WALL-E/Fridge

• I was really irritated by the portrayal of future humans in WALL-E as morbidly obese, lazy to the point of helplessness, and entirely self-absorbed... until I realized that the point was not to be a slam against fat people, but to liken the humans to infants. It really clicked for me when it occurred to me that they all wear one-piece jumpsuits (rather like layettes) and consume only liquids. And then I realized that even their obesity has kind of a cuddly appeal, like the chubbiness of well-fed babies. It's not that they're all gluttonous, disgusting slobs, it's that too much luxury and not enough challenge has robbed them of their independence. (And then I wondered how I ever could have made the first assumption, when it is a Pixar film--no one who works for John Lasseter would ever mistake fatness for an indication of laziness!)
  • A throwaway line about the effects of microgravity on bone formation suggests that it was a serious attempt to represent the effects of hundreds of years in space. That said, the "babies" metaphor fits perfectly with the scene at the end where the Captain learns to walk for the first time.
    • Word of God confirms the infant explanation if you watch the DVD commentary.
    • Likewise, the infant explanation is referenced in Peter Gabriel's song Down to Earth, written for the movie, in the line "Coming down to Earth/Like babies at birth".
  • The first time watching WALL-E, I thought that his reawakening by EVE's kiss at the end was pure Deus Ex Machina, as I didn't see how that little spark could do all that. Then, rewatching their first kiss, I realized that you could interpret his reaction as a system reboot. As such, the whole thing makes perfect sense: when EVE repairs him after his fatal system crash, he boots up in safe mode, with just the base operating system running. One clean reboot later, and all user customization is restored, including 700 years of learned personality.
  • I realized what Beta Couple Mary and John represented after seeing their names next to each other. They represent mankind, plus they are two of the three humans who actually meet WALL-E. Do their names remind you of anyone? Hint: Think Mary and Joseph. The ending of WALL-E is mankind creating a new beginning on Earth, it could be a way of saying their sins were being purged. Not sure if this was intentional, but it sure fits! -Gallows
    • I figured (thanks to the entry directly above) that is was Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist- The two most commonly-recalled Apostles. They helped spread the word to which WALL-E had opened their eyes, even after WALL-E got taken down in a self-defeating plan to keep the status quo from shifting.
      • The names always seemed significant to me until I read that they are also the two most common names in English, showing how humans stopped thinking about things such as names or prehaps showing they were named by a robot that woud only know really common names. - bookworm389
      • Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist were not Apostles.
    • Or - or maybe they chose the common names deliberately to say "There is nothing special about these people except luck! Anyone can break the mold like this! You don't have to be Garimathian Ordinald Sturrian de Verinald, any regular Joe John could do this."
      • And this interpretation fits nicely with WALL-E's story, since he more or less puts humankind back on the right track by falling in love.
  • The captain fools Auto twice with holograms. Auto only has one eye, and thus lacks depth perception. "Come and get it, Blinky" indeed.
• In WALL-E, after much thought, is that this could actually be considered Pixar's first live-action feature! The humans presented in the video of the BNL's starships were real humans, not CGIed ones. As was Fred Willard's role as the CEO of BNL, Shelby Forthright and the previous captains of the main starcruiser. The reasoning is that since the people got so fat, their bodies bacame more misshapen and too puffy, it would look cartoony so they could get away saying it was CGI. The robots could have been either way since they're robots and would look good either way.
• I had a moment of Fridge Brilliance when reading the page for Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. A lot of people griped that it was unrealistic for the humans to survive on Earth after coming back. I thought about the distances involved... and then I realized, for Wall-E and EVE making the journey to the Axiom and back, time has no meaning. They're robots! As for the humans returning at the end of the film, they blast into what looks like a Star Trek style faster-than-light warp and come straight back to Earth in what seems like a few seconds. However, according to relativity, more time than what they experienced would pass on Earth. Hence, we see Earth going from having one small, limp-looking plant, to having entire fields covered in greenery in the last scene. Keep in mind that at no point does the captain or anyone else mention how long it has been since the EVE probes were sent to Earth, only that "no probe's ever come back positive before." It's quite possible that EVE was launched a long, long, time before the events of the movie. After all, they've been out there for 700 years.
  • Actually, Auto does refer to EVE as 'Annual Probe 1', suggesting they are sent (or return) exactly once a year. Going by the montage of Wall-E caring for EVE's dormant body (after EVE acquires the plant), it does seem that EVE was on Earth for at least a few seasons, so this makes sense.
