History of Wall-E

Pixar's Feature Films WALL•E
#1

OK, so, I’m watching “Wall-E”, again, and I’m wondering if I have this right:

It’s about 2100 when life becomes unsustainable on Earth thanks to pollution, around the time the ultra-technologically-advanced conglomerate, Buy-N-Large, is building space cruise ship liners meant for human enjoyment and fun.

Their plan to dump the garbage in space backfires when it surrounds the Earth’s surface and adds to the toxic atmospheric conditions, along with old, dead satellites.

That’s when “Operation: Cleanup” is put into play, and the cruise ships became the evacuation plan. (I’m guessing that since there were many Axiom-style ships taking off towards the beginning.) The Wall-E robots were to clean up the Earth and make it life-sustaining again.

When the starliners take off, I think most of them were not ready and did not make it past the atmosphere. The population of the Earth was divided amongst the starships, but only the Axiom’s passengers survived, which explains why there are not 9 billion people in space.

Not only that, but some people probably died because of the Earth’s condition. Whatever the reason, Earth is completely trashed at this point and there are roughly 500 people alive, all of which are in space aboard the Axiom.

Then, “Operation: Cleanup” fails, and the Wall-E robots are shut down, except for one.

600 years later, that one Wall-E bot is still cleaning up. The human race has changed alot thanks to the loss of bones and labor-saving devices. They send down EVE robots to monitor the Earth’s state and report when plants have been found. Plants will confirm that life is sustainable on Earth.

At this point, the movie takes place. Allow me to point out that I think that Auto wanted to refrain from returning to Earth not only because it was his “directive”, but because doing otherwise would put him out of commission.

After the movie, the future looks bright. Wall-E and EVE are together (and at the end, is it my imagination, or do we get a glimpse of a wedding ceremony at Wall-E’s trailers?) and the Earth becomes inhabitable again as evidenced by the Earth’s silhoutte becoming greener as the movie faded out, then the credits.

Does this seem right?

#2

I’m not entirely sure but I think this is how it happens:

It’s about 2100 and the earth is covered in trash. BnL then decides to take all the humans off of earth in space cruises and clean the planet. While the ships are taking off, the Wall-E bots begin to work. After a while BnL finds out that rising toxicity levels have made life unsustainable on earth. Instead of trying to fix this problem they decide to keep all the humans in space and turn off the Wall-E bots. The movie takes place 700 years later.

#3

There’s also the theory that they left all the WALL-E units on, and they all just deactivated over the years. Save one. There’s a lot more in the Science of WALL-E thread.

#4

Ok, I’d like to add something to the timeline which I had trouble grasping until recently.
Well remember Operation Cleanup failed and the WALL•E’s were deactivated, we’ll why’d they still send EVE probes if Operation Recolonize was cancelled as well.
Well as you remember, humans weren’t always as lazy as evidenced by the BnL ads and the pictures of the past Captains. Well my whole point is, AUTO never cancelled the EVE’s so the more aware captain of the time wouldn’t get suspicious. Then it just became routine, and even Captain B. McCrea was aware of his (limited) duties. It all makes sense now.
Anyone have anything to add? And sorry if this has already been pointed out.

#5

I believe the EVE probes were simply on an automated system that had no reason to be canceled. AUTO had orders to “not return to Earth”, but he never had orders to stop searching for life. AUTO is the most machine-like of all the robots, he follows his orders to the letter, he wouldn’t have extrapolated any additional orders from just that one.

#6

Yeah, I agree with you wallefanataic, AUTO is all computer.
I thought of that as a simple reason why, but I think what I said solidifies it even more.
Welcome to Pixar Planet!

#7

I still think that the WALL-E’s were just left to rot. Not deactivated.

#8

I’m honestly still not sure, as much as I’ve considered it. The original idea Stanton and co. had was that “someone forgot to turn off the last robot” so there’s that working against the “left to rot” idea. Of course, the fact that they all seem to have just stopped functioning in random different ways at different times and difference places indicates they probably just wore out, although then we have to ask “how did WALL-E survive the initial phase of units breaking down?” We know he used spare parts after other units were already gone, but was he just resilient due to his personality beforehand? If they were all turned off the only idea I have is that either there’s some “kill-switch” at BnL headquarters that shut them all down at the same time and WALL-E just didn’t have it installed, or they used some kind of EMP in order to disable them and WALL-E managed to be out of range.

#9

You know you’re a WALL•E freak when you post in this discussion!!! :laughing:

Here is an observation of mine…

I was watching the first shots in the Captain’s Quarters and I became suddenly intrigued with the dates on the bottom of the captain’s names… (please excuse the first names of the captains… I put them in there because it helps me, for whatever reason… and I like coming up with names anyways… :unamused:)

Devon Reardon, 2105-2248 (143)*
Patricia Fee, 2249-2379 (130)
Rob Thompson, 2380-2520 (140)
Johnson Brace, 2521-2645 (124)
Kelly O’Brien, 2646-2774 (128)
Brandon McCrea, 2775- c.2805** (30)

[i]*Numbers in parentheses indicate how old each captain would have been; assuming the years listed are birth and death dates.

**McCrea is the last captain of the Axiom; estimate of the year the humans returned home (McCrea age 30 at the time of landing).[/i]

Q.1: Are the humans on the Axiom kept alive longer because of the sterile environment and, perhaps, advances in medical technology? I would think that since they have been reduced to gel people in hoverchairs, their bodies wouldn’t be able to support that extra weight and they would develop such conditions as heart disease, diabetes, etc. (respectfully).

Q.2: I know that in the score for WALL•E, one of the first tracks indicates that it is “2815 A.D.”; but if the message about “Override A113” was sent in 2110, and assuming they had been in space for their 5-years (this would mean they left in 2105), it wouldn’t make sense that 2815 is the 700th Anniversary of their 5-yr cruise.

Edit: Q.3: Since the dates that the former captain died and the date the next captain is born are one right after the other (for example: 2105-2248, 2249-2379), would that mean that the captains assume duty when they are babies?! It doesn’t make sense.

What are your thoughts on this?

little chef

#10

Just to see if there is still a chance of them being able to go back at all.

But there’s one thing that doesn’t make sense is that Shelby Fortright mentions the EVE probes in a video that was made in 2100, but Andrew Stanton seems to insist that she is on the other end of the spectrum of technology, meaning she is a futuristic robot compared to Wall-E. But then how did Shelby know about the EVE probes? Because I highly doubt that they were making or even coming up with the EVE probes in 2100, because no one plans something and then passes the idea on for 700 years so that people then will make it. And plus, they said somewhere in the movie that EVE probes do down to earth every year to check for plant life, so does that mean the probes were made a little while after the video was made? But then Andrew said again that Wall-E and EVE are 700 years apart.

So if EVE was really built around 2100 considering what Shelby said, then did Andrew make a mistake? How old is EVE?

#11

Operation Clean-up was not handled well. At all. Thus, WALL-E got relatively primitive gadgets while the Axiom robots were all better treated.

Life span increases due to medical advances. Life in space would more then likely prevent viral and bacterial diseases, It’s quite reasonable to have a one hundred and fifty-year lifespan in the future.

As to only the Axiom passengers surviving, that is a highly unlikely theory. We only saw the Axiom passengers landing, but we can assume that other ships would be soon forthcoming.

#12

I think the easiest explanation is that the BNL ships set course for seperate systems instead of all of the ships going to the Kuiper Belt (Axiom’s location).

Because the captains’ dates are are sequential, they’re dates of duty. Life expectancies may be much longer than we thought; over 150 years.

Citation:

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ6Q_aA_K … re=channel

#13

Okay this is how it goes.
By the year 2105, the Earth is covered in trash. As seen in that newspaper WALL-E treads over in the movie, it says “Over 200 billion consumers worldwide”. So over-population and garbage are destroying the Earth. Buy n Large built many starliners, with the Axiom the best one. Operation Cleanup was to be initiated.
Operation Cleanup:

  1. Millions of WALL-Es compact garbage in cubes and stack into orderly towers.
  2. Towers are then incinerated by massive city block wide-sized incinerators which at the same time, pump pollution out of the atmosphere.
  3. Was supposed to take five years.

Operation Recolonize then brought the humans back to Earth after plant life was found by an EVE probe. The probes scanned areas just make sure it was safe to return.
In 2110, Earth was deemed too toxic and Operation Recolonize was cancelled. Shelby Forthright had all robots turned off, but missing one (Operation Cleanup failed, so why let the WALL-Es continue running if they aren’t coming back?)

So there were other starliners. The Axiom held 600,000 people (mentioned in one of the BnL shorts). Because all the plant life is returning, the other starliners’ EVE probes easily found plants and probably their captains eventually “ordered” their Autos to bring their ships home (Auto can’t refuse orders). That, or people got in the escape pods because in the credits you see four escape pods land.

And now I have two questions: Why was Shelby Forthright still on Earth and were there other humans on Earth too? And how do you think the Axiom captains were picked when the humans didn’t do anything?

#14

First, and I’ve brought this up over at either the ‘Advanced’ thread or the ‘Observations’ thread, we don’t know for sure whether AUTO was in charge of all the ships facilities. He was the wheel in the bridge and even he had to push buttons instead of being wired into the system. It’s not quite clear if he had control over the ships computer, I don’t think he did. The computer was aware at one point in the movie of a security breach, and AUTO found out about it the same way the Captain did: hearing the announcement. AUTO had to push buttons to get the security bots out in force, same buttons the Captain could have pressed, except that AUTO had control over the elevator to the bridge and had confined him.

The computer knew, perhaps very shortly after the probe ships return, that ‘The Plant’ was onboard, perhaps even before GO-4 did his sweep. But you are right, AUTO still did not have any orders to stop sending EVE out. The question is, could he have stopped them leaving if he had wanted to?

#15

As CEO of BnL, I think Shelby Forthright stayed on Earth to oversee Operation Cleanup. But when everything fell through, he and any other humans that may have been there to take off in another supership.

I attempted to explain the “Captain Selection Process” in my fanfic, Higher Calling. If you ever get a chance, give it a read. You won’t regret it. :wink: