Wall-E (2008) - 20 questions

Question: Right after WALL-E introduces himself to Mary and goes off to find EVE, Mary is surprised to find that the Axiom has a pool. First of all, how could she not have noticed that after living her whole life there? She must be at least 20 years old, and the pool, or Lido Deck, is obviously a very popular place for people to hang out at. And second, how does she even know what a pool is? If she's never been to Earth and she never knew the Axiom had a pool, then she's never been in one. And we can see that the captain is very uneducated about things on Earth. So how does Mary know what a pool is if she's never seen one before?

Answer: She never noticed the pool because she's always had her face buried in that 'screen' displayed by her chair. She knows what a pool is because the entertainment programs she views on that screen undoubtedly contained a swimming pool at least a time or two.

Question: The human race has lived on the Axiom for 700 years, with no trips to Earth during that time. So how do they keep making food after all that time? Especially with no plants or animals on the ship.

Answer: You are assuming that there are no animals on board. The Axiom is a massive ship so plenty of room to put animals. Even if there are no animals on the ship there could be processing facilities that might be creating chemical based food products.

Question: When Auto shows the captain the video about the president saying life is unsustainable on Earth, you can see the president putting on a helmet before going outside. The air is obviously toxic. So how, 700 years later, are the humans able to breathe when they go back to Earth? The air would be even worse by then.

Answer: After 700 years the toxins were all filtered away through the plants that eventually started to grow. with oxygen being the obvious aftermath.

Question: I'm not a medical expert, but surely the level of bone loss shown in the movie would make it impossible for any of the humans to support their own weight?

Answer: The level of medicinal care allowed a string of captains to live well into their 130s. Preventing or reversing bone loss seems like a trivial task compared to that.

Question: I have three questions. First, on one of the holo-screens in the beginning, (the one saying: "Too much garbage in your space? There's plenty of space out in space"), there are two Axiom cruisers leaving. I thought it was just one. Question number two: What's the purpose of that robot that is clicking on a keyboard? (The one that lets GO-4, Wall-E and Eve pass to the bridge.) Last question: In the Axiom garbage disposal thing area, there are two gigantic Wall-A's. What does the A stand for?

Answer: (1) If you continue to listen to the announcement that you quote, the next line is "BnL Starliners leaving each day". Clearly there's a sizeable fleet of ships, as you'd expect, given the necessity to completely evacuate Earth's population, with the Axiom, described as "the jewel in the BnL fleet", presumably being the flagship. Whether any of the other ships were also still functioning remains unrevealed. (2) It's presumably some sort of administration robot, with specific duties regarding access to the captain's office. (3) It stands for "Axiom".

Question: What was the eventual fate of the Earth President? His 'A113' message ends with him muttering about "getting the hell out of here" which would suggest he went on the space liners with the other humans but no further mention is ever made of him.

Answer: He almost certainly boarded the Axiom, and lived out the remainder of his days in luxury.

Question: According to the president's addresses EVE was part of the Axiom's crew since it first left Earth, meaning that she and WALL-E would have been manufactured around the same time since he was intended to start cleaning the planet up right after humanity evacuated. Why then do the two have such a major difference in their looks and technological standards if they were both intended for roughly the same behind the scenes purpose (at least in terms of wandering around wastelands and looking through trash)?

Answer: A few reasons, I guess. The Wall-E units were designed for constant, robust use (picking up and compacting garbage, then moving the garbage around), so they're going to be bulkier and have no bells and whistles. The EVE units are designed for relatively little usage (they check out a planet every now and then, and there are multiple units so each one isn't likely to get much use), so they can afford to be more techy. The Wall-E units were designed to work in a huge army to clean up earth, so they needed to be low cost (which often coincides with lower-tech), whereas the Eve units were relatively few, but important, so more money could be spent on each unit. Also the Eve units would be on the ships where the humans are, and likely to be seen by many people, so they had to look nice for them. The Wall-E units would be working unseen, so they can look ugly. It's basically the same reason why a harbour tug and a speedboat are so different in terms of aesthetics and technology, even though they're both made for powering through water.

Question: It's not unusual for Pixar to put characters from their next movie in their movies (like the Nemo doll in "Monsters Inc."). Are there any characters from "Up" in this movie?

Answer: There aren't any characters from Up in Wall-E, however during the first scene in Wall-E's trailer you can see Carl's walker briefly.

Question: What is the point of WALL-E (a garbage robot) having the function of recording? It seems pointless.

Answer: Since Wall-E has been repairing himself for 700 years, and likes music,he may have modified himself as he did when he took another robots tracks, There is no way to know if he was originally made with the recorder or not.

Question: Where on North America does Wall-e live? I can only tell from the shot of Earth zooming in that it is somewhere around the Virginia or North Carolina region.

Answer: We are never told for sure, but the city resembles the Manhattan island of New York City.

Question: This is admittedly more a matter of opinion than actual mistake, but could anyone offer up a logical explanation for why, out of the numerous ways AUTO could have destroyed the plant (chucking it in the reactor/tossing it down into the garbage compactor area/having the stewards crispy fry it with their lasers in private to name a few), he settled for having GO-4 place it in an escape pod and blast it a short distance from the ship before blowing it up? I'm aware plot convenience and an easy means for it to be recovered is obviously the main reason, but that still doesn't really explain why he would take such a unnecessarily risky course of action, given the waste of the escape pod would no doubt be noticed and rouse suspicions and, as WALL-E and EVE demonstrate, the chance of the plant being intercepted and saved from destruction is increased significantly.

Answer: The autopilot probably had to make sure every single cell of the plant was either destroyed, or eliminated from the ship. The computer concluded that putting the plant physically off the ship was the only certain way to do so. It's also a computer and its creativity may be limited - the garbage is thrown off the ship and thus eliminated, and it is possible it concluded it was the only way the plant could be properly eliminated as well.

Question: I can't help noticing that in every scene on Earth the terrain is bathed in brilliant sunlight yet the entire planet is meant to be permanently covered in thick (presumably toxic) clouds. Is this at all possible?

Answer: Earth is meant to be uninhabitable -- not necessarily due to "thick ... clouds". Earth's environment is inhospitable to humans in many ways, including trash and air quality and presumably water quality. No specific mention of "thick clouds."

Question: What's the name of the song that is playing at the start of the credits, before it actually begins scrolling upwards?

Answer: "Down to Earth", by Peter Gabriel, composed specifically for the film.

Question: When Wall-E and Eve are in the repair ward, and Wall-E is misinterpreting Eve's cleaning as torture, what is the second "scene" supposed to be? I understand that the first one looks like Eve is having her arm ripped off and the third looks like Eve is having her head chopped off, but I can't figure out what the second one with the malfunctioning umbrella is supposed to be.

Answer: It's a combination of what WALL-E sees happening to EVE, with her circuitry lighting up and her head bobbing up and down as she laughs, with the noise of the umbrella as the diagnostic arms try to force it down. All WALL-E can hear is something that resembles a mechanical screech, along with EVE reacting - he thinks that she's being electrocuted and is in pain.

Question: Perhaps I missed it somewhere, but how is it that the Wall-E main character is the only functioning Wall-E unit left?

Answer: All the others have either malfunctioned or been damaged beyond repair in the 700 years since they were built - their mission was only intended to last five years, so they're a long way past their expected functional lifespan. WALL-E has simply lasted the longest and has kept himself going by replacing his own worn-out parts with those scavenged from other defunct WALL-E units.

Question: How could Auto act against his directive? He's playing the top-secret order he got (never to come back to Earth) in front of the captain, yet isn't able to act against it again because things might have changed in the 700 years since the order was received. And in the face of the new evidence (the plant), doesn't that contradict the order?

Answer: One of the key points of the movie is that programming can evolve - WALL-E being the most obvious case in point. After all this time, Auto's entitled to be somewhat erratic in how he deals with things. Besides, he's still very firm on his primary directive, to prevent the return to humanity to Earth - keeping the existence of that directive a secret is rather less critical. As for the plant, that does very little to invalidate the directive. It may show that the principles underlying that directive are flawed, but Auto's not got the leeway to deal with that. The directive still stands.

Question: Why is Eve, who is a vegetation evaluator reconnaissance robot sent to Earth to find proof that life is once again sustainable, provided with a gun, and she shoots at the least perception of the slightest movement?

Answer: She would require some method of gaining access to every area she needed to scan. A blasting device like the one in the film would make perfect sense. She would need to blast through doors, walls, barricades, etc. Also, she is programmed to find living vegetation. Any other life (animals, even humans) would be outside her directive and she would deal with it as she chose. In this case she probably felt threatened.

Question: Just a question about the remarkable resemblance to Johnny Five from the Short Circuit films. Is Wall-E intentionally modeled this way or is it just a coincidence they look so alike?

Answer: It certainly wasn't intentional, although the director, Andrew Stanton, has acknowledged that he did see Short Circuit many years ago and agrees that it could well have been a subconscious influence. WALL-E was principally designed with the job that he does in mind - the design brief was to consider WALL-E as an appliance first, what he would need to look like in order to do his job efficiently, then work out how to read emotion into the character after that. Stanton has stated that the chief inspiration for WALL-E's eyes came from a pair of binoculars, which he decided looked happy or sad depending on which way up they were.

Question: How did Wall-E get the VHS tape to play on an I-Pod?

Answer: Analog-to-digital converter. The technology exists today. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog-to-digital for a long technical explaination of the device.

Question: What is the movie that Wall E has on his iPod?

Answer: "Hello, Dolly!"