• Fridge Horror -- One might expect at the beginning that all humanity was evacuated onto the spacecraft. But near the end, the entire populace aboard the ship is visible; the population of a small town. Now one might ask: Did they really abandon more than 99% of the earth's population on the earth (which, at that point of time would have been much bigger than 7.000.000.000). And, if yes, where are the remains? There must be remains (well, at least skeletons) or at least survivors on earth. If there are any of both, they are never shown. Then again, one might think that the ship once held all of earth's population on board (and that it naturally decreased over the dozens of dozens of generations in those 700 years), but in the aforementioned final shot, it is apparent, that it never could have held anymore people than were presently on board (the aforementioned small town). So, what happened to the other people that possibly made it on board. Well, any answer and conclusion that we come to could easily pass as rather disturbing.
  • You're forgetting something though, there were other ships. The one the movie takes place on was the flagship, or the main one leading the others. Of course, it does beg the question of whatever happened to the other ship. Did the signal to go back to earth reach them? Did they die out and AUTO never told anyone? Did AUTO possibly disable the other ships as a big "screw you" before his deactivation?
    • Watch the credits closely - one of the shots is of escape pods landing and more humans coming out. So they got back, eventually.
• Fridge Horror - WALL-E takes pieces of his fallen friends and comrades for himself so that he can stay alive. Cannibalism, anyone?
  • More like donating organs, really. He's not eating them or even using them as fuel, he's replacing broken parts of his body.
  • Plus, we see him take off his treads when he enters his "house"... maybe those sorts of things are more like clothes. It's still a bit creepy to take clothes off of corpses, but not that creepy.
    • Frankenwoobie!
• Fridge Horror: It's presumed that all Pixar movies so far take place in the same universe. In pretty much all of the Pixar movies, one can find a reference to another Pixar movie. In Wall-E, the Pizza Planet truck can be seen, just briefly, in the garbage pile. In Toy Story 3, it's even shown that Buzz Lightyear runs on Buy 'n Large batteries. Seeing the other Pixar movies making references to each other implies that they're all linked together. (such as Toy Story references in Finding Nemo, Cars, and Monsters, Inc..) That means in WALL-E, a film taking place in the future, all the characters from the other movies may be dead. Seeing how polluted the earth is, clownfish may even be extinct. If the toys from Toy Story haven't died yet, it means they just wander the wasteland forever, no one to play with them and only waiting for death...
  • Well, yeah, but that's not to say they all didn't live long, happy lives. It's like if they made a movie about dinosaurs. Unless it ends with a meteor flying through the sky, it's not confirmed they died immediately. But still, by the time the other movies take place dinosaurs have gone extinct. The lovable characters have died by then, but life goes on. It's not that bad.
  • Actually, all of a sudden, Cars makes perfect sense. The automobiles are all the super-advanced AI-controlled automobiles that everybody left behind when they abandoned Earth.
  • If I recall correctly, there was a man named Andy in the prequel comic, Out There...
  • Now that I think about it, we've seen how "built to last" B&L products are. Assuming Woody etc are B&L products or at least repaired with B&L parts, who's to say Andy's family and friends haven't been passing the gang down to other kids for 700 years? Just because we don't see toys doesn't mean there aren't any.
• Fridge Horror: One of the robots in the repair ward is defibrillating everything in sight. Wall-E lets him loose. Where was he between being released and when we next see him? The residential quarters? The daycare? Where??
• Fridge Horror: As noted by another troper above, Pixar loves referencing its own canon in each new film. WALL-E collects things he finds while compacting trash, and one of the items briefly glimpsed in his home is Rex the dinosaur from the Toy Story trilogy, in good condition! Assuming toys are indefinitely sentient, this Rex has quietly witnessed the centuries of self-indulgent destruction of everything he once knew back in Andy's room. By the time the events of this movie take place, he's likely consigned himself to just remain on WALL-E's shelf for the rest of eternity.
  • Of course, Rex could be up and about while WALL-E is off at work, which could make for a pretty interesting (albeit creepy) spin-off short...are you reading this, Pixar and/or Wallace Shawn?
• Near the end of the movie, while the Captain fights AUTO for control of the ship, it starts tilting. The gravity also tilting. But if they're in space, a 0G environment, with artificial gravity, wouldn't it be the same no matter the ship's orientation?
• Fridge Horror: It is implied that at one point the captains want to return to earth to fix things that Auto has killed every generation leading to the plot's timeline, slowly getting more and more control. It is likely he would've been running the show by the next generation, Wall-E didn't mess everything up.
  • Probably not EVERY captain. Least, not the ones that listened to AUTO anyway.
• Near the beginning of the movie, Eve's fondness of her BFG and general trigger-happy tendencies seem a little brash for a well programmed, professional piece of equipment. Of course, that's just the point- Eve was programmed to think of Earth as wild and dangerous for living things, just like Auto. To her, Earth is land of Everything Trying to Kill You.