Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: Red quotes Andy a price of $10 for the rock hammer, and associated fees. Seems like a lot of money for the time period, doesn't it? And what did prisoners get paid, if anything?

Answer: $10 in the '40s is equivalent to roughly $180-$190 today, so yes, rather pricey for an item that retails for under $20 nowadays. Still, Red charges his fees, plus a significant mark-up due to the increased risk of smuggling contraband that could be perceived (by prison officials) as a weapon. The estimate of the cost of the hammer comes from the novel. And no, the prisoners likely weren't paid (even if, at that time, they had the option, the warden is so corrupt he'd likely keep their wages for himself); according to the novel, Andy smuggled a few hundred dollars into prison with him, hidden in...let's just call it a secret place.

Question: A helmet that is built to withstand thousands of PSI can really be broken by a few slams with a fire extinguisher?

Dangar

Answer: The helmet is designed to withstand immense pressure that is equally distributed over its entire surface. Direct blunt-force impacts by a hard metal object like a fire extinguisher may compromise the structural integrity.

raywest

Answer: He reprogrammed the computer so that it was possible to win. But winning and losing wasn't really the point; it was a test of character, gauging how potential captains dealt with a situation with only bad options available.

Cubs Fan

Question: Just an observation. There's 5 or 6 minutes of screen time between the initial shrinking of the sub / crew and the start of the 60-minute clock. Shouldn't those minutes have been included in the countdown?

Answer: I think the countdown began after the crew were injected into the patient's body.

No, the countdown started after the second shrink.

Answer: The sub was shrunk in stages, with the lab personnel performing different tasks at each step. The clock automatically reset after each step was completed and as the next shrink phase commenced. The final sixty-minute countdown began after the last shrinking stage and when the sub is injected into the scientist's body.

raywest

Question: How did Quicksilver manage to get the arcade game, the table tennis and what looks like a sound system in the basement? They are very heavy and even with his speed would be impossible to move.

Answer: There could be a basement door, so he wouldn't need the stairs, and with a hand truck, even the heavier objects would be easy to move.

Brian Katcher

He's able to move several people out of the Mansion when it is destroyed, so perhaps his powers allow him to move things that big quickly. He can also push a cart or trolley at speed, remember.

Answer: He doesn't have to steal the actual heavy items, he can steal money and buy the heavy items and have them delivered. His mother is a single parent so it wouldn't be very difficult for him to arrange delivery of items while she is working. Mom also appears to be completely aware of Peter's crimes and doesn't really seem all that concerned.

BaconIsMyBFF

Answer: He could have just hired a moving company to do it all for him.

Phaneron

And his mother wouldn't have found that suspicious? Or the movers? He's a teenager.

Brian Katcher

His mother seemingly already knows that he steals stuff. It's her house after all. She thinks the heroes are the police when they first show up to talk to him, and she visits him in the basement in the next film, and would have seen all the stuff he has down there. As for the movers, I used to work for a moving company, and not once did we ever ask a customer where they acquired something we were moving. They would be there to do a job.

Phaneron

That totally doesn't make any sense. The idea is that he stole these items. Would he call a moving company to steal an arcade game out of an arcade hall? How does he get the arcade game in the first place? Does he leave it on the curb of the arcade hall (or shop) so they can pick it up and drop it off at his house?

lionhead

He most likely stole money and legit bought all those things. He likely helps his mother with the bills and stuff, so she doesn't ask him how he does it. Pietro is not known to be some master criminal with bad character, so he likely doesn't steal from ordinary people. The way he broke Magneto out of the prison, it seems he knows his way around a vault.

How he gets the arcade game is another question entirely. Maybe he stole it from a gas station or a restaurant that was near an apartment complex, but was still far from his home, and arranged to have it picked up at the apartment complex, so it would look like he lived there and was moving it to a new place. Alternatively, he could have had friends help him load it onto a truck.

Phaneron

Question: Why did the survivors ignore the poor animals they pass by before they found the house to safety? didn't they even realised they needed to be saved from starvation?

musicman

Answer: As noted elsewhere here Jeannie is speaking Farsi.

What are the several things she says in Farsi? Please translate.

Answer: Regarding the three wishes, there was never any set-in-stone rule or belief. This appears to originate from "The Ridiculous Wishes" or "The Three Ridiculous Wishes" that is a French literary fairy tale written by Charles Perrault and was published in 1697. It sort of set the standard for genie rules that later appeared in other folk tales and then in movies and TV shows. Like vampire lore, common details can be changed by any author to suit their story.

raywest

Answer: She's speaking Persian. And there was never a 3 wish rule. When Tony freed her, he became her master, and she'd do anything for him (i.e. grant his every wish).

Bishop73

Question: Why did the shuttle craft only have room for two crew members when there are seven of them? The shuttle is mainly an escape vessel if the ship was in danger and their lives were at risk hence the stasis capsules, so there should have been accommodation for seven.

Answer: Considering "The Company" that owned the mining space ship was notoriously cheap (and corrupt) about providing their crew with necessities, it is hardly surprising they had inadequate safety equipment, like enough stasis capsules. Also, the company's real mission (known only to Ash) was to collect the alien creature at any cost while the crew was deemed "expendable," so no need to provide them with a viable escape method.

raywest

Question: Hannibal tricks three, "DNA-modified" dogs to chase him, dodging the dog's attack to send them crashing through the building's high-rise window. The result is the three dogs falling to their death on the street below (you hear terrified screams as the dogs make impact). Why did the dogs die though? Wouldn't a vampire, however infected or changed, survive a fall from a great height?

