lizardgirl - I wonder why the humans in WALL•E even had teeth, as they obviously didn’t use them with the pureed food they ingested. What was the name of that short story, do you know? I’d love to track it down.
Rachel- I’ve just realised that probably one of the main reasons why they still have teeth is because they still talk to each other, and teeth are very important in creating certain sounds and that sort of thing. This probably stopped the humans losing their teeth altogether, and explains why in this short story, the humans did lose their teeth- every human has its own room underground, but they never communicate with each other or see other humans, unlike aboard the Axiom, where the humans still socialise.
As for the name of the short story, I can’t remember. 
But when I see my teacher again tomorrow, I’ll ask him.
I posted this over at the History of WALL•E thread but I think it fits here too so I’ll summarize it quickly.
Well, as we saw in the movie, the Captains seemed to lose power to AUTO more and more as the years passed. But the first Captain was probably much more involved than Cpt. B. McCrea was, so here’s my point:
Now I understand why they AUTO kept sending EVE’s even though Operation recolonize was cancelled. Well it makes sense, AUTO couldn’t tell the Captain about the secret directive, but cancelling EVE’s would arouse suspision, also this would make everything seem like the Axiom is “staying the course”.
I don’t know if people thought of this before, but I really wnated to share it to clear up anyone’s question if it was posed.
Here’s another observation: there are no child or teenage humans aboard the Axiom. Only babies and grown adults! I have no idea why… anyone want to guess?
Good point, Rachel. There also aren’t any older people on board the Axiom, and the lack of both older and younger people is intriguing, since they both appeared in that BnL Axiom advertising video.
I can’t think of a really good reason as to why this is. Part of me is thinking that perhaps it was easier just to have either adults or babies, as creating so many humans must’ve been difficult in the first place without having to change their base for each age bracket of human. But then again, Pixar doesn’t usually like to cut corners. Maybe the sheer numbers of the humans forced them to limit what they could feasibly do.
Aside from that, I’ve no idea.
Yes, they both appear in the ad video that poor Wall-E had to see nearly half a million times. But no, there are a few old people on the Axiom. You can see one with a walker right at the front of the group exiting the Axiom with the Captain. There are others who appear to be elderly in the huge mass of people being slopped around on the Lido Deck by Auto’s antics.
Oh yeah… I remember the old people now. One had a walker when they were coming out from the Axiom on New Earth. But where are the kids and teenagers?
Something funny that I’ve noticed is that they give EVE the “breathing effect” when she is standing (or rather, hovering) still. Perhaps it is only an effect of hovering in which you can’t be completely motionless, but especially in the truck scene (specifically, when she is gazing at the lighter) her chest seems to rise and fall rhythmically as though she were breathing.
Also, this is also clear the moment WALL-E’s pod explodes later in the film. Again, it could also be the effects of hovering, but her chest seems to heave as though she were breathing hard (as somebody would in that situation, both from the vigorous acitivity she took part in as well as the shock and disbelief she suffered from WALL-E’s potential death).
Sorry if this has already been answered, but [spoil]I saw it as a kind of shrug. He scans WALL-E and then jumps in surprise, then when he goes back and sees the empty spot he just says “ehh…” and goes on scanning the other EVEs.[/spoil]
Yeah I think that is more for expression than anything. Since Go-4 doesn’t have eyes, arms or a mouth, they use those “shoulder/hand” things to convey emotion.
After EVE presses down the “Hello, Dolly!” tape in hopes of reviving WALL-E, we see him compact some of his favorite things into of box. One of those things is a mixer, presumabley the same one WALL-E showed to EVE in the beginning (he grabbed it from roughly the same spot she placed it); the one EVE accidently broke. However, it was suddenly magically fixed.
If you listen closely to the “Top Secret Video” near the end of the movie, when Shelby Forthright tells AUTO to assume Directive A113, in his greeting it almost sounds like he says “Hey there AUTO Pilot(s)”. (Note this is plural.) Does anyone else think he says this?? This would indicate that all of the AUTO Pilots assumed the directive.
little chef
I noticed two more Mac references, particularly in both Wall-E and Eve’s design.
For Wall-E, notice how the L-shaped arm tracks on his body resemble the slot drive on Mac computers (especially the dust-cover ‘bristles’)?
And for Eve, notice how when she went into hibernation mode, her ‘plant logo’ glows in the same manner as the power light on Macs when they’re in sleep mode?
Yeah, I put the first one in on the other observations thread. You might mean when Hal wiggled his way into that slot, it sure looked like it was for a disk. It made me think he has at least a disk in there somewhere and perhaps other motherboards.
Btw, this forum sure has died in the past few weeks. The bad news has cast some kind of shadow. A few posts a day is pretty sad.
I was honestly confused with all the “observation” threads… I wanted to post something about the captains of the Axiom once (which I did), but I didn’t know whether to put it in the “History” thread or the “Science” thread… or the “Observation” thread!!! 
I think it’s clear that he says ‘AUTO Pilots’ in the movie…So that would mean that there are still millions of people floating through space for all eternity… 
I don’t think that’s the case. My idea is that all of the ships are networked somehow, and the moment Brandon (oops… Captain McCrea…) pressed the holo-detector button, the other ships responded as well. I’m pretty sure that they all hyperjumped back home at the same time to their respective locations.
Either that or after the humans on the Axiom had lived on Earth for a while, the EVE probes from the other ships found the plants that grew there and brought the other ships home. (Now the thing with that is… all of the other captains would have had to battle with their AUTOs to override Directive A113!!!)
It’s only a theory, anyways. 
Now that’s an interesting theory…It’s too bad the captains don’t have a WALL-E to help them out.
My guess is that the ‘History’ and ‘Science’ threads come from the walleforum.com site, which links to there, and they have found a lot of extra stuff and expanded on the basics of the movie. There is also a Soundtrack thread, an Advanced (Observations) thread, and probably lots of smaller threads, just not a Ben Burtt thread.
There are just too many types of observations in a 97 min movie to put in one thread, and it’s good on the other hand that they do collect into just a few threads instead of having numerous threads like “Did you see all the Captain’s names? Har har har!”
Other ‘Observation’ threads:
‘Dvd observations’
‘Subtitles always correct?’
‘Pixar in-jokes in Wall-E’
So these other threads are kind of specialized.
I’m not sure that I agree with picking holes in every aspect of this film, the plant can survive in space because it’s surrounded by a field of ‘plot’ which leads to one of the most beautiful moments in 2008 cinema, that’s all that is needed.
This film is brilliant as it is, it doesn’t require picking at it’s few flaws just to satisfy curiosity, I’m all for highlighting the clever in-jokes and observations purposefully put into the film but attempting to analyse it ona scientific basis? That’s hardly necessary.
•End Rant•