Alright, sorry if a thread like this already exists. If so, lock this one up.
While I adore WALL•E and think it overall is a very believable story, I can’t help but notice some of what Tropers like to call “Fridge Logic” - logic that you don’t realize doesn’t make sense until later, basically. Perhaps the most prominent flaw is this:
At the end, we see the Axiom humans coming back to Earth, ready to rejuvenate it, growing all kinds of plants… and in the end credits, we see a sort of “epilogue” with how Earth looks after the story ends. But weren’t all the bugs extinct? (Except for WALL•E’s pet cockroach, anyway, and that was just an inside joke.) And there were no oceans or water left on the planet? Obviously plants need both to grow.
Well, when they showed Earth from space there didn’t seem to be any oceans, but there has to be water somewhere; it is a renewable source. Maybe all the water is on the other face of Earth that we didn’t see!
Good thoughts everyone! I never would’ve thought the Axiom could’ve carried animals, I guess it seems plausible though. I wonder how many species there were left by 2800…
This was something my family had puzzled over a bit. The idea of it being like Noah’s Ark is very plausible… it sorta goes along with the story. Also, there had to be some kind of water source… nothing would have been able to survive in that case, and I seriously doubt all the water could have been contaminated in only 700 years.
The water issue seems to have been deflty explained by JustSoWall-eCrazy- it’s very plausible that the water is underground, buried underneath all the rubbish and earth. As for insects, it wouldn’t be surprising if the AXIOM had picked up some insects when it had left Earth in the first place, and the AXIOM would be a great breeding ground for bugs.
The only problem with the return of the insects to Earth is the now the reduced species diversity due to the genetic ‘bottleneck’, so to speak. Not all insects pollinate plants, so the only way we’d get the lush vegetation that we see in the WALL-E credits is for there to have been a few bees or other pollinating insects on board the AXIOM. And they could only survive in the presence of plants, so I’m guessing there might have been some sort of greenhouse or something in the AXIOM.
The plants on Earth would really only be of a few limited species in reality. For there to be the variance of species that we have now would take millions of years of evolution, so though the Earth may be green once again, it wouldn’t be Earth as we know it.
I like all the ideas presented here, you guys! I actually really miss this kind of in-depth discussion of WALL-E. <3
When I saw the title of the thread, “fridge logic”, I had this feeling that you were going to bring up the whole plant-growing-out-of-the-ground-inside-a-fridge issue. But obviously I’m the only one who has an issue with that bit, since no one else seemed to bring it up here.
Great idea for a thread Leirin I’m a troper myself, so I love it when people make references to my hobby.
Don’t worry little_chef, I had a hard time believing the bit with the plant in the shoe as well. It didn’t take away from the movie at all, it just irked me a bit. Hmm. Perhaps it was a magic plant? Like Jack’s bean stalk?
I take a more relaxed approach to this question. By some way, which I’m sure you guys will work out, they managed to do it. Is it essential to know how they pulled off a planetary revitalization? Nah, not really. So I just sit back and enjoy the happy ending.
I’ll offer this.
We’ve even now in 2010 have a doomsday vault full of seeds. Throw a seed freezer on the axiom and there’s your plants.
Beyond the beginning it was never really addressed again or seen, but it is mentioned that the Axiom is simply the star of BnL’s starship fleet. There are more ships and some of these could be for animals with full fledged environments. Besides, I’m sure they offered meat in a cup to eat and that meat had to come from somewhere.
And as mentioned before, we saw EVE digging a well, so access to water is available.
All of this plus the futuristic informations and technologies came together to somehow jump start a dead planet.
Well some things are better to be left behind. But thing is I think they can sythesis these things you know. Re arange particles and stuff from the gentic blueprints/data from before. So they can still get the old animals and plants.
They only needed Eve to get the plant sample to show that the earth is life sustainable.
There are some species that can fully survive in such toxic conditions (such as cockroaches) that have supplemental nutrients for diversifying life. Usually, the only way that other species can process through this toxicity is Evolution. Maybe, the bees had developed an immunity to the toxic waste, but, because their was no pollen to be processed from, very scarce sources of those kinds of bees remain. We have 700 years to account for this evolution process, which the archaebacteria can survive in intense situations and breed off a new species, which, furthermore, could suffice in radioactive conditions (like the cockroach, but, that already could survive through Wall-E’s twinkie feast), which also brings me to another point about the twinkies. The burgers and the waste all scuttled around Earth could be prominent for the life of decomposing bacteria as well as Algae and Fungi, so that could be another means of new life. Those fish that the crewmembers were fishing in the end credits probably caught fish that were unharmed by the radioactive waste because they learned to survive through it, through evolution. Although the fish in the end credits looks much like our fish life, i would suggest that this new evolution could bring upon some new, wierder species of life!
Finally, once the crewmembers have rehabilitated the Earth again, the fish would find no use of this radioactive protection and soon re-evolve into their normal selves, this protection would be vistigial towards their own survival and become their normal selves (like how we once had tails but had found no use to it, all that remains is the tailbone)
I forgot all about that!
I’m a troper myself, so I love it when people make references to my hobby.