen is closely aligned with the script. No room for improvisation once the script is locked. What’s interesting is to see how Andrew Stanton evokes a sense of the scene’s tone in the lyrical nature of his writing. To me, it’s one of the most beautiful scenes in the entire Pixar catalogue.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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