Wall-E

[Alex]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Well, to be honest, there were only 3 human characters, and two of those were barely cameos.

That's kind of my point in considering that part of the story weak. Since we never get to learn anything really about the humans why should I care whether they return to earth. Or the sense of wonder they have when they do. Or why it is that you can stack them 20 deep in a steeply tilted spaceship and none come to harm (or why tilting a spaceship with artificial gravity would even have any effect on the humans inside).

Did Wall-E even have any kind of character arc? I don't think so. He was likeable ... but besides falling in love, was he any different at the end of the movie than at its start?

While Wall-E is the central cute character, I don't really think his was the story arc but rather it was Eve that provided it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex

(or why tilting a spaceship with artificial gravity would even have any effect on the humans inside).

Or why residents of a spaceship with artificial gravity would be subject to the deterioration associated with microgravity. Or why WALL E breaking someone's display screen causes sudden onset of awareness whereas the emergency robots chasing rogue robots can knock people off their chairs with reckless abandon. Or why Fred Willard would have bothered with giving the autopilot special orders to stay away from earth since if the reason was that life was unsustainable then there would have been no plant life to start the return process anyway, or........

I've thus far avoided going into the many many weaknesses I found in that plot. It's full of gaping holes. But I don't want to dwell on them because it's just going to make me like the movie less and I'd really prefer to keep liking it. So I'm trying to just kinda ignore it and focus on the far superior element of the movie.

As for WALL E's character arc, perhaps he himself doesn't have an arc, but he is intimately involved in one (EVE's/the relationships's) and one that is done in a thoroughly artistic manner. He may not grow much, but he is a fully fleshed out character that the audience can actually connect to, not a prop piece.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Or why residents of a spaceship with artificial gravity would be subject to the deterioration associated with microgravity. ..

With the big bold disclaimer that these issues of science and physical consistency did not at all detract from my enjoyment of the movie. Just things I noticed, some other things I noticed and thought while watching:

Spoiler:

The Axion used some kind of FTL drive to return to Earth but the probe ship used subluminal speeds to return to the Axion from Earth. A speed that would have taken years, if not centuries, for the trip shown.

Using chemical reactive propulsion to land a giant ship and then take off again is a horribly inefficient way to get six Eve's down to the surface of earth. Especially when repeated to retrieve them. Especially when the technology for artificial gravity and anti-gravity apparently exists and is used widely (Eve flies without any apparent form of propulsion).

It is essentially impossible to evacuate earth. The planet's population increases by about 250,000 every day. Based on the size of the Axiom as seen when it lands on Earth, just to hold the population of Earth steady would require at least one new Axion be build every day and probably dozens if you want to evacuate the planet in any short period of time.

If the planet was evacuated, where are all of the other cruise ships out in space and will they be returning?

If the planet wasn't evacuated, where are the signs of 6+ billion corpses among all the trash?

Either that is the universes smallest nebula that the Axion is living behind or the Axion was much bigger in space than it was on Earth.

I'm pretty sure that 700 years far exceeds the data life of VHS (and in reality a VHS tape would be decades older than the Earth evacuation). An, really, the artifacts he was finding were amazingly well preserved for being 700+ years old in an area ravaged by severe storms.

Why is a short term probe designed to look for plantlife on an otherwise sterile planet so heavily armed and aggressively programmed? What is Eve designed to defend herself from?

It was pretty, but of course the rings of Saturn are not so dense that you can run a hand through them.

Why did the Axion have a complement of plant-seeking probes when they apparently departed on their 5-year cruise expecting it to be just 5 years and with earth still occupied by a clean up force consisting of at least Fred Willard?

Earth deprived of plant life for 700 years would be extremely oxygen deprived. The existence of a single photosynthesizing plant would hardly indicate that the atmosphere had returned to a survivable balance.

If there had been no plants on the planet for 700 years where did the plant found germinate from?

Presumably there are plenty of other cockroaches or is the one we meet 700 years old? If so, what are they eating since no new food is being created?

Since Wall-E is solar powered and the trip from Earth to the Axion must have taken days or weeks (even if not shown but obviously not the years or centuries of reality) and most of the would have been in the essentially zero-light of extra-solar space travel how was he still charged when reaching the Axion?

Yes, I know it is just a cartoon and I want to reiterate that the above questions/issues really didn't impact my enjoyment of the movie. They're just things that occurred to me from a purely technical point of view of the world presented.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Originally Posted by Alex

If the planet wasn't evacuated, where are the signs of 6+ billion corpses among all the trash?

Oh, simple... they use CALL-E - she's the Corpse Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class.

[innerSpaceman]

Well, I thought of it as a science fiction film in the way that Star Wars is generally considered a sci fi film. It's much more a throwback swashbuckler, but since it takes place in an off-Earth world of another galaxy, it's "automatically" sci fi, too.

