While much attention already has been on the success of Iron-Man and Indiana Jones this summer I sat down yesterday and tried to figure what would truly be the surprise movie of the summer. So I went through the list. Dark Knight will be great and bring in crap loads of money, no surprise. Indy brought in a lot of money and will continue to do so, no surprise. Caspian didn’t due as hot box office wise but not the movie’s fault that was poor marketing because it was really good. Iron-Man is riding the box office cash wave and the movie was awesome.

So I have looked at all this and then I have looked at what is come, Sex and the City, Incredible Hulk, Wall-E, Dark Knight, The Love Guru, Mummy 3, Kung Fu Panda, Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Get Smart, Hancock, X-Files 2, Tropic Thunder, the International, Wanted and The Pineapple Express.

Out of all these movies and I am sure there is some I have missed, the one film that stands out and you can exclude The Dark Knight, the one film that really screams box-office surprise is:

Read My Choice for Summer Movie Surprise after the jump…

WALL-E.

I can’t wait for this movie, I mean seriously can’t wait for this movie. The surprise factor is kind of skewed though, it isn’t a surprise that Pixar and Disney can make a good movie I mean look at all the animated films they have done. None of them are bad. The surprise is that Pixar can still push and innovate their animation and storytelling beyond anything anyone can imagine and with WALL-E you have a unique character and story that entices adults and kids alike.

According to John Lasseter, WALL-E producer and Pixar veteran

WALL-E is the story of the last little robot on Earth. He is a robot and his programming was to help clean up. You see, it’s set way in the future. Through consumerism, rampant, unchecked consumerism, the Earth was covered with trash. And to clean up, everyone had to leave Earth and set in place millions of these little robots that went around to clean up the trash and make Earth habitable again.

Well, the cleanup program failed with the exception of this one little robot and he’s left on Earth doing his duty all alone. But it’s not a story about science fiction. It’s a love story, because, you see, WALL·E falls in love with EVE, a robot from a probe that comes down to check on Earth, and she’s left there to check on and see how things are going and he absolutely falls in love with her.

Wall-E was conceived by Andrew Stanton, another Pixar veteran, during his early work with Pixar before Toy Story was made. Stanton wanted to explore a story about mankind evacuating Earth and forgetting to turn off the last remaining robot. Stanton pushed this project away and other stories and films were made and then he got his chance to direct. His directorial debut earned him a Best Animated Film Academy Award for Finding Nemo. So what does an Academy Award winning director usually get to do as his next project? That’s right the one he has always wanted to do, WALL-E.

WALL-E will be different than previous Pixar films for a couple of reasons. One, they will do as they always do and improve on some aspect of computerized, digital animation that hasn’t been done before. The real other reason it will be different is it will lack dialogue. Producer, Lasseter, responded to this in a Newsarama article by saying,

the art of animation is about what the character does, not what it says. It all depends on how you tell the story, whether it has a lot of dialogue or not.

This movie has high anticipation by almost everyone so like I said how can it be surprise if it is already highly anticipated? Because it isn’t the fact that Pixar can’t make a great movie it is the fact that Pixar can still push and innovate their animation, technically and visually, but also their storytelling beyond anything anyone can imagine and with WALL-E you have a unique character and story that entices adults and kids alike. Everyone will enjoy this movie and I mean everyone.