Madagascar/Headscratchers

• How did Captain Chantel break through walls?
• How come it takes Alex days to figure out he's going to be a danger to his friends, where the heck does he think meat comes from, magically out of the sky?
  • From a Silver platter, every day, in copious amounts.
    • Exactly. Early in the movie, Alex calls steak "Food...Things" and specifically states that they can't be found in the wild. As a zoo animal, he's never seen steak produced and thus has no idea that he's been eating other animals his whole life. After all, steak doesn't exactly look like his friends.
      • It is only later that he makes the connection between meat and other animals, as shown by his steak-o-vision.
• How do the penguins manage to tunnel through what is presumably solid concrete to escape their enclosure?
  • They're that badass.
  • Incredibly strong sporks.
• How on earth do they build those buildings with no access to tools?
  • First off, Bamboo Technology applies a lot here. Also they gain access to Kowalski - he can build anything they WANT.
• Why hasn't Maurice deposed Julien?
  • Julien is king, Maurice would be killed for being a traitor, probably.
  • Despite how insane Julien is, the lemur people clearly listen to him, partly because he's such a party animal. Maurice obviously knows it's better to be a sane right-hand-lemur than a totally ignored ruler. Also, he's only very slightly more sane than Julien - he often joins in with Julien's insanity and agrees with him an awful lot.
  • Maurice can't rule the matriarchal lemurs because he's a guy. Wild Mass Guessing has pegged Julien as Transsexual; he's just still taking advantage of the perks of being born with a uterus.
  • Maurice is a nice, loyal guy.
  • Well, while Julien is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and a Cloudcuckoolander, he's not a terrible leader...just a pretty incompetent one. He does care for the concern about his subjects and you can tell in the first film that he is worried about the Fossa eating them. His reaction about the Fossa isn't so much as one of indifference but rather a "There's nothing we can do, so we may as well leave each day like it's our last" mentality. Maurice is sort of his Morality Chain and Only Sane Man partner to keep him in check and to help him rule the lemurs more efficiently.
• Does anyone actually have a link to the creator's claim that Mort is thirty-five? I've seen it mentioned, but can't find the source.
  • Maybe he's just 35 in Lemur years.
• Where did Julien's "throw someone into the volcano as a sacrifice" plan come from? He had nothing to gain from it and he didn't even believe it'd really work (when someone asks whether it'd work, he casually answers "no" before correcting himself) so... why?
  • I guess, he is just such an Attention Whore. He needs no other benefit apart being constantly in the limelight. He just remembered one possible way to gain the water and used it to attract everyone's attention. Those little things, like whether this plan would work, or that someone has to sacrifice himself, are out of Julien's concern.
  • Also note that he never forced anyone to be sacrificed. He asked for volunteers. And got one, too.
• Alex is ten? The average life span of a Lion is 15 in the wild, up to 30 in captivity, but typically 16 years. Why are his parents alive and looking young?
  • Looking young? His dad looks fairly old to me.
  • They don't look old enough.
  • Human-style cartoon animal aging (That needs to be a trope, if it's not one already). Cartoon animals age the same way humans do and live the same lifespan. Go figure.
  • Also, Marty is the one that is claimed to be ten, Alex's age is never mentioned.
• Why ship the penguins to Africa on the same ship as the others? That's not their natural habitat. They likely wouldn't even survive there, with the heat and the lack of water/fish.
  • Maybe they were going to drop African animals at Africa and then to go to Antarctica.
  • Maybe just a big mess-up...
  • The penguins probably assaulted and hid whatever animal was supposed to go in the crate and took it's place, assuming that somewhere down the line they would be able to make a break for Antarctica.
• Is it me or are the Fossa less like Fossa, and more like weird Lionesses?
  • Look them up on That Other Wiki. Yes, they do look kinda like lionesses. That's because they're distantly related to cats.
• Did the writers of the sequel even see the first movie? The intro of the sequel with them at the zoo made no real connection for the "Marty's depressed on his birthday" reason for going to Connecticut.
  • It seemed to be just a Call Back working under Rule of Funny. But hey maybe he always wanted to go to Connecticut and his birthday gave him an excuse to talk about it again.
• Exactly why in Escape 2 Africa are all the animals in the preserve, predator and prey, seen coexisting with one another?! This especially jarring considering that a major plot point in the first movie was Alex dealing with his closest friends also being his prey in the wild.
  • Truth in Television on this one. In Africa during droughts, predator and prey will often be seen coexisting peacefully around the only available water source in the area. Dehydration will kill before starvation, so the water is the priority, not getting food.
• Did Alex/Alakay always have that birthmark in the shape of Africa on his right fore paw?
• I have one that just occurred to me after watching it again yesterday. How exactly did Marty make fire?
  • Isn't he stated as having used wildfire?