As is Wall-E. Sure, it's of other genres more primarily. But I didn't feel the human story was tacked on. It was the McGuffin and was no more tacked on nor less explored in depth than any classic McGuffin.

It was given more weight than a good many McGuffin, so it veered very nicely into sci fi territory. McGuffin plot was sci fi, and the main characters were all robots. Hmm, yes, love story or not ... this was a science fiction film.

And perhaps I'm giving it too much free parking because it was animated, but I think Alex is also overanalyzing its improbabilities.


* * ** *
* Just because a movie doesn't show something does not mean it doesn't exist. If the Axiom was shown traveling faster than light to return to Earth, but the probe ship was not ... that doesn't necessarily mean the probe ship travelled at sub-light speeds. In fact, since that's clearly an impossible journey, the fact that they didn't speficially show the light speed portion of that journey means nothing (to me, at least).

* Yes, chemical propulsion was a stupid way to have a giant ship arrive and depart from earth. But it looks so cool. I suppose that's why the Enterprise had shuttle craft and transporters ... but by the time of Voyager, they made sure to land the entire freaking spaceship on some planets because it was irresistibly awesome not to.

We don't know squat about the details of Eve's anti-gravity. Perhaps it only works on small objects, and would be inefficiant and perhaps impossible for very large objects. Who the frell knows? But just because they didn't stop for a disertation does not mean they didn't have a plausible explanation. I think the demonstration that small objects have anti-grav and large objects don't fits fine with common sense film language physics.

* Maybe I missed it, but who said Earth was evacuated? I think G.Delight was right that there were more than one escape ship ... but I never got the notion that the ships held all 7 billion people on the planet. That's just dumb.

* And again, just because they didn't show the other ships meet with disaster or whatever happened to them whereever they are. Maybe there'll be a spin-off tv series about each of those.

* Similarly, even if the 7 billion skeletons haven't decomposed, not showing them doesn't mean they don't exist. It sorta makes sense (to me) that bio disposal would be one of the first jobs, completed over 600 years ago.

* Kevy already explained about the videotape.

* As for Eve's directive or capabilities, who's to say that the robots were not repurposed, or new ones built, or new programming done for new tasks, or robots - especially spacefaring ones - having many capabilities quite apart from fullfilling their prime directive.

* Yeah, Saturn's rings. Ya got me.

* Ok, very little oxygen on the Earth. Hopefully, all the humans asphyxiate 10 minutes after the end credits roll. Yeah, I got nothing for that one.

But Eve hardly conducted a massive planet-wide search. Perhaps there are plants in other zones, and seeds blew upon the stormy winds and were placed in the refrigerator by the ghosts of the decendents of Indiana Jones through his Mutt line of heirs.

And while there were no plants to form a food chain in Wall-E's city, perhaps there was an endless supply of twinkies to support a small clan of cockroaches.


* * * * *
I'm sure I missed some of Alex's points, but my free time has expired.

[Alex]

Your taking my thoughts too seriously, just as you seem to feel I am being too serious in having them.

Of course the fact that something isn't shown doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'm not saying each of these things needed to be explained in the movie or that they couldn't be reasonably explained. They're just things I wondered about while watching the movie. It presented a world different from mine so I naturally start to wonder how it all hangs together; I don't require the questions be answered but that doesn't stop me from thinking about them (and in this regard I did respond to it just as I do to any decent science fiction story).

I also find it interesting to consider the questions of whether some apparent inconsistency exists because the filmmaker never considered it, because they didn't care, or because they thought it made for a better movie that way. Andrew Stanton and dozens of writers and animators lived with this for years, I'm curious as to how they expanded this universe even if it doesn't end up in the movie. And if inconsistencies are left in because they feel it makes a better movie then I can respect that completely.

However

I think the demonstration that small objects have anti-grav and large objects don't fits fine with common sense film language physics.

They did show large objects having anti-gravity. The Axion had a comprehensive gravity field (even in parts of the ship where no human would ever go) and it was much larger than the ship that carried Eve to Earth. Anti-gravity would just be turning whatever creates that upside down.

And:

but the probe ship was not ... that doesn't necessarily mean the probe ship travelled at sub-light speeds.

Except there was a montage of the probe ship passing various landmarks on its way to the Axion. So either it didn't use FTL or it was constantly turning it on an off for purposes of a montage. With FTL how would you end up running your fingers through the rings of Saturn.


Yes, it is a science fiction movie. Just one that didn't particularly care about being a science fiction movie. We'll just have to disagree on how well the "humanity's return" part of the story contributed to the whole. For me was more distraction and filler than help to the story. Add another 10-15 minutes (and WALL-E is already somewhat short by recent Pixar standards) and it could have been fleshed out into a good b-line.

Of course, it is all subjective

[Gemini Cricket]

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[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

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