Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: Right after the Jamaicans kill Ramon Vega and the predator slaughters all of them, Jerry Lambert says, "she (Ramon's girlfriend) never made it". What could she have died of? She was seen walking with Leona Cantrell and didn't seem wounded, and the predator would not have hurt her because she was unarmed. If she were wounded, she would have been checked out by paramedics right away. (00:31:20)

Chosen answer: Jerry means she never made it to the hospital. Keyes' goon squad intercepted the ambulance and snatched her to interrogate her about the Predator.

Grumpy Scot

Question: Is the scene where Will smith recites all the movie dialogue while it is playing in the original Richard Matheson novel, or was it just a homage to The Omega man (where Charlton Heston does something similar)?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: It's an homage to the Omega Man.

Grumpy Scot

Question: According to the president's addresses EVE was part of the Axiom's crew since it first left Earth, meaning that she and WALL-E would have been manufactured around the same time since he was intended to start cleaning the planet up right after humanity evacuated. Why then do the two have such a major difference in their looks and technological standards if they were both intended for roughly the same behind the scenes purpose (at least in terms of wandering around wastelands and looking through trash)?

Answer: A few reasons, I guess. The Wall-E units were designed for constant, robust use (picking up and compacting garbage, then moving the garbage around), so they're going to be bulkier and have no bells and whistles. The EVE units are designed for relatively little usage (they check out a planet every now and then, and there are multiple units so each one isn't likely to get much use), so they can afford to be more techy. The Wall-E units were designed to work in a huge army to clean up earth, so they needed to be low cost (which often coincides with lower-tech), whereas the Eve units were relatively few, but important, so more money could be spent on each unit. Also the Eve units would be on the ships where the humans are, and likely to be seen by many people, so they had to look nice for them. The Wall-E units would be working unseen, so they can look ugly. It's basically the same reason why a harbour tug and a speedboat are so different in terms of aesthetics and technology, even though they're both made for powering through water.

Gary O'Reilly

Question: Okay, so help me out here. When someone still plugged into the Matrix dies from say, cancer or is hit by a car, does that mean the real world counterpart of that person has been completely drained of energy by the machines? When a human has served its purpose to the machines, do they alter the Matrix to make that person die? I'm very curious to know how how death works in the Matrix.

Brad

Chosen answer: Insofar as can be told from what little we know, the human body will continue to produce energy indefinitely, at least until it dies of old age or from some other cause - there appears to be no precedent for an individual to be fully drained by the machines. If an individual dies in some abnormal manner within the Matrix, such as a car crash, their body will die on the outside and will have to be disposed of. Otherwise, their body will presumably age normally until they expire of natural causes. As for how cancer might operate, we have no information. To theorise, as the digital body represents the actual body with reasonable accuracy, should an individual plugged into the Matrix develop cancer in their real body, then it's a plausible hypothesis that their digital self will demonstrate the same symptoms - the real and virtual afflictions will proceed at the same rate and the digital self will expire when the real body passes away.

Tailkinker

Question: How come Tony doesn't die when Pepper hits the button that blows up the roof? He never cleared the roof as intended and it must have been really powerful if it killed Obediah. Tony's chest piece flickers on and off and then the scene fades. They never give an explanation for this.

Answer: Tony, even wearing the Iron Man armour, is light enough that the shockwave of the blast throws him out of the way, so he escapes the majority of the explosion's effects. Stane, in his much heavier suit, isn't so lucky and so gets the full impact, which kills him. The flickering of the chest piece is merely a device to show that Tony is still in one piece, even if injured.

Tailkinker

Show generally

Question: My understanding of The Daleks is that they draw their power from their vertical shoulder slats. The new paradigm Daleks have no shoulder slats, so where are they drawing their power from?

Josman

Chosen answer: Don't know where you got that information from, but there doesn't seem to be much around to support it. Models of Dalek shown in very early episodes of the original series got their power from external sources, but since then they have operated entirely on unspecified internal power sources concealed within their armour. No reason to think that the new Daleks are any different.

Tailkinker

Question: I would like to know from a real Navy pilot if the scene is correct where Maverick's F-14 is right on Iceman's tail and he tells him to fly hard right to get out of his way. This leaves jet wash in his flight path and the jet goes down. Wouldn't a real pilot be trained to avoid this kind of danger from happening with the jet wash?

jcmann01

Answer: The original F-14A used the TF30 engine which was prone to compressor stall. This problem was fixed in later aircraft. https://theaviationist.com/2014/12/12/f-14b-engine-goose/.

Chosen answer: Probably not a lot of Navy fighter jocks on this site. Of course he'd be trained to avoid it, but Maverick is hyper-aggressive and is following Iceman way too closely. Had he been farther back he'd have avoided it.

Grumpy Scot

Question: I actually have two questions about this film. Firstly, does Rambo actually kill anyone in this film? Dennehy doesn't die and he didn't kill Galt so was there anyone else? And secondly when Rambo arrives at the cliff face, why didn't he simply run to his right or left? The police were only coming at him from behind (and even if one of them came from the side, Rambo could have used his skills to get past him). So why did he feel that going down the cliff was his only option?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: No he doesn't kill anyone. He didn't know if he was surrounded or not and if he did encounter one from the side they might have shot him.

Grumpy Scot

Question: When Chick's pit crew insults Guido, he yells back something in Italian. Can someone translate to English?

Answer: Guido says something like "Who do you think you're talking to? Who are you talking to?"