Answer: Vampires may be very resistant to a lot of trauma, but they aren't indestructible. If they fall from such a height the entire body will just explode and though they could theoretically regenerate (very far fetched) if their head is still attached, the dogs would be dead not much later anyway.

lionhead

Question: How does Cassandra manage to find Brett's home address and track him down there? There's no suggestion he gives her any other information than his mobile number, which isn't enough to find an address.

swordfish

Chosen answer: It's possible to find someone's address using a reverse directory (using a cell or landline phone number to link to an address). I've found people's addresses by putting their name and/or phone number into a search engine.

raywest

Question: Why would Cliff and Ronnie just let themselves die killing zombies when they could've driven off to seek refuge?

Cody Fairless-Lee

Answer: It was in the script that they would die. Ronnie stated he knew it would end badly because the director gave him the full script ahead of time.

Invader_Gir

Question: What spills onto the floor in the hotel fight when the toilet is broken? It looks like some form of insulation.

Answer: From what I could tell, at the beginning you see a smoky glass partition (or glass-like) by the toilets. I couldn't really tell what for, maybe a changing area. Before the toilet gets broken, this partition gets shot and shatters. That's what's on the floor. But I can't see how it could get around the toilet like it does without some mistake.

Bishop73

Answer: Ray Park's film work has mostly been as a stunt double and not as a speaking actor. Peter Serafinowicz has extensive experience as both an actor and doing voice-over work. He was better able to vocalize the Darth Maul character. It's fairly common in films (particularly sci-fi and fantasy) for minor character's voices to be dubbed over by other actors. Many movie scenes are filmed without sound and the dialogue and sound effects are added in post-production. Many actors dub over their own voices for better sound quality.

raywest

Question: In the rainy scene outside of Steven's apartment building: Chip appears and Steven seems to be surprised that Chip helped him get together with Robin again. He asks, "How did you know we're back together?" But Robin already called Steven to thank him for the free cable upgrade. Shouldn't he already know that Chip was involved? Who else would upgrade Robin's cable and pretend that Steven paid for it?

Answer: If we're to assume it to be an intentional addition to their dialogue, and not just a minor continuity error, maybe it was just Steven's way of handling Chip's uncomfortable initiation of the topic? I can buy Steven not understanding what Chip was talking about when he said "I set em up, you knock em down" without much context to set up that convo. But once Chip says he juiced her up and helped get her back, it seems like Steven gets what he's hinting at. The way he turns away and sort of flees while asking "how did you know we're back together?" (to me) seems a little more like an effort to avoid acknowledging what Chip did, and a little less like him genuinely not knowing Chip's involvement. As if he was in denial and didn't want to openly accept the situation for what it was. That's just my guess anyway. I hope it sounds like a fair enough point and not like something I'm looking too deeply into. Never really gave that moment in the film a second thought until reading the question.

Question: Without any actual eyes to study, how would anyone know that a T-Rex couldn't see anything unless it moves?

Answer: The notion that tyrannosauruses' vision was based on movement, or was otherwise poor, is a complete fabrication of the film (and possibly the book it is based upon). They were apex predators and thus likely had excellent vision, as do apex predators of today. But just for the sake of argument, studying the brain cases of extant skeletons and comparing them to those of living species, as well as extrapolating knowledge of the brain functions and visual acuity of comparable species, could allow for the hypothesis that the vision of the T-Rex was movement-based. (And in reality, it was by this method that scientists came to the exact opposite consensus).

Answer: In the book, they find out about T. Rex's visual acuity only later when Dr. Grant was actually knocked out of his car and was injured when it attacked him. I believe he then stood up and had the T. Rex right in front of him and stayed absolutely still because he was frozen in terror, not being able to move. The T. Rex then couldn't find him and started roaring as to scare him to get him to move or run because it lost sight of him. He didn't realize this fact only until when he slept in the trees with Lex and Tim when some other herbivore dinosaur, not a Brachiosaurus, was eating the leaves around him. Startled waking up to it, he moved which scared the dinosaur, but then he stopped moving so the dinosaur couldn't see him anymore and began to graze again. He realized this finally and connected the dots that it was because of the amphibian DNA. He knew frogs' visual acuity is only based on movement, and so all the dinosaurs had that trait. I hate from the beginning in the movie he just somehow knows.

Question: What does Netty say when Wilma calls her after she discovered the turkey **** all over her sheets? Wilma says "I'm gonna get you and your stupid mutt" and Netty replies with something that sounds like a foreign language before finally talking English again and saying "He's a good dog".

Answer: She says "You don't dare. You stop bothering me and my Raider." (Raider being her dog).

Bishop73

Question: The record shop girl gives Ethan a record. Where does it come from? The way her arm moves it's like she receives it from someone at her right.

Answer: She gets it from under the counter. It's hard to see the way the shot is framed, but you can just see her arm movements as she reaches under the counter, slides the record out, then rotates her arm (out of frame) to hand the record to Ethan.

Sierra1

Question: Why didn't Scully believe Mulder when he told her that he found the bomb and was trapped in the room?

Answer: She's used to Mulder's rather droll, off-beat sense of humor and thought he was just making a glib jest.

raywest

Question: What exactly is the curse that the leprechaun places on the well? He only says that he curses the well until he finds his magic that breaks the spell, but never specifies what the curse is.

Question: During the opening scene, where it explains the creation of the ring, Sméagol finding and Bilbo taking it, was the entire scene animated or were live actors used before switching to animation?

Answer: This is from Wikipedia: The (1978) film is notable for its extensive use of rotoscoping, a technique in which scenes are first shot in live-action (human actors), then traced onto animation cels. It uses a hybrid of traditional cel animation and rotoscoped live action footage.

raywest

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