OK, this is just awesome. Someone spent a long time on that. Don't miss the disclaimers and waivers and privacy policy.

With absolutely no evidence to back this up, I strongly suspect that an earlier draft of "Wall-E" had a much, much, darker ending, and that that ending got focus-tested and Disneyized out of the movie.

I can't blame them: the charming ending they have versus the Strangelovian ending I imagine it originally having probably makes a $200-million difference not including the merchandising and theme-park possibilities. But rewrite the last ten minutes to be more internally consistent with the satiric message of the movie, and it would be one of my all-time favorites. That said, even with the nod to commercialism, it's one of the best movies I've seen this year, was quite entertaining and even moving. I saw nods to bits of Star Wars, Titanic, Planet of the Apes, Silent Running, 2001, Matrix, Sleeping Beauty, City Lights, Terry Gilliam—and a lot of Idiocracy. Thumbs up. I'd be curious what my readers think of my theory of the ending.

Updating my summer movie list:

• Iron-Man very very good, perhaps best comic-book movie ever (aside from the questionable legal machinations over corporate control);


• Indiana Jones was teh suck;


• I may be willing to give the Hulk movie a shot if it gets good reviews;


• Same with Hellboy II;


• Now that I know Robert Smigel wrote it (warning: link has far too many spoilers) with Judd Apatow, I'm intrigued by the "Zohan" Sandler vehicle.