Question: Did anyone know that Gordon didn't actually die? Or were Batman or Dent in on the plan?

Answer: Given Dent's reaction after Gordon saves him it seems he had no idea. It seems by Batman's reaction in the armored car chase that he knew Gordon was the driver but it's not totally clear. Batman going to Gordon's house after his apparent death gives viewers the idea he also thought Gordon was dead. This may have just been Batman "playing to appearances" so to say. The way the chase ended seems to lead you to think Batman and Gordon had planned the whole thing together.

dablues7

Question: When Helen and Madelin are fighting with the shovels, Helen whacks off the end of Madelin's shovel, and then Madelin throws the stick through Helen. How did they achieve this effect?

curiouskid

Chosen answer: CGI, just like any other difficult effect.

Grumpy Scot

Question: If the ship's artillery is only equipped with 5-inch starburst rounds (as stated more than once), how do they use the much larger guns to sink the submarine?

Answer: The smaller guns were only equipped with the Starburst rounds. The 16 Inch Cannons were still supplied with live ammo. None of the characters left to fight had experience with the 16 inch guns except for the Gunner's Mate, therefore none of them thought to use one of the 16 inch guns.

dablues7

Question: When Slugworth is trying to bribe Charlie into bringing him the Everlasting Gobstopper, he says that his reward will be "10,000 of these" as he shows Charlie a bunch of money. Does anyone know what "those" were and how much "they" were worth? They look too big to be American dollars.

Paul Pepiton

Chosen answer: The story itself is purposely set in a fictional European country (accordingly to the DVD's audio commentary), so no real town or city can be identified (keeping the cities anonymity). Coupled with the fact that Willy Wonka IS a fantasy, the money offered to Charlie by Slugworth is of a non-descript denominational currency used in that country. It can be safely assumed that it was a very large sum of money.

CCARNI

Question: Why is is Yoda is always seen stooped and hobbling around everywhere with a walking stick - but when it comes to fighting, with his duel against Count Dooku at the end of this movie for example - he all of a sudden practically becomes a ninja; jumping, spinning and battling with his lightsaber so spectacularly?

Answer: He must tap into the Force to perform these acrobatics. Without doing so, he is restricted in movement by his age and limp. He feels it would be squanderous, selfish, and unnecesary to use his abilities with the Force simply to get about.

Phixius

Except in the case of the scene where he's walking with Obi-Wan and Mace in the temple. Then he's using the force to float his chair.

Question: Who really killed the Comedian? I've always assumed it to be Veidt but after watching it again the other night, I saw that the assailant's mask is raised to show his face and it wasn't Adrian. The attacker seemed to have a salt and pepper mustache, but that might have been a trick of the lighting of the scene. (The Comedian's killer is shown in a series of flashbacks when Adrian explains everything to the other Watchmen while they are in Karnak.)

Answer: It was Adrian Veidt. Most likely, he was disguised in case anyone should see him entering or leaving Blake's apartment, or, in case he should not be able to defeat the Comedian.

Twotall

Answer: It could only have been Veidt, as Comedian was still at peak physical condition. To beat him would require superhuman (bullet catching) speed and strength.

Question: In Star Wars Battlefront II, if you're playing Galactic Conquest and move up on Endor, there is a big blue planet beside the moon. Which planet is that and how does the environment look there?

Answer: That is actually the planet Endor. It is a gas giant so the environment is probably just swirling masses of clouds and vapor. Check out http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Endor_(planet) for more information.

Question: At which point do you see Barbossa's hat and boots?

Answer: When Jack gives tia the monkey, she releases him and he runs away and lands on a pair of boots. Mostly likely Barbossa is lying in a bed, healing, hidden by a curtain and they are his boots.

Answer: The first shot of Jack the Monkey. He's sitting next to them.

Phixius

Question: I wonder, what was the point of having a gunfight with the armored man at the beginning of the film?

Answer: It was put in the film to introduce the concept of Rianne and Lorna being pregnant and to bring in the joke about the news article about Roger, not to mention giving the film an action-heavy opening.

Question: When the caravan that is moving the grain is captured by Robin Hood, he ties the men together and they are forced to walk back to the town ("17 miles" or so). Shouldn't they have used the metric system to state the distance they have to travel to the town? I thought stating the distance to be traveled in miles was just for the sake of the joke for American viewers.

nanderson

Chosen answer: A "mile" is not American in origin. The British adapted it from the ancient Roman term, "mille passuum," meaning one thousand paces or strides. Each pace was the length of five Roman feet, resulting in a mile that was approximately 5,000 feet long. This measurement fluctuated up until the Tudor era, when Parliament established the current measuring standard, though the metric system, which was developed by the French in the late 1700s, has since replaced it in Europe and elsewhere. Britain still uses mile as a standard measure of distance on road signs and for speed limits, etc.

raywest

Answer: The woman who wanted Monica's wedding dress from the blow-out sale retaliated by booking the Swing Kings for the same day as Monica and Chandler's wedding. She would only let Monica have the band if Monica agreed to give up the dress. Monica honored the agreement to ensure that Chandler got his favorite band for the reception - if she'd kept the dress after booking the band, the deplorable woman would have retaliated in some other way. Monica simply found another dress.

raywest

Answer: The first answer is 100% correct, but in S8 E1, the band they actually have at the wedding is called ‘Jungle Swing'.

If you haven't yet, you should totally submit this as a Mistake / Plot Inconsistency. Nice catch